The Assistant Commissioner was surprised and gratified extremely.
“I shall certainly bring my discoveries to the House on the chance of you
having the time to—”
“I won’t have the time,” interrupted the great Personage. “But I will
see you. I haven’t the time now—And you are going yourself?”
“Yes, Sir Ethelred. I think it the best way.”
The Personage had tilted his head so far back that, in order to keep the
Assistant Commissioner under his observation, he had to nearly close his
eyes.
“H’m. Ha! And how do you propose—Will you assume a disguise?”
“Hardly a disguise! I’ll change my clothes, of course.”
“Of course,” repeated the great man, with a sort of absent-minded
loftiness. He turned his big head slowly, and over his shoulder gave a
haughty oblique stare to the ponderous marble timepiece with the sly,
feeble tick. The gilt hands had taken the opportunity to steal through
no less than five and twenty minutes behind his back.
The Assistant Commissioner, who could not see them, grew a little nervous
in the interval. But the great man presented to him a calm and
undismayed face.
“Very well,” he said, and paused, as if in deliberate contempt of the
official clock. “But what first put you in motion in this direction?”
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, 1907
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