But when he discovers another undercover policeman on the Council, Syme begins to question his role in their operations.
Yet one of their number - Thursday - is not the revolutionary he claims to be, but a Scotland Yard detective named Gabriel Syme, sworn to infiltrate the organisation and bring the architects of chaos to justice. The council is governed by seven men, who hide their identities behind the names of the days of the week. The Central Anarchist Council is a secret society sworn to destroy the world. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday is a thrilling novel of deception, subterfuge, double-crossing and secret identities, and this Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Matthew Beaumont. A man who steppedinto its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written comedy. He had not discoveredanything new in biology but what biological creature could he have discovered more singular thanhimself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded it had to be considerednot so much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art.
That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. That old gentleman with the wild, white beardand the wild, white hat-that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher but at least he was thecause of philosophy in others. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face-that youngman was not really a poet but surely he was a poem. Even if the people were not "artists," the whole wasnevertheless artistic. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard itnot as a deception but rather as a dream. Nor when he met the people was hedisappointed in this respect. But although its pretensions to be anintellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable.The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddlyshaped the people must be who could fit in to them. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called itsarchitecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impressionthat the two sovereigns were identical. It was built of a bright brick throughout its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground planwas wild. THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud ofsunset.
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