Chapter 5 Chapter 4 A Detective's Story
Gabriel Syme is not just a detective pretending to be a poet, he is actually a poet who becomes a detective.He made no secret of his hatred of anarchism, and his extreme conservative views were established not through conventional taming, but because he watched too many revolutionaries' inexplicable follies in his youth.His venerable character comes suddenly, a rebellion against rebellion.He came from a weird family - all the elders with all the latest ideas.One of his uncles was always walking around without a hat, and another uncle once tried to walk around without any clothing but a hat, but without success.His father cultivated artistic sentiment and self-realization; his mother cultivated simplicity and hygiene.So the boy, in his infancy, was completely ignorant of absinthe and cocoa, nor did he appreciate their benefits.The more his mother instilled in him more than Puritan abstinence, the more his father preached more than pagan freedom; when the former one day forced the child to vegetarianism, the latter had justified cannibalism.
Surrounded by every conceivable resistance since infancy, Syme was doomed to have to, so disgusted that he could only run away from reason.But there was so much fanatic blood in him that his common sense dissent seemed unreasonably fierce.His hatred of modern man is also culminated in a lawless accident.He was there when the explosion happened.At the moment of the explosion, he couldn't see or hear, and after the smoke cleared, he saw the broken windows and bloody faces.Since then, his behavior has been the same as usual-quiet, polite, and quite gentle; but his psychology has long been different.He no longer sees the anarchists, as most of us do, as a sickly mass of ignorance mixed with intellectualism; he sees them as a colossal and relentless threat, like an invasion .
He kept feeding newspapers and people's wastebaskets with stories, poems and scathing articles to warn people of this proliferation of savage betrayal.However, he never got close to his enemies, and what was worse, he was struggling to survive.He paced up and down the Thames Embankment with a cheap cigar in his mouth and entered into a state of contemplative anarchism, and even anarchists with bombs in their pockets were not as ruthless or lonely as he.In fact, he often felt that the government was weak and had been cornered to the point of dire straits.He followed this question with the fanaticism and obsession of Don Quixote.
He had walked on the embankment in a dark red sunset, the red river reflected the red sky, and they all reflected his anger.In fact, the sky was so dark and the river so red that the water seemed more like a raging fire than the setting sun it reflected.It looks like flames are snaking their way through the vast caverns of an underground country.
In those days, life was hard for Syme.He wears an old-fashioned black top hat and an even older black battered cloak, the combination of which gives him the appearance of early outlaws in the works of Dickens and Bulwar Leighton; his yellow beard and hair More messy and unclean than the lawn of Sevron Manor, which had not been mowed for a long time, a long, thin black cigar bought for twopence was stretched across his clenched teeth.On the whole, he looks like a very satisfying typical anarchist, and that's exactly what he's vowing to wage a holy war against.
Perhaps it was for this reason that a policeman greeted him "good evening" on this embankment.
Syme was on the verge of a morbid apprehension of humanity, and the indifference of the uninvited official, a blue monstrosity, seemed to sting him too.
"You mean good evening?" he said harshly. "You people always call the end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun and that bloody river! I tell you, if that It's real human blood that's flowing and you'll still be standing here motionless as before, watching out for a poor and harmless bum and ordering him to go away. You cops are cruel to poor people, if it wasn't for your calm , I can forgive you, even your cruelty."
"If we are calm," the policeman replied, "it is the calm of organized resistance."
"Huh?" said Syme, staring at him.
"A soldier must remain calm in the heat of battle," continued the policeman. "The calm of an army is the anger of a nation."
"My God, boarding school!" said Syme. "Isn't that what non-denominational education is?"
"No," said the policeman mournfully, "I never had those advantages. The boarding school came after my school years. I am afraid I have had the crudest education, and outdated."
"Where did you get your education?" asked Syme, wondering.
"Oh, at Harrow," replied the policeman.
Class sympathy, false as it is, is the truest thing in the masses.The sympathy poured out of Syme uncontrollably.
"And yet, my dear friend," said Syme, "you shouldn't be a policeman!"
The cop sighed and shook his head. "I understand," he said gravely, "I understand that I am unworthy."
"Then why did you become a policeman?" asked Syme with crude curiosity.
"For the same reason you lash out at the police," he replied, "and I find that the police department has more to worry about than the outliers of human scientific ingenuity, rather than those of whom the human will is accustomed to have justified outbursts, though such outbursts are Excessive. I think I got my point."
"If you mean you made your point," said Syme, "I think you did. As for making it clear, that's the last thing you'll do. Why would a man like you wear Blue helmets talking philosophy on the Thames Embankment?"
"It is obvious that you are not aware of the latest developments in our police system," the other replied, "I am not surprised. Our latest developments are kept secret from the educated class, because this class has too many of our enemies. But you seem to be in a good mood, and I think you might be able to join us."
"Which organization of yours?" asked Syme.
