Chapter 8 Chapter Seven: The Strange Behavior of Professor de Worms

"Sit down!" said Sunday, in a voice he had only used once or twice in his life, the kind that would make men drop drawn swords. The three standing men walk away from Gogol, and the ambiguous man returns to his seat. "Well, my friend," said Sunday quickly, addressing him as if to a stranger, "will you please put your hand in the top pocket of your vest, and show me what is there?" The suspicious Pole with the messy black hair turned pale, but he calmly put two fingers into his pocket and pulled out a long, thin blue card.When Syme saw the cards on the table, he was again aware of an outside world.Even though the card was on the other side of the table and he couldn't read the words printed on it, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the blue card in his own pocket when he joined the anti-anarchist police sent to him by the agency.

"Poor Slavs," said the chairman, "poor Polish child, denying yourself in this organization with this card—isn't it too much?" "Yes!" said the man who had previously been Gogol.Everyone was taken aback by the clear, popular, cockney voice of the man with the forest-like foreign hair.This is unbelievable, as if a Chinese word suddenly has a Scottish accent. "I think you fully understand your situation," Sunday said. "Of course," replied the Pole, "I will say that I am an honest policeman. I will say that I do not think a Pole can imitate my accent any more than I imitated his."

"I believe that," said Sunday, "I believe your accent is inimitable, though I will practice it in the shower. Would you mind leaving your beard with the card?" "Not at all," replied Gogol, ripping off the entire shag hood with one finger, revealing thinning red hair and a pale, elegant face. "It's too hot!" he said. "To do you justice, I will say," said Sunday, with an undeniable admiration, "that you seem to have kept your cool under the hood. Now listen to me, I like you, and the consequences are If I hear you die in pain, I'll be sick for two and a half minutes. Yes, if you report us to the police or anyone, I'll have those two and a half minutes of discomfort. I won't be thinking about you all the time Discomfort. Good day. Watch out for steps."

Without a word, the red-haired detective posing as Gogol stood up and walked out of the room with a look of complete indifference.The astonished Syme, however, realized that this ease was feigned, for a slight fall outside the door indicated the departing detective's fall. "Time flies," said the chairman in his happiest style, before glancing at his watch, which, like himself, was ridiculously large, "I have to leave now, I'm off to chair a meeting of humanitarians. " The secretary looked at him, his eyebrows twitching. "Now to go into the details of our plans," he said somewhat harshly, "wouldn't it be better now that the spies have left us?"

"No, I object," said Sunday, yawning like an inconspicuous earthquake, "forget about it for now. Let Saturday take care of it. I should go. Have breakfast here next Sunday." But the noisy scene that had just occurred excited the almost naked nerves of the secretary.He is a man who is serious even when he is committing a crime. "I must protest, Chairman, that this matter is out of order," he said. "The fundamental principle of our group is that all plans should be discussed in plenary meeting. Of course, I fully appreciate your foresight, in the face of a traitor— —”

"Secretary," said Sunday gravely, "if you took the head home and boiled it into a turnip, it might work. I'm not sure. But it might be." The secretary backed up like an angry horse. "I just can't understand—" He was about to seriously offend Sunday. "Indeed, indeed," said Sunday, nodding countless times, "that's something you can't do. You can't understand. So, you dancing monkey," he growled, rising to his feet, "you don't want to be tapped by spies, don't you How do you know you're not bugged now?"

With that he swaggered out of the room, trembling with incredible contempt. There were four men behind him who were dumbfounded and didn't understand what he meant.Only Syme understood, so he was a little creepy.If Sunday's last sentence is any indication, it means that he has always been suspected; it means that even if Sunday cannot accuse him as he accuses Gogol, he does not believe him as much as anyone else. The other four stood up, complaining more or less in their mouths, and they went to another place to have lunch, because it was already past noon.The professor walked last, looking slow and uncomfortable.Syme sat long after the others had gone, musing over his strange situation.He escaped a lightning strike, but he was still under a dark cloud.At last he got up and walked out of the hotel into Leicester Square.The sunny day was also quite cold, and when he was walking on the street, he was surprised by a few flakes of snowflakes.Although he carried his sword and staff and the rest of Gregory's handy luggage, his cloak had been left somewhere, perhaps on the tugboat, or on the balcony of the hotel.While hoping that the snow would fall less, he walked out of the street and stood in front of a small oily hair salon.The front window of the store was bare except for a wax figure of a sickly lady in evening gown.

