"Trust me for that, sir."
This was too much for the forced calmness under which the Assistant
Commissioner had for upwards of eighteen months concealed his irritation
with the system and the subordinates of his office. A square peg forced
into a round hole, he had felt like a daily outrage that long established
smooth roundness into which a man of less sharply angular shape would
have fitted himself, with voluptuous acquiescence, after a shrug or two.
What he resented most was just the necessity of taking so much on trust.
At the little laugh of Chief Inspector Heat's he spun swiftly on his
heels, as if whirled away from the window-pane by an electric shock. He
caught on the latter's face not only the complacency proper to the
occasion lurking under the moustache, but the vestiges of experimental
watchfulness in the round eyes, which had been, no doubt, fastened on his
back, and now met his glance for a second before the intent character of
their stare had the time to change to a merely startled appearance.
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