Gilbert Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday

“In a man I never saw,” said the other, looking at the leaden sea.

“I know what you mean,” said Syme in a low voice, “the man in the dark room. But Sunday must have killed him by now.”

“Perhaps,” said the other steadily; “but if so, he was the only man whom Sunday found it hard to kill.”

“I heard what you said,” said the Professor, with his back turned. “I also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw.”

All of a sudden Syme, who was standing as if blind with introspective thought, swung round and cried out, like a man waking from sleep

“Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!”

“The Colonel! Yes,” cried Bull, “where on earth is the Colonel?”

“He went to speak to Renard,” said the Professor.

“We cannot leave him among all those beasts,” cried Syme. “Let us die like gentlemen if ”

“Do not pity the Colonel,” said Ratcliffe, with a pale sneer. “He is extremely comfortable. He is ”

“No! no! no!” cried Syme in a kind of frenzy, “not the Colonel too! I will never believe it!”

“Will you believe your eyes?” asked the other, and pointed to the beach.

Many of their pursuers had waded into the water shaking their fists, but the sea was rough, and they could not reach the pier. Two or three figures, however, stood on the beginning of the stone footway, and seemed to be cautiously advancing down it. The glare of a chance lantern lit up the faces of the two foremost. One face wore a black half-mask, and under it the mouth was twisting about in such a madness of nerves that the black tuft of beard wriggled round and round like a restless, living thing. The other was the red face and white moustache of Colonel Ducroix. They were in earnest consultation.

“Yes, he is gone too,” said the Professor, and sat down on a stone. “Everything’s gone. I’m gone! I can’t trust my own bodily machinery. I feel as if my own hand might fly up and strike me.”

“When my hand flies up,” said Syme, “it will strike somebody else,” and he strode along the pier towards the Colonel, the sword in one hand and the lantern in the other.

As if to destroy the last hope or doubt, the Colonel, who saw him coming, pointed his revolver at him and fired. The shot missed Syme, but struck his sword, breaking it short at the hilt. Syme rushed on, and swung the iron lantern above his head.

“Judas before Herod!” he said, and struck the Colonel down upon the stones. Then he turned to the Secretary, whose frightful mouth was almost foaming now, and held the lamp high with so rigid and arresting a gesture, that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced to hear.

“Do you see this lantern?” cried Syme in a terrible voice. “Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it, Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.”

He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where it flared like a roaring rocket and fell.

“Swords!” shouted Syme, turning his flaming face ; to the three behind him. “Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to die.”

His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme’s sword was broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, flinging him down. In a moment they would have flung themselves upon the face of the mob and perished, when an interruption came. The Secretary, ever since Syme’s speech, had stood with his hand to his stricken head as if dazed; now he suddenly pulled off his black mask.

The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much rage as astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority.

“There is some mistake,” he said. “Mr. Syme, I hardly think you understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law.”

“Of the law?” said Syme, and dropped his stick.

“Certainly!” said the Secretary. “I am a detective from Scotland Yard,” and he took a small blue card from his pocket.

“And what do you suppose we are?” asked the Professor, and threw up his arms.

“You,” said the Secretary stiffly, “are, as I know for a fact, members of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of you, I ”

Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea.

“There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council,” he said. “We were all a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the dynamiters. I knew I couldn’t be wrong about the mob,” he said, beaming over the enormous multitude, which stretched away to the distance on both sides. “Vulgar people are never mad. I’m vulgar myself, and I know. I am now going on shore to stand a drink to everybody here.”

NEXT morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for Dover. The poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, having been first forced to fight for two factions that didn’t exist, and then knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous old gentleman, and being much relieved that neither party had anything to do with dynamite, he saw them off on the pier with great geniality.

The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to each other. The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to wear masks originally in order to approach the supposed enemy as fellow-conspirators;

Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through a civilised country. But above all these matters of detail which could be explained, rose the central mountain of the matter that they could not explain. What did it all mean? If they were all harmless officers, what was Sunday? If he had not seized the world, what on earth had he been up to? Inspector Ratcliffe was still gloomy about this.

“I can’t make head or tail of old Sunday’s little game any more than you can,” he said. “But whatever else Sunday is, he isn’t a blameless citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?”

“I grant you,” answered Syme, “that I have never been able to forget it.”

“Well,” said the Secretary, “I suppose we can find out soon, for to-morrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me,” he said, with a rather ghastly smile, “for being well acquainted with my secretarial duties.”

“I suppose you are right,” said the Professor reflectively. “I suppose we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should feel a bit afraid of asking Sunday who he really is.”

“Why,” asked the Secretary, “for fear of bombs?”

“No,” said the Professor, “for fear he might tell me.”

“Let us have some drinks,” said Dr. Bull, after a silence.

Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly convivial, but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had always been the optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the other four that the whole company could take the same hansom cab from Victoria; but this was over-ruled, and they went in a four-wheeler, with Dr. Bull on the box, singing. They finished their journey at an hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as to be close to the early breakfast next morning in Leicester Square. Yet even then the adventures of the day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull, discontented with the general proposal to go to bed, had strolled out of the hotel at about eleven to see and taste some of the beauties of London. Twenty minutes afterwards, however, he came back and made quite a clamour in the hall. Syme, who tried at first to soothe him, was forced at last to listen to his communication with quite new attention.