However, the snow is getting bigger and bigger, faster and faster.Syme knew that one look at a lady's wax figure was enough to bring him down, so he looked out into the white, empty street.He was surprised to see a man standing motionless outside the store looking into the window.His top hat was snow-covered like Santa's, and white snow piled up around his feet; but nothing seemed to stop him from gazing at the pale figure in his soiled tuxedo. Wax doll.Syme was amazed that someone would be standing and looking at the shop in that weather; but his astonishment soon turned to shock when he realized that the man standing there was none other than the apoplectic De Vaux. Professor James.This is simply not the place for a man of his age and condition.

At first Syme was going to believe in this deranged dehumanizing brotherhood; but he still couldn't believe that the Professor could fall in love with the wax lady.He could only guess that his illness (whatever it was) produced some sort of momentary stiffness or stupor.However, he didn't want to feel such strong pity and worry.Instead, he was thankful that the professor's apoplectic state and his labored limp would allow him to easily throw him miles away.Syme had been longing to get out of that toxic atmosphere, if only for an hour.Then he could sort things out, figure out his countermeasures, and finally decide whether to keep his promise to Gregory.

He walked away slowly in the snowflakes, two or three blocks north, then two or three blocks south, and finally walked into a Soho diner for lunch.He pondered and enjoyed four strange side dishes, drank half a bottle of red wine, finally lit a black cigar, drank black coffee, and continued to think.He sat on the second floor of the restaurant, which was filled with the clanging of knives and forks and the chatter of foreigners.He remembered that earlier he had imagined that all these benign and harmless foreigners were anarchists.He shuddered, remembering the reality of the situation.But the trembling suggested that his happy escape was a disgrace.The wine, the ordinary food, the familiar place, the faces of these normal and talkative people made him almost feel that the Supreme Council was just a nightmare; although he knew it existed objectively, it was at least far away from him .Between him and the shameful seven he last saw were towering houses and crowded streets; in free London he was free, and drank among free people.He easily picked up his hat and cane and went down the stairs to the shop on the first floor.