"I will tell you," said the policeman slowly, "that the situation is as follows: the head of one of our departments, one of the most famous detectives in Europe, has always believed that a conspiracy of purely high intelligence would soon threaten the very existence of civilization. He Convinced that the worlds of science and art were silently being drawn into a war against the family and the nation, he formed a special police force, where the police were also philosophers. Their job was to watch out for conspiracies , not only from the criminal point of view, but from any controversial point of view. Being a democrat myself, I fully understand the value of ordinary people in matters requiring ordinary courage or virtue. But obviously, in a pursuit It is inappropriate to use ordinary police officers in the investigation of heresy."
Syme's eyes shone with sympathy and curiosity.
"So what do you do for work?" he asked.
"The work of the Philosopher's Police," answered the blue-uniformed policeman, "is more adventurous and subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to the tavern to arrest thieves, we go to the artist's tea party to detect misanthropists. Ordinary detectives discover crimes from ledgers or diaries, and we predict crimes to occur from a book of sonnets. We want to find out the source of those terrible thoughts that drive people to rational fanaticism and high-intelligence crime. We An assassination at Hartlepo was averted in good time, thanks entirely to our Mr. Wilkes (a bright young man) mastering an octet in two verses."
"You mean," asked Syme, "that there is really a close connection between crime and the intellect of modern man?"
"You are not a pure democrat," replied the policeman, "but you were right when you said that our treatment of poor criminals is savage. I tell you that I sometimes tire of my profession because I find it always meant a war against the ignorant and the desperate. But this new operation of ours is something else entirely. We deny that snobbish Briton's assumption that the illiterate is the most dangerous criminal. We will not Forget the emperors of the ancient Roman Empire, and never forget the great princes who poisoned the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminals are the educated criminals, and the most dangerous criminals today are the completely lawless modern philosophers. And he In contrast, thieves and bigamists are essentially virtuous people; I sympathize with them. They agree with the basic idea of human beings and pursue it in the wrong way. Thieves respect property. They just want other people's property to become theirs. their own property, so that they could more perfectly respect property. But philosophers loathe property itself; they wish to destroy the idea of private property. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the ritual of bigamy, or even the cliché of convention ; but philosophers despise marriage itself. Murderers respect human life, and they only want to make it more fulfilling for themselves by sacrificing what they consider secondary life; but philosophers hate life itself, their own and the lives of others .”
Syme clapped his hands. "Too true," he exclaimed, "I've thought so since I was a boy, but I've never been able to say the opposite proposition. The common criminal is a bad guy, but at least he's a conditioned man, as the saying goes. Good guy. He said that if one particular obstacle was taken out—like a rich uncle—he would be ready to identify with the universe and praise God. He was a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wanted to cleanse the mansion, not to destroy it. But evil philosophers do not intend to change things, but to destroy them. Yes, the modern world retains all those tyrannical and shameful parts of policing, such as harassing the poor, spying on the unfortunate. He Has given up his more dignified work of punishing powerful traitors and powerful pagan chiefs. Modern man says we should not punish heretics. I only doubt whether we have the right to punish anyone."
"But it's absurd!" cried the policeman, clasping his hands with an agitation out of proportion to his size and uniform, "it's unbearable! I don't know what you're doing, but you're wasting your life .You must, you should, join our special team against anarchism. Their gangs are all around us, they are ready to shoot. Wait a little longer and you may lose the honor of working with us, and the last Our heroes die together for glory."
"Of course, this opportunity shouldn't be missed," Syme agreed, "but I still don't quite get it. I understand as well as anyone else that the modern world is full of lawless little people and crazy little movements. Yet despite their repulsive , They generally have the advantage of being at odds with each other. How do you think they have a gang and want to hurt people, how do you understand this kind of anarchism?"
"Don't confuse it," replied the Inspector, "with those occasional explosive riots in Russia or Ireland, which are really riots of the oppressed, possibly misunderstood people. This is A broad philosophical movement, consisting of an outer gang and an inner gang. You might as well call the outer gang a crowd of laity, and the inner gang a bunch of priests. I prefer to call the outer gang the innocent class, and the inner gang The gangs of the largest group are called the ultra-criminal class. The outer gangs—which constitute the main mass of their supporters—are simply anarchists, that is to say, people who believe that rules and norms destroy human happiness. They believe that human Crime, and all its evil consequences, are crimes of the system. They do not believe that crime leads to punishment, but believe that punishment leads to crime. They believe that if a man seduces seven women, he will be as irreproachable as a spring flower Walk away easily. They believe that if a man pickpocketed once, he would instinctively feel very comfortable. These are the people I call the innocent class.”
"Oh!" said Syme.
"So, naturally, these people talk about 'happy times to come,' 'paradise to come,' 'human being freed from vice and virtue,' and things like that. And the people in the inner circle—those holy priests Talking too. They too spoke to the applauding crowd about future happiness, and the freedom of man at last. But in their mouths—" the policeman lowered his voice, "in their mouths these happy words There's a sense of horror. They're not hallucinating, they're sane, and they don't think that humans on Earth will one day be free from sin and struggle. They imply death, and when they say that humans will be free at last, they mean that humans will commit suicide. When they talk about a When there is no right or wrong heaven, they mean the grave."
