THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY.
"Did I take a policeman's hat by mistake out of the restaurant?" asked Syme, smiling wildly. "Have I by any chance got a number stuck on to me somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? Why must I be a policeman? Do, do let me be a postman."
The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope, but Syme ran on with a feverish irony.
"But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German philosophy. Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an evolutionary sense, sir, the ape fades so gradually into the policeman, that I myself can never detect the shade. The monkey is only the policeman that may be. Perhaps a maiden lady on Clapham Common is only the policeman that might have been. I don't mind being the policeman that might have been. I don't mind being anything in German thought."
"Are you in the police service?" said the old man, ignoring all Syme's improvised and desperate raillery. "Are you a detective?"
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