《代号星期四》06第四章 一个侦探的故事（在线收听）

CHAPTER IV. THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE

 GABRIEL SYME was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism.

Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left—sanity. But there was just enough in him of the blood of these fanatics to make even his protest for common sense a little too fierce to be sensible. His hatred of modern lawlessness had been crowned also by an accident. It happened that he was walking in a side street at the instant of a dynamite outrage. He had been blind and deaf for a moment, and then seen, the smoke clearing, the broken windows and the bleeding faces. After that he went about as usual—quiet, courteous, rather gentle; but there was a spot on his mind that was not sane. He did not regard anarchists, as most of us do, as a handful of morbid men, combining ignorance with intellectualism. He regarded them as a huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion.

He poured perpetually into newspapers and their waste-paper baskets a torrent of tales, verses and violent articles, warning men of this deluge of barbaric denial. But he seemed to be getting no nearer his enemy, and, what was worse, no nearer a living. As he paced the Thames embankment, bitterly biting a cheap cigar and brooding on the advance of Anarchy, there was no anarchist with a bomb in his pocket so savage or so solitary as he. Indeed, he always felt that Government stood alone and desperate, with its back to the wall. He was too quixotic to have cared for it otherwise.

He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding under the vast caverns of a subterranean country.

Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fashioned black chimney-pot hat; he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, black and ragged; and the combination gave him the look of the early villains in Dickens and Bulwer Lytton. Also his yellow beard and hair were more unkempt and leonine than when they appeared long afterwards, cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A long, lean, black cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from between his tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very satisfactory specimen of the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a holy war. Perhaps this was why a policeman on the Embankment spoke to him, and said “Good evening.”

Syme, at a crisis of his morbid fears for humanity, seemed stung by the mere stolidity of the automatic official, a mere bulk of blue in the twilight.

“A good evening is it?” he said sharply. “You fellows would call the end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun and that bloody river! I tell you that if that were literally human blood, spilt and shining, you would still be standing here as solid as ever, looking out for some poor harmless tramp whom you could move on. You policemen are cruel to the poor, but I could forgive you even your cruelty if it were not for your calm.”

“If we are calm,” replied the policeman, “it is the calm of organised resistance.”

“Eh?” said Syme, staring.

“The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle,” pursued the policeman. “The composure of an army is the anger of a nation.”

“Good God, the Board Schools!” said Syme. “Is this undenominational education?”

“No,” said the policeman sadly, “I never had any of those advantages. The Board Schools came after my time. What education I had was very rough and old-fashioned, I am afraid.”

“Where did you have it?” asked Syme, wondering.

“Oh, at Harrow,” said the policeman

The class sympathies which, false as they are, are the truest things in so many men, broke out of Syme before he could control them.

“But, good Lord, man,” he said, “you oughtn’t to be a policeman!”

The policeman sighed and shook his head.

“I know,” he said solemnly, “I know I am not worthy.”

“But why did you join the police?” asked Syme with rude curiosity.

“For much the same reason that you abused the police,” replied the other. “I found that there was a special opening in the service for those whose fears for humanity were concerned rather with the aberrations of the scientific intellect than with the normal and excusable, though excessive, outbreaks of the human will. I trust I make myself clear.”

“If you mean that you make your opinion clear,” said Syme, “I suppose you do. But as for making yourself clear, it is the last thing you do. How comes a man like you to be talking philosophy in a blue helmet on the Thames embankment?”

“You have evidently not heard of the latest development in our police system,” replied the other. “I am not surprised at it. We are keeping it rather dark from the educated class, because that class contains most of our enemies. But you seem to be exactly in the right frame of mind. I think you might almost join us.”

“Join you in what?” asked Syme.

“I will tell you,” said the policeman slowly. “This is the situation: The head of one of our departments, one of the most celebrated detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a purely intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of civilisation. He is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the Family and the State. He has, therefore, formed a special corps of policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is their business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense. I am a democrat myself, and I am fully aware of the value of the ordinary man in matters of ordinary valour or virtue. But it would obviously be undesirable to employ the common policeman in an investigation which is also a heresy hunt.”

