It would not be good for its efficiency to know too much.

Chief Inspector Heat got out of the train in a state of thoughtfulness entirely untainted with disloyalty, but not quite free of that jealous mistrust which so often springs on the ground of perfect devotion, whether to women or to institutions.
It was in this mental disposition, physically very empty, but still nauseated by what he had seen, that he had come upon the Professor.
Under these conditions which make for irascibility in a sound, normal man, this meeting was specially unwelcome to Chief Inspector Heat.

He had not been thinking of the Professor; he had not been thinking of any individual anarchist at all.

The complexion of that case had somehow forced upon him the general idea of the absurdity of things human, which in the abstract is sufficiently annoying to an unphilosophical temperament, and in concrete instances becomes exasperating beyond endurance.

At the beginning of his career Chief Inspector Heat had been concerned with the more energetic forms of thieving.