here had come abruptly the head of a cat or a dog, it
could not have been a more idiotic contrast.

The man's name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this circle
of days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were incurably
tragic; he could not force himself to play the prosperous and frivolous
part demanded of him by President Sunday. And, indeed, when Syme came in
the President, with that daring disregard of public suspicion which was
his policy, was actually chaffing Gogol upon his inability to assume
conventional graces.

"Our friend Tuesday," said the President in a deep voice at once of
quietude and volume, "our friend Tuesday doesn't seem to grasp the idea.
He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a soul to
behave like one. He insists on the ways of the stage conspirator. Now if
a gentleman goes about London in a top hat and a frock-coat, no one need
know that he is an anarchist. But if a gentleman puts on a top hat and
a frock-coat, and then goes about on his hands and knees--well, he may
attract attention. That's what Brother Gogol does. He goes about on his
hands and knees with such inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he
finds it quite difficult to walk upright."

"I am not good at goncealment," said Gogol sulkily, with a thick foreign
accent; "I am not ashamed of the cause."

"Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you," said the President
good-naturedly. "You hide as much as anybody; but you can't do it, you
see, you're such an ass! You try to combine two inconsistent methods.
When a householder finds a man under his bed, he will probably pause to
note the circumstance. But if he finds a man under his bed in a top hat,
you will agree with me, my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely even to
forget it. Now when you were found under Admiral Biffin's bed--"

"I am not good at deception," said Tuesday gloomily, flushing.

"Right, my boy, right," said the President with a ponderous heartiness,
"you aren't good at anything."

While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking more
steadily at the men around him. As he did so, he gradually felt all his
sense of something spiritually queer return.

He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and
costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he looked
at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he had seen
in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhe