 that all this had been done
directly the old woman had come forward with her deposition. And he mentioned
the name of a station. »That's where they came from, sir,« he went on. »The
porter who took the tickets at Maze Hill remembers two chaps answering to the
description passing the barrier. They seemed to him two respectable working-men
of a superior sort - sign painters or house decorators. The big man got out of a
third-class compartment backward, with a bright tin can in his hand. On the
platform he gave it to carry to the fair young fellow who followed him. All this
agrees exactly with what the old woman told the police sergeant in Greenwich.«
    The Assistant Commissioner, still with his face turned to the window,
expressed his doubt as to these two men having had anything to do with the
outrage. All this theory rested upon the utterances of an old charwoman who had
been nearly knocked down by a man in a hurry. Not a very substantial authority
indeed, unless on the ground of sudden inspiration, which was hardly tenable.
    »Frankly now, could she have been really inspired?« he queried, with grave
irony, keeping his back to the room, as if entranced by the contemplation of the
town's colossal forms half lost in the night. He did not even look round when he
heard the mutter of the word Providential from the principal subordinate of his
department, whose name, printed sometimes in the papers, was familiar to the
great public as that of one of its zealous and hard-working protectors. Chief
Inspector Heat raised his voice a little.
    »Strips and bits of bright tin were quite visible to me,« he said. »That's a
pretty good corroboration.«
    »And these men came from that little country station,« the Assistant
Commissioner mused aloud, wondering. He was told that such was the name on two
tickets out of three given up out of that train at Maze Hill. The third person
who got out was a hawker from Gravesend well known to the porters. The Chief
Inspector imparted that information in a tone of finality with some ill humour,
as loyal servants will do in the consciousness of their fidelity and with the
sense of the value of their loyal exertions. And still the Assistant
Commissioner did not turn away from the darkness outside, as vast as a sea.
    »Two foreign anarchists coming from that place,« he said, apparently to the
window-pane. »It's rather unaccountable.«
    »Yes, sir. But it
