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 statesman-like 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.

The short jacket and the low, round hat he assumed in a sort of curtained
alcove containing a washstand, a row of wooden pegs and a shelf, brought
out wonderfully the length of his grave, brown face. He stepped back
into the full light of the roo