When he entered the room below, he was momentarily stunned as if struck.At a small dining table next to the empty shop window and the snow-covered street, the old anarchist professor sat drinking milk, his livid face upturned and his eyelids drooping.For a moment Syme stood as frozen as the stick he leaned on.Then, with a posture of blindly rushing forward, he brushed past the professor, slammed the door open and slammed it shut, and stood outside in the snow. "Will that old coffin follow me?" he asked himself, biting his yellow upper lip mustache. "I've been in that restaurant too long for that slow-footed fellow to overtake me. One consolation is that If I'd walked faster, I'd have knocked that guy out of the way. Maybe I'm too fancy? Was he really stalking me just now? Surely Sunday wouldn't be foolish enough to send a cripple to stalk me. " Syme set off with brisk steps, swinging his stick here and there, towards Covent Garden.As he crossed the Great Market, the snow fell harder, blinding and disorienting, and the afternoon drew closer to night.Snowflakes haunted him like a swarm of silvery bees.They flew into his eyes and beard, constantly irritating his already irritated nerves; and when he staggered to the Fleet Street entrance, he lost his patience, found a teahouse, and went in to rest his feet.Looking for an excuse to stay longer, he ordered a second cup of black coffee.Before the words were finished, Professor De Worms staggered into the store, sat down with difficulty, and ordered a glass of milk. Syme's cane dropped from his hand with a thud, suggesting that iron was hidden within.But the professor didn't look around.Syme, who is usually so calm, was now like a country boy who sees a magic trick - dumbfounded.He saw no carriage following; he heard no wheels outside the shop; and from all signs the fellow came on foot.But the old fellow walks like a snail, and he walks like the wind.Syme jumped to his feet, grabbed his cane, and, as if possessed by arithmetical contradictions, stepped out of the revolving door without taking a sip of his coffee.A shore-bound bus rattles by with uncharacteristic swiftness.He ran desperately a hundred yards after it; he sprang to his feet and succeeded in grabbing the fender, on which his body dangled, and after a moment's panting he climbed to the upper carriage.About half a minute after taking his seat, he heard a heavy panting sound behind him. He turned around abruptly, and saw a muddy and snow-dripping top hat slowly emerging from the bus steps, and under the shadow of the brim was the near-sighted face and swaying shoulders of Professor de Worms.He settled into a seat with characteristic caution, wrapping himself tightly up to his chin in a rubber blanket. Every movement of the old man's trembling body and ambiguous hands, every vague gesture and panicked pause, seemed to indicate beyond any doubt that he was a waste, that he was in the last moments of physical decay.He moved little by little, and sat down with a slight cautious pant.However, unless the philosophical entities known as time and space do not exist at all, there is no doubt that he came after the bus. Syme sprang to his feet in the swaying carriage, cast a wild glance at the snowy sky, which was growing darker and darker, and ran down the steps.He couldn't restrain his instinctive impulse to jump. Dazed without looking back, he ran into a small yard off Fleet Street without thinking, like a rabbit into a burrow.He had a vague notion that if this creepy old fellow was really stalking him, it would be quick to lose him in those labyrinthine alleys.He dashed in and out of those twisting alleys that looked more like gaps than passages; after he'd made about twenty turns and run an unbelievable polygon, he stopped to listen for the sound of a track .No, nothing could be heard anyway, the narrow streets were covered with silent snowflakes.Just behind the Red Lion Park, however, he noticed an energetic townsman sweeping away the snow, clearing a field of about twenty yards, save for a few wet, glistening pebbles.He paid no attention to this place as he passed, and rushed into another labyrinth of streets.After running a few hundred yards he stopped and listened again, and now his heart froze, for he heard the clink of the cane and painful footsteps of the devilish cripple over the uneven stony ground. The sky overhead was filled with snowy clouds, which made London at dusk look prematurely gloomy and depressing.The walls of the alleys on either side of Syme were illegible and featureless; there were no small windows, nor any small eyes.He felt again the urge to rush out of the labyrinth of neighborhoods and into the open, lit streets again.But he walked evasively for a long time before he came to the road.This time he went much further than expected.He seemed to have come to the huge and empty Lugart Circus and saw St. Paul's Cathedral towering in the sky. He too was startled at the sight of these empty roads, as if a plague had swept through the city.Then he told himself that a certain amount of emptiness was normal, first because of this dangerous and severe snowstorm, and second because it was Sunday.He bit his lip at the thought of the word Sunday; it was his use from now on like a dirty pun.Under a blanket of white snow, the sky over the city has turned into a very strange green twilight, and people seem to be at the bottom of the sea.The oppressive and sullen sunset behind the dark domes of St. Paul's Cathedral showed smoky evil colors--sick greens, dead reds, decaying bronzes, bright enough to accentuate the pure white of the snow.But against these dull colors the black body of the cathedral rose, and on top of it was a smudge of messy snow that still seemed to cling to the Alpine peaks.Snowflakes occasionally fell, but only half covered the dome of the cathedral from top to bottom, setting off the dome and cross in perfect silver.Seeing this, Syme straightened his back suddenly, and saluted involuntarily with his sword and staff. He knew that the evil one, his shadow, was following him more or less quickly, but he didn't care. When the sky is dark, high places on the earth are bright, which seems to be a sign of human faith and courage.Devils may occupy heaven, but they cannot control the cross.He had a new urge to unravel the mystery of the flailing, hopping old man with strokes who followed him.So he turned towards the entrance of the circus garden, sword and staff in hand, and prepared to face his pursuer. Professor de Worms walked slowly down a winding alley, his unnatural figure against a lone gas street lamp, reminding one of the imaginary character in the nursery rhyme, "Walk the winding road Hunchback by a mile".After so many twists and turns, he looked like he was falling apart.He came closer and closer, the light reflecting on his upturned glasses and his upturned, serious face. Syme waited for him as St. George waited for the dragon, as a man waits for a final explanation or death.The old professor walked in front of him like a complete stranger, his sad eyes never blinking. This silent and unexpected affectation irritated Syme greatly, and the pale face and manner of the fellow seemed to prove that the follow-up had been an accident.With a passion between pain and childlike mockery, Syme made a wild gesture that seemed to knock the old fellow's hat off, shouted "Come and get me," and kicked away. Just ran across the white and empty circus.Concealment was impossible now; turning his head, he saw the old gentleman's dark figure loping after him, as if intent on winning the mile.But the head resting on that throbbing body was still pale and serious and professorial, like a speaker's head resting on the body of a clown. On this startling pursuit through Rugart Circus, over Rugart Hill, around St. Paul's Cathedral, and through Cheapside, Syme remembered the nightmare he knew.Then Syme turned and walked towards the river, and at last was almost down the pier, where he saw the yellow panes of a low lighted tavern, and walked in quickly to order a beer.It was a dirty tavern, where a few foreign sailors sat here and there, a place where opium was smoked and knives were used. After a while, Professor de Worms came in, sat down cautiously, and asked for a glass of milk.