ity a chance meeting. Chief Inspector Heat had had a
disagreeably busy day since his department received the first telegram
from Greenwich a little before eleven in the morning. First of all, the
fact of the outrage being attempted less than a week after he had assured
a high official that no outbreak of anarchist activity was to be
apprehended was sufficiently annoying. If he ever thought himself safe
in making a statement, it was then. He had made that statement with
infinite satisfaction to himself, because it was clear that the high
official desired greatly to hear that very thing. He had affirmed that
nothing of the sort could even be thought of without the department being
aware of it within twenty-four hours; and he had spoken thus in his
consciousness of being the great expert of his department. He had gone
even so far as to utter words which true wisdom would have kept back.
But Chief Inspector Heat was not very wise--at least not truly so. True
wisdom, which is not certain of anything in this world of contradictions,
would have prevented him from attaining his present position. It would
have alarmed his superiors, and done away with his chances of promotion.
His promotion had been very rapid.

"There isn't one of them, sir, that we couldn't lay our hands on at any
time of night and day. We know what each of them is doing hour by hour,"
he had declared. And the high official had deigned to smile. This was
so obviously the right thing to say for an officer of Chief Inspector
Heat's reputation that it was perfectly delightful. The high official
believed the declaration, which chimed in with his idea of the fitness of
things. His wisdom was of an official kind, or else he might have
reflected upon a matter not of theory but of experience that in the
close-woven stuff of relations between conspirator and police there occur
unexpected solutions of continuity, sudden holes in space and time. A
given anarchist may be watched inch by inch and minute by minute, but a
moment always comes when somehow all sight and touch of him are lost for
a few hours, during which something (generally an explosion) more or less
deplorable does happen. But the high official, carried away by his sense
of the fitness of things, had smiled, and now the recollection of that
smile was very annoying to Chief Inspector Heat, principal expert in
anarchist procedure.

This was not the only circumstance whose recollection depressed