"They have only two goals, first to destroy humanity, and then to destroy themselves. That's why they throw bombs and not pistols. Those innocent ordinary members are disappointed that the bomb didn't kill the king; but those noble priests are happy , because the bomb killed some people."
"How do I join your organization?" Syme asked with passion.
"I know there's a vacancy," said the policeman, "and it's a great honor that I have the confidence of the head of the force. You should come and meet him, or, I shouldn't say meet him, because no one has ever seen him." .But you can talk to him if you want."
"Call?" Syme asked with interest.
"No," said the policeman patiently. "He always likes to sit in a dark room. He says it makes his thoughts flow better. You must come."
A little bewildered and terribly excited, Syme was led into a side door in a long row of Scotland Yard buildings.Before he knew what he was doing, he had been checked by about four middle-ranking officers, and then was ushered into a room startled by the sudden darkness.It's not ordinary black here, otherwise at least the shape of the object can be vaguely recognized, but here you can't see your fingers.
"Are you the recruited recruit?" A heavy voice asked.
In spite of the darkness before him, Syme somehow knew two things: first, that the voice belonged to a large man; and second, that the man had his back turned to him.
"Are you the recruit?" asked the invisible chief, who seemed to know all of this. "Okay. You're hired."
Syme couldn't help but resisted faintly the certainty of his words.
"I really don't have any experience," he began.
"Everyone has no experience," said the other party, "about the experience of Armageddon."
"But I'm really not suitable for-"
"You did it voluntarily, and that's enough," said the mysterious man.
"Well, really," said Syme, "I don't know of a profession where the ultimate test is merely voluntary."
"I know," said the other, "martyr. I condemn you terribly. Good day."
Thus Gabriel Syme emerged, and re-entered the red light of night.He still wears his old black hat and lawless tattered cloak, but he's part of a new team of detectives formed to thwart a grand conspiracy.On the advice of his policeman friend (who has a professional cleanliness), he trimmed his hair and beard, bought a nice hat, and wore a well-made light blue-gray summer suit with a flower in the buttonhole. Pale yellow flowers.In short, he became the elegant and intolerable man Gregory had first met in the little garden of the Sevron estate.Before he left the police building, his friend handed him a small blue card that read "The Last Jihad," along with a number, the official badge of his authority.He put the card carefully into the top pocket of his waistcoat, lit a cigarette, and set out to track down and strike down the enemy in all the drawing rooms of London.Where his adventures ultimately lead him, we've seen.On a February night, around one-thirty in the morning, he gallops down the silent Thames in his small tugboat, sword and revolver in hand as the marks of his official appointment as an Anarchist Central Council Thursday.
When Syme stepped aboard the steam tug, he had a strange excitement of stepping into entirely new territory; not just into the landscape of a new land, but of a new planet.This was largely due to the madness of that night, and partly due to the complete change in weather and sky since he had entered the tavern two hours earlier.Every trace of the feathery clouds of sunset has been swept away, and a naked moon hangs in the naked sky.The moon is so bright and full that (by virtue of an oft-noticed paradox) it looks like a slightly weaker sun.Instead of bright moonlight, it feels like dead day.
Across the landscape there was a discolored area of unnatural brilliance, like the tragic twilight glow of the sun in Milton's eclipse.Under the circumstances Syme had his first idea that he was actually on another, more vacant planet, orbiting some sadder star.But the more alone he felt on the moonlit earth, the more his own foolish chivalry burned like a great fire in the night.Even the mundane objects he carried with him—the food, the brandy, the loaded pistol—carry exactly that concrete, down-to-earth poetry that a child does when he takes a gun to the road or bread to bed. felt.Though the sword stick and brandy bottle are themselves mere tools of a morbid conspirator, they become expressions of his own healthier adventure story.The sword-stave becomes the knight's sword, the brandy almost becomes the farewell wine.Even the most brutal of modern fantasy relies on someone older and simpler; the adventure can be crazy, but the adventurer has to be normal.It wouldn't be weird without St. George's dragon.So this brutal landscape can only be imagined in the presence of a truly human being.To Syme's exaggerated mind, the bright and melancholy villas and townhouses by the Thames looked like ethereal mountains on the moon.But that's why the moon is poetic.
The tug was operated by two men, and despite their best efforts, the boat was moving slowly.The moon that lit Chesque was down when they passed Butters; and dawn was beginning to break when they passed the great Palace of Westminster.
The sky cracked like great bars of lead to reveal bars of silver; and when these bars shone like white flames, the tugboat changed its forward course inwards, to the side of Charing Cross. big pier.
When Syme looked up, the boulders on the embankment were still dark and massive, larger and darker against the white dawn.These boulders made him feel as if he were on the great steps of some Egyptian palace; in fact, it suited his mood, for he was inwardly attacking the solid throne of the terrible pagan king.He jumped out of the boat and landed on a slimy step, dark and slender in the midst of the huge stone building.Without saying a word, the two men on the tug switch off the machine and start venting the air.
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