Syme’s eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity.

“What do you do, then?” he said.

“The work of the philosophical policeman,” replied the man in blue, “is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet.”

“Do you mean,” asked Syme, “that there is really as much connection between crime and the modern intellect as all that?”

“You are not sufficiently democratic,” answered the policeman, “but you were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment of the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people’s.”

Syme struck his hands together.

“How true that is,” he cried. “I have felt it from my boyhood, but never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed—say a wealthy uncle—he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spying upon the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anybody else.”

“But this is absurd!” cried the policeman, clasping his hands with an excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, “but it is intolerable! I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re wasting your life. You must, you shall, join our special army against anarchy. Their armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt is ready to fall. A moment more, and you may lose the glory of working with us, perhaps the glory of dying with the last heroes of the world.”

“It is a chance not to be missed, certainly,” assented Syme, “but still I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that the modern world is full of lawless little men and mad little movements. But, beastly as they are, they generally have the one merit of disagreeing with each other. How can you talk of their leading one army or hurling one bolt. What is this anarchy?”

“Do not confuse it,” replied the constable, “with those chance dynamite outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really the outbreaks of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast philosophic movement, consisting of an outer and an inner ring. You might even call the outer ring the laity and the inner ring the priesthood. I prefer to call the outer ring the innocent section, the inner ring the supremely guilty section. The outer ring—the main mass of their supporters—are merely anarchists; that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the system that has called it crime. They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe that the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a man seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless as the flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket he would naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the innocent section.”

“Oh!” said Syme.

“Naturally, therefore, these people talk about ‘a happy time coming’; ‘the paradise of the future’; ‘mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,’ and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak—the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths”—and the policeman lowered his voice—“in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave.

“They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.”

“How can I join you?” asked Syme, with a sort of passion.

“I know for a fact that there is a vacancy at the moment,” said the policeman, “as I have the honour to be somewhat in the confidence of the chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see him. Or rather, I should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but you can talk to him if you like.”

“Telephone?” inquired Syme, with interest.

“No,” said the policeman placidly, “he has a fancy for always sitting in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts brighter. Do come along.”

Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be led to a side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he had been passed through the hands of about four intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a room, the abrupt blackness of which startled him like a blaze of light. It was not the ordinary darkness, in which forms can be faintly traced; it was like going suddenly stone-blind.

“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice.

And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.

“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.”

Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable phrase.

“I really have no experience,” he began.

“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle of Armageddon.”

“But I am really unfit—”

“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown.

“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession of which mere willingness is the final test.”

“I do,” said the other—“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day.”

Thus it was that when Gabriel Syme came out again into the crimson light of evening, in his shabby black hat and shabby, lawless cloak, he came out a member of the New Detective Corps for the frustration of the great conspiracy. Acting under the advice of his friend the policeman (who was professionally inclined to neatness), he trimmed his hair and beard, bought a good hat, clad himself in an exquisite summer suit of light blue-grey, with a pale yellow flower in the button-hole, and, in short, became that elegant and rather insupportable person whom Gregory had first encountered in the little garden of Saffron Park. Before he finally left the police premises his friend provided him with a small blue card, on which was written, “The Last Crusade,” and a number, the sign of his official authority. He put this carefully in his upper waistcoat pocket, lit a cigarette, and went forth to track and fight the enemy in all the drawing-rooms of London. Where his adventure ultimately led him we have already seen. At about half-past one on a February night he found himself steaming in a small tug up the silent Thames, armed with swordstick and revolver, the duly elected Thursday of the Central Council of Anarchists.

When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular sensation of stepping out into something entirely new; not merely into the landscape of a new land, but even into the landscape of a new planet. This was mainly due to the insane yet solid decision of that evening, though partly also to an entire change in the weather and the sky since he entered the little tavern some two hours before. Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset had been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky. The moon was so strong and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. It gave, not the sense of bright moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight.

Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural discoloration, as of that disastrous twilight which Milton spoke of as shed by the sun in eclipse; so that Syme fell easily into his first thought, that he was actually on some other and emptier planet, which circled round some sadder star. But the more he felt this glittering desolation in the moonlit land, the more his own chivalric folly glowed in the night like a great fire. Even the common things he carried with him—the food and the brandy and the loaded pistol—took on exactly that concrete and material poetry which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey or a bun with him to bed. The sword-stick and the brandy-flask, though in themselves only the tools of morbid conspirators, became the expressions of his own more healthy romance. The sword-stick became almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of the stirrup-cup. For even the most dehumanised modern fantasies depend on some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be mad, but the adventurer must be sane. The dragon without St. George would not even be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was only imaginative by the presence of a man really human. To Syme’s exaggerative mind the bright, bleak houses and terraces by the Thames looked as empty as the mountains of the moon. But even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.

The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went comparatively slowly. The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had gone down by the time that they passed Battersea, and when they came under the enormous bulk of Westminster day had already begun to break. It broke like the splitting of great bars of lead, showing bars of silver; and these had brightened like white fire when the tug, changing its onward course, turned inward to a large landing stage rather beyond Charing Cross.

The great stones of the Embankment seemed equally dark and gigantic as Syme looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge white dawn. They made him feel that he was landing on the colossal steps of some Egyptian palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his mood, for he was, in his own mind, mounting to attack the solid thrones of horrible and heathen kings. He leapt out of the boat on to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and slender figure, amid the enormous masonry. The two men in the tug put her off again and turned up stream. They had never spoken a word.

第四章 一个侦探的故事

    盖布利尔·赛姆不仅仅是一位假冒诗人的侦探，实际上他是一位成为侦探的诗人。他毫不掩饰对无政府主义的憎恨，其极端的保守主义观并不是通过常规性的驯服而建立的，而是因为他在年轻时看了太多的革命者令人费解的愚蠢行为。他可敬的品格来得突然，这是对造反的反叛。他来自一个怪异的家族——所有的长辈有所有最新的观念。他的一位叔叔总是不戴帽子四处走动，而另一位叔叔曾经尝试着不着任何衣物只戴帽子四处走动，但是没有成功。他父亲培养艺术情操和自我实现；他母亲主内，培养朴素和卫生。所以这个孩子在他少不更事时，完全不了解苦艾酒和可可这两种饮品，他也不喜欢这两种饮品的益处。他母亲对他超乎清教徒的节制灌输得越多，他父亲超乎异教徒的自由就鼓吹得越多；当前者有朝一日强迫孩子接受素食主义时，后者已经为人吃人辩护了。

    自婴儿期就被各种可以想象的反抗围绕着，赛姆注定不得不反抗，所以他厌恶到只能脱离理智。可是他身上流淌了太多狂热分子的鲜血，使得他为常识而持的异议也显得不合乎情理的激烈。他对现代人的憎恨也因为一起无法无天的事故达到极致。那起爆炸事故发生时，他就在现场。爆炸发生的那一刻，他看不见、听不见，硝烟消散之后，他看见了破裂的窗户和流血的面孔。从那以后，他的行为一如往常——安安静静，彬彬有礼，相当的温和；但他的心理早已不一样。他不再像我们大多数人一样，把无政府主义者看作一小撮无知愚昧和理智主义夹杂在一起的病态的群众；他把他们看作是一个巨大而冷酷的威胁，就像一次入侵。

    他不断为报纸和人们的废纸篓里提供故事、诗歌和激烈的文章，以此告诫人们这种野蛮背弃的泛滥。不过，他不曾接近他的敌人，更糟糕的是他已难以维生。他在泰晤士河堤上来回踱步，嘴里叼着一支廉价的雪茄进入思索无政府主义的状态，即使口袋里放着炸弹的无政府主义者也没有像他那么无情，或是孤独。实际上，他常常觉得政府势单力薄，已经被逼到万分危急的绝境。他像唐吉珂德一样狂热而执着地关注着这个问题。

