shadowy immobility. The
Assistant Commissioner, invited to take a chair, sat down. In the dim
light, the salient points of his personality, the long face, the black
hair, his lankness, made him look more foreign than ever.

The great man manifested no surprise, no eagerness, no sentiment
whatever. The attitude in which he rested his menaced eyes was
profoundly meditative. He did not alter it the least bit. But his tone
was not dreamy.

"Well! What is it that you've found out already? You came upon
something unexpected on the first step."

"Not exactly unexpected, Sir Ethelred. What I mainly came upon was a
psychological state."

The Great Presence made a slight movement. "You must be lucid, please."

"Yes, Sir Ethelred. You know no doubt that most criminals at some time
or other feel an irresistible need of confessing--of making a clean
breast of it to somebody--to anybody. And they do it often to the
police. In that Verloc whom Heat wished so much to screen I've found a
man in that particular psychological state. The man, figuratively
speaking, flung himself on my breast. It was enough on my part to
whisper to him who I was and to add 'I know that you are at the bottom of
this affair.' It must have seemed miraculous to him that we should know
already, but he took it all in the stride. The wonderfulness of it never
checked him for a moment. There remained for me only to put to him the
two questions: Who put you up to it? and Who was the man who did it? He
answered the first with remarkable emphasis. As to the second question,
I gather that the fellow with the bomb was his brother-in-law--quite a
lad--a weak-minded creature. . . . It is rather a curious affair--too
long perhaps to state fully just now."

"What then have you learned?" asked the great man.

"First, I've learned that the ex-convict Michaelis had nothing to do with
it, though indeed the lad had been living with him temporarily in the
country up to eight o'clock this morning. It is more than likely that
Michaelis knows nothing of it to this moment."

"You are positive as to that?" asked the great man.

"Quite certain, Sir Ethelred. This fellow Verloc went there this
morning, and took away the lad on the pretence of going out for a walk in
the lanes. As it was not the first time that he did this, Michaelis
could not have the slightest suspicion of anything unusual. For the
rest, Sir Ethelred, the indignation of this man Verloc