- Chapter Five follows the Professor after he has left the Silenus Restaurant. Right away, he becomes self-conscious about how short he is in the London crowd, but reassures himself by feeling the rubber ball in his pocket and fantasizing about all the people he could blow up if he chose to.
- Here, the narrator gives us a little more background on the Professor, saying that he is "of humble origin" (5.1) and that because of his smallness and general ugliness, "his imagination had been fired early by the tales of men rising from the depths of poverty to positions of authority and affluence" (5.1). It's all well and good to want to rise up in the world, but the Professor's ambition has gone a little off the rails because of his "astounding ignorance of worldly conditions" (5.1). In other words, the Professor knows that he wants to be great, but doesn't know how to go about achieving it. So he doesn't plan on proving his greatness to people through "arts, graces, tact, [or] wealth," but by "sheer weight of merit alone" (5.1).
- The Professor thinks that greatness is something that just exists inside him, and other people should acknowledge this fact whether he's good at anything or not. His idea of his own greatness is a total fantasy, and the fact that he's willing to die for this fantasy is what generally makes him a psychopath.
- But the Professor temporarily loses his sense of greatness when he's walking among the massive crowds of London, which make him feel "miserable and undersized" (5.2). It's not just for physical reasons that he feels small, but emotional ones too.
- Because, deep down, the Professor wants the world to acknowledge him as a superior person, but when he gazes around the crowds of London, he is terrified that the people of the crowds are "thoughtless like a natural force, pushing on blind and orderly and absorbed, impervious to sentiment, to logic, to terror, too, perhaps" (5.2).
- Sure, he could blow himself up, but people would forget about him after a few weeks. This realization makes the Professor very anxious, and he yearns for "the refuge of his room" (5.3). Getting away from the crowds and being alone would allow him to rebuild the (psycho) fantasy of his greatness in peace.
- To escape the crowd, he cuts down an alley and runs into Chief Inspector Heat of London's Special Crime Department. The Professor regains his courage, seeing that Heat is afraid of him. This is the Professor's rock-star moment.
- The perspective shifts to Inspector Heat, who's already having a bad day. He basically guaranteed his boss that there wouldn't be any anarchist attacks on London, and now bam, someone's gone and blown himself up in Greenwich Park. Heat is sure that his men have been keeping a close watch on all known anarchists.
- As if things couldn't get any worse, Heat recalls how he had to visit Greenwich earlier in the day to examine the remains of the bomber, who after the bomb went off looked like "an accumulation of raw material for a cannibal feast" (5.18). Blegh.
- A local constable stands with Heat as he examines the remains. This constable is the