    他曾在一个暗红色的夕阳下在河堤上散步，红色的河流反射出红色的天空，它们都映衬着他的怒火。事实上，天空很黑，而河面太红，河水似乎比它反射的落日更像猛烈的火焰。它看起来就像火焰在一个地下国家的巨大洞穴底下蜿蜒穿行。

    在那些日子里，赛姆生活很拮据。他戴一顶老式的黑色高顶礼帽，披着一件更老的黑色破旧斗篷，这两样物件的组合赋予了他狄更斯和布尔瓦·莱顿作品中早期歹徒的相貌；他黄色的胡子和头发比很久没有修整过的塞夫伦庄园的草坪更凌乱不洁，一支花了两便士买的又长又细的黑色雪茄横伸在他咬紧的牙关。总体上，他看起来就像一个非常令人满意的典型的无政府主义者，而这正是他对无政府主义誓要发动一场圣战。

    也许正是由于这个原因，在这河堤上，一个警察问候他“晚上好”。

    赛姆正处在对人类的病态忧虑的危急关头，这个不请自来的官员就像一个蓝色的庞然大物，它的冷淡似乎也刺痛了他。

    “你是说晚上好吗？”他严厉地说，“你们这些人总把世界的结束称为一个美好的晚上。看看那个血腥的红太阳和那条血腥的河流！我告诉你，如果那是真正的人血在流淌，你仍然会像以前一样一动不动地站在这儿，留意察看贫穷而无害的流浪汉，然后命令他走开。你们警察对穷人很残忍，如果不是因为你的平静，我可以原谅你，甚至你的残忍。”

    “如果我们是平静的，”警察回答道，“这是有组织反抗的平静。”

    “呃？”赛姆盯着他说道。

    “战士必须在战斗最激烈的时候保持平静。”警察继续说，“一支军队的平静就是一个国家的怒火。”

    “天哪，寄宿学校！”赛姆说，“这就是非教派教育？”

    “不，”警察悲哀地说，“我从未拥有过那些好处。寄宿学校在我的学龄之后才出现。恐怕我接受的教育是最简陋的，而且还过时。”

    “你在哪里接受的教育？”赛姆问，心里很疑惑。

    “哦，在哈罗公学。”警察答道。

    阶级同情心尽管是错误的，却也是群众中最真实的东西。这同情心从赛姆身上喷涌而出，难以控制。

    “然而，天哪，朋友，”赛姆说道，“你不应该成为一名警察！”

    警察叹了口气摇了摇头。“我明白，”他严肃地说，“我明白我不配。”

    “那你为什么当警察？”赛姆带着粗鲁的好奇心问。

    “和你痛骂警察是同一个原因，”他回答道，“我发现警察部门最需要担心的是人类科学才智离经叛道的人，而不是人类意志惯常有理由爆发的那些人，尽管这种爆发是过度的。我想我讲明白了。”

    “如果你指你说清楚了你的观点，”赛姆道，“我想你做到了。至于说讲明白，这是你要做的最后一件事。为何像你这样的一个人会戴着蓝色头盔在泰晤士河堤上谈论哲学？”

    “很明显你还不知道我们警察系统的最新进展，”对方回答道，“我对此并不惊讶。我们的最新进展对受教育阶层是保密的，因为这一阶层有我们太多的敌人。不过你似乎心态不错，我想你或许可以参加我们。”

    “参加你们的什么组织？”赛姆问道。

    “我会告诉你，”警察慢悠悠地说，“情况是这样的：我们一个部门的头头，欧洲最着名的侦探之一，一直认为一个纯粹高智商的阴谋会很快威胁文明的存在。他确信科学和艺术世界正无声地被裹胁到一场针对家庭和国家的战争中。因此，他组建了一支特殊的警队，在这里，警察同时也是哲学家。他们的职责就是监视阴谋的发生，不仅仅在刑事角度上，在任何一个有争议的角度也是如此。我自己是一个民主主义者，我完全明白平常人在需要平常勇气或德行事务中的价值。不过很明显，在一项追捕异端邪说的调查中使用普通警察是不得体的。”

