The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (short books to read txt) 📕

“I won’t have the time,” interrupted the great Personage. “But I will see you. I haven’t the time now⁠—And you are going yourself?”

“Yes, Sir Ethelred. I think it the best way.”

The Personage had tilted his head so far back that, in order to keep the Assistant Commissioner under his observation, he had to nearly close his eyes.

“H’m. Ha! And how do you propose⁠—Will you assume a disguise?”

“Hardly a disguise! I’ll change my clothes, of course.”

“Of course,” repeated the great man, with a sort of absentminded loftiness. He turned his big head slowly, and over his shoulder gave a haughty oblique stare to the ponderous marble timepiece with the sly, feeble tick. The gilt hands had taken the opportunity to steal through no less than five and twenty minutes behind his back.

The Assistant Commissioner, who could not see them, grew a little nervous in the interval. But the great man presented to him a calm and undismayed face.

“Very well,” he said, and paused, as if in deliberate contempt of the official clock. “But what first put you in motion in this direction?”

“I have been always of opinion,” began the Assistant Commissioner.

“Ah. Yes! Opinion. That’s of course. But the immediate motive?”

“What shall I say, Sir Ethelred? A new man’s antagonism to old methods. A desire to know something at first hand. Some impatience. It’s my old work, but the harness is different. It has been chafing me a little in one or two tender places.”

“I hope you’ll get on over there,” said the great man kindly, extending his hand, soft to the touch, but broad and powerful like the hand of a glorified farmer. The Assistant Commissioner shook it, and withdrew.

In the outer room Toodles, who had been waiting perched on the edge of a table, advanced to meet him, subduing his natural buoyancy.

“Well? Satisfactory?” he asked, with airy importance.

“Perfectly. You’ve earned my undying gratitude,” answered the Assistant Commissioner, whose long face looked wooden in contrast with the peculiar character of the other’s gravity, which seemed perpetually ready to break into ripples and chuckles.

“That’s all right. But seriously, you can’t imagine how irritated he is by the attacks on his Bill for the Nationalisation of Fisheries. They call it the beginning of social revolution. Of course, it is a revolutionary measure. But these fellows have no decency. The personal attacks⁠—”

“I read the papers,” remarked the Assistant Commissioner.

“Odious? Eh? And you have no notion what a mass of work he has got to get through every day. He does it all himself. Seems unable to trust anyone with these Fisheries.”

“And yet he’s given a whole half hour to the consideration of my very small sprat,” interjected the Assistant Commissioner.

“Small! Is it? I’m glad to hear that. But it’s a pity you didn’t keep away, then. This fight takes it out of him frightfully. The man’s getting exhausted. I feel it by the way he leans on my arm as we walk over. And, I say, is he safe in the streets? Mullins has been marching his men up here this afternoon. There’s a constable stuck by every lamppost, and every second person we meet between this and Palace Yard is an obvious ’tec. It will get on his nerves presently. I say, these foreign scoundrels aren’t likely to throw something at him⁠—are they? It would be a national calamity. The country can’t spare him.”

“Not to mention yourself. He leans on your arm,” suggested the Assistant Commissioner soberly. “You would both go.”

“It would be an easy way for a young man to go down into history? Not so many British Ministers have been assassinated as to make it a minor incident. But seriously now⁠—”

“I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you’ll have to do something for it. Seriously, there’s no danger whatever for both of you but from overwork.”

The sympathetic Toodles welcomed this opening for a chuckle.

“The Fisheries won’t kill me. I am used to late hours,” he declared, with ingenuous levity. But, feeling an instant compunction, he began to assume an air of statesmanlike moodiness, as one draws on a glove. “His massive intellect will stand any amount of work. It’s his nerves that I am afraid of. The reactionary gang, with that abusive brute Cheeseman at their head, insult him every night.”

“If he will insist on beginning a revolution!” murmured the Assistant Commissioner.

“The time has come, and he is the only man great enough for the work,” protested the revolutionary Toodles, flaring up under the calm, speculative gaze of the Assistant Commissioner. Somewhere in a corridor a distant bell tinkled urgently, and with devoted vigilance the young man pricked up his ears at the sound. “He’s ready to go now,” he exclaimed in a whisper, snatched up his hat, and vanished from the room.

The Assistant Commissioner went out by another door in a less elastic manner. Again he crossed the wide thoroughfare, walked along a narrow street, and re-entered hastily his own departmental buildings. He kept up this accelerated pace to the door of his private room. Before he had closed it fairly his eyes sought his desk. He stood still for a moment, then walked up, looked all round on the floor, sat down in his chair, rang a bell, and waited.

“Chief Inspector Heat gone yet?”

“Yes, sir. Went away half-an-hour ago.”

He nodded. “That will do.” And sitting still, with his hat pushed off his forehead, he thought that it was just like Heat’s confounded cheek to carry off quietly the only piece of material evidence. But he thought this without animosity. Old and valued servants will take liberties. The piece of overcoat with the address sewn on was certainly not a thing to leave about. Dismissing from his mind this manifestation of Chief Inspector Heat’s mistrust, he wrote and despatched a note to his wife, charging her to make his apologies to Michaelis’ great lady, with whom they were engaged to dine that evening.

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