    赛姆的眼睛带着同情和好奇闪闪放光。

    “那么你做什么工作？”他问道。

    “哲学家警察的工作，”穿蓝色制服的警察答道，“比平常侦探的工作要更冒险，而且更微妙。平常的侦探前往小酒馆逮捕盗贼，我们前往艺术家的茶会侦探厌世主义者。平常的侦探从账本或者日记里发现犯罪行为，我们通过一本十四行诗集预测将要发生的罪案。我们要查出那些逼使人们最终迈向理性狂热和高智商犯罪的可怕思想的源头。我们非常及时地避免了一起在哈特勒普的暗杀，那完全归功于我们的威尔克斯先生（一个聪明的年轻人）精通一首八行两韵诗。”

    “你是说，”赛姆问道，“犯罪与现代人的才智之间的联系真的很密切？”

    “你不是一个纯粹的民主主义者，”警察答道，“不过你刚才说我们对贫穷罪犯的处置非常野蛮，这你说对了。我告诉你，我有时厌倦我的职业是因为我发现它总意味着一场针对无知者和铤而走险者的战争。但我们的这一项新行动完全是另一回事。我们否认那个势利的英国人的假想，即文盲是最危险的罪犯。我们不会忘记那些古罗马帝国的皇帝，不会忘记那些在文艺复兴时期下毒的了不起的王子。我们要说危险的罪犯就是受过教育的罪犯，当下最危险的罪犯就是完全无法无天的现代哲学家。和他相比，盗贼和重婚者实质上是有德之人；我同情他们。他们认同人类的基本理念，也以错误的方式追求这一理念。盗贼尊重财产。他们仅仅是希望别人的财产变成他们自己的财产，这样一来他们就可以更完美地尊重财产。但是哲学家厌恶财产本身；他们希望摧毁私有财产的观念。重婚者尊重婚姻，不然他们就是不愿经历重婚的仪式，甚至惯例的俗套；但是哲学家鄙视婚姻本身。杀人犯尊重人的生命，他们只是想通过牺牲他们认为的次要生命来使自己获得更圆满的人生；但是哲学家憎恨生命本身，憎恨他们自己的和别人的生命。”

    赛姆拍了一下手。“讲得太对了，”他叫道，“我从少年时代就是这么想的，但总是无法说出对立的命题。普通罪犯是坏人，但至少就像俗话说的，他是一个有条件的好人。他说如果排除一个特定的障碍——比如一个富有的叔叔——他就会准备认同宇宙和赞美上帝。他是一位改革家，但不是一个无政府主义者。他希望清洗大厦，而不是毁掉它。但是邪恶的哲学家不打算改变事物，而是要消灭它们。是的，现代世界保留了警务工作中所有那些暴虐和可耻的部分，如骚扰穷人，窥探不幸者。他已经放弃了他较为庄严的工作，如惩罚有权势的叛国者和有权势的异教首领。现代人说我们不应该惩罚异教徒。我只怀疑我们是否有权利惩罚任何人。”

    “可这是荒唐的！”警察叫道，带着与他的身材和制服不相称的激动握住了双手，“这令人无法忍受！我不知道你在干什么，可你在浪费你的生命。你必须，你应当，参加我们对付无政府主义的特殊队伍。他们的团伙就在我们的周围，他们箭在弦上。再等一会儿，你就可能丧失和我们一起工作的荣耀，可能丧失和世界上最后的英雄们一起赴死的荣耀。”

    “当然，这个机会不该被错过，”赛姆表示同意，“但是我仍然不太理解。我和常人一样，懂得现代世界充满了无法无天的小人物和疯狂的小运动。然而，尽管他们令人厌恶，他们一般都有彼此不和的优点。你怎么会认为他们有一个团伙，而且要伤人，这种无政府主义怎么理解？”

    “不要把它，”警官答道，“和那些在俄国或者爱尔兰偶然发生的使用炸药的暴动搞混了，那些暴动真的是被压迫者的暴动，他们可能是一些被误解的人。这是一个广大的哲学运动，包括一个外围的团伙和一个内在的团伙。你不妨把外围的团伙称为一群俗人，把内在的团伙称为一群牧师。我偏爱把外围的团伙称为无辜阶层，把内在的团伙称为极度有罪阶层。外围的团伙——构成他们支持者的主要群众——仅仅是一些无政府主义者，也就是说这些人相信规章和准则毁掉了人的幸福。他们相信人类的罪行、所有邪恶的后果都是制度的罪行。他们不相信罪行会导致惩罚，却相信惩罚导致了犯罪。他们相信如果一个男子勾引了七个女人，他会像春天的花儿一样不受指责地轻松走开。他们相信如果一个男子扒窃了一次，他会本能地感到非常舒服。这些人我称为无辜阶层。”

    “哦！”赛姆道。

    “所以，自然而然地，这些人谈论‘即将到来的快乐时光’、‘未来的天堂’、‘人类脱离罪恶与美德的束缚，’以及诸如此类的话题。而内在圈子的人——那些神圣的牧师们也要说话了。他们也对鼓掌欢呼的人群讲述未来的幸福，以及人类最终获得自由。但是在他们的嘴巴里——”警察降低了他的声音说，“在他们的嘴巴里这些快乐的措辞有一种恐怖的意义。他们没有幻觉，很理智，不会想到地球上的人类有朝一日能够摆脱原罪和挣扎。他们暗示死亡，当他们说人类最终能够自由时，就是指人类将自杀。当他们谈论一个没有对错的天堂时，他们意指坟墓。”

    “他们只有两个目标，首先毁灭人类，然后毁灭自己。这就是为什么他们扔炸弹而不用手枪的原因。那些无辜的普通成员很失望，因为炸弹没有炸死国王；但那些高贵的牧师们很高兴，因为炸弹炸死了一些人。”

    “我如何参加你们的组织？”赛姆带着一种激情问道。

    “我知道现在有个职位空缺，”警察说，“而且很荣幸，我深受警队头头的信任。你应当过来见见他，或者，我不该说见见他，因为没人见过他。不过你愿意的话可以和他谈谈。”

    “打电话？”赛姆感兴趣地问道。

    “不，”警察耐心地说，“他总喜欢坐在一个漆黑的屋子里。他说这会使他的思路更顺畅。你一定要来。”

    带着点茫然和极度的兴奋，赛姆被人带到伦敦警察厅一长排大楼的一个边门里。就在他了解自己在做什么之前，他已经经过了大约四个中级警官的核查，然后就被带进一个房间，突如其来的黑暗吓了他一跳。这里不是一般的黑，否则至少物体的形状可以隐约辨识，但在这里伸手不见五指。

    “你就是被招募的新人？”一个沉重的嗓音问道。

    尽管眼前一片黑暗，赛姆还是通过某种奇怪的方式知道了两件事：首先，声音的主人是身材庞大的男子；其次，这个男子背对着他。

    “你就是被招募的新人？”看不见的长官问道，他似乎已得知了所有这一切。“好的。你被录用了。”

    赛姆喜不自禁，但还是对他确定无疑的话语进行了微弱的抵制。

    “我真的没有任何经验。”他开口说。

    “大家都没有经验，”对方说，“关于大决战的经验。”

    “但我真的不适合——”

    “你是自愿的，这就够了。”这位神秘的人说。

    “那么，真的，”赛姆说道，“我不知道什么职业仅仅是以自愿为最终的考验。”

    “我知道，”对方说，“殉道者。我极度地谴责你。日安。”

    盖布利尔·赛姆就这样出来了，重新走进夜晚的红光中。他依旧戴着黑色的旧帽子，披着无法无天的破斗篷，可他已成为为挫败大阴谋而组建的新警探队的一名成员。根据他的警察朋友的建议（他的朋友有职业性的洁癖），他修剪了头发和胡子，买了一顶好帽子，穿了一件制作精良的淡蓝灰色夏装，扣眼里插了一朵淡黄色的花。总之，他变成了格里高利在塞夫伦庄园的小花园里第一次遇到的那个优雅而不能容忍的男士。在他离开警察局大楼之前，他的朋友交给他一张蓝色的小卡片，上面写着“最后的圣战”，以及一个号码，这是他官方职权的标记。他小心翼翼地把卡片放进马甲上层的口袋里，然后点一支香烟，开始追踪和打击处于伦敦所有客厅里的敌人。他的冒险最终把他引向了哪里，我们已经看到了。在二月份的一个夜晚，大约凌晨一点半，他乘坐的小拖船在寂静的泰晤士河里驰骋，手里的剑杖和左轮手枪是他正式成为无政府主义中央理事会星期四的标志。

    当赛姆踏上这艘蒸汽拖船时，他有一种踏进全新领域的奇特的兴奋；这不仅仅是踏进一块新土地的景观，而且是踏进一个新的星球的景观。这主要由那天晚上的疯狂决定的，也有一部分是因为自从他两小时前进入这家小酒馆后天气和天空完全的变化。日落时如羽毛的云彩每一个踪迹已被扫荡一空，一个赤裸裸的月亮悬荡在赤裸裸的天空。月亮如此的闪亮和圆满（凭借一个经常要被注意到的悖论），它看起来就像一个稍弱的太阳。它给人的感觉不是明亮的月光，而是死气沉沉的白昼。

    在整个景观上都有一个光辉反常的变色区域，犹如弥尔顿描述的日食中的太阳所发出的悲惨的薄暮之光。在这种情形下，赛姆浮现了他的第一个想法，即他实际上是在另一个更为空旷的行星上，而这个行星围绕着某个更可悲的恒星。但是他对月光照耀下闪光的大地上感受越多的孤寂，他自己的愚蠢的侠义行为就像一把熊熊的大火在黑夜里燃烧得越加旺盛。甚至他随身带的普通物件——食物、白兰地和上了膛的手枪——一丝不差的带着那种具体而实在的诗意，这种诗意是一个孩子带枪上路或者带面包上床时才会感受到。尽管剑杖和白兰地酒瓶本身仅仅是病态阴谋者的工具，它们却变成了他自己的更为健康的冒险故事的表达。剑杖变成了骑士之剑，白兰地几乎变成了饯别酒。即使是最残酷的现代幻想作品也要依靠某个更老更简单的人物；冒险可以是疯狂的，但冒险者必须正常。缺了圣乔治的恶龙就不会显得怪异。所以这个残酷的景观只有在一个真正有人性的人面前才能被想象出来。对于赛姆夸张的心灵来说，泰晤士河边明亮而忧郁的别墅和联排屋看起来像月亮上缥缈的群山。不过正因此月亮才富有诗意。

    操作拖船的是两个人，尽管他们使尽全力，但船的速度依然缓慢。当他们经过巴特思时，照亮切斯克的明月已经下来了；当他们从庞大的威斯敏斯特宫旁经过时，天已经开始破晓了。

    天空就像一块块巨大的铅条裂开现出一块块的银条；当这些银条像白色的火焰一样闪亮时，拖船改变了它向前的航向向内，靠向查林十字旁边的大码头。

    当赛姆抬起头来看时，河堤上的巨石依然显得阴暗和庞大，在白色黎明的映衬下更显又大又黑。这些巨石使他仿佛觉得身处某个埃及宫殿的巨大的台阶上；实际上，这东西切合他的心境，因为他正在自己的内心里对可怕的异教徒的国王的坚实的宝座发动攻击。他从船里跳出来，落在一个覆有黏泥的台阶上，在这巨大的石头建筑物中间，他的身影显得又阴暗又苗条。拖船上的两个人一言不发地关掉机器，开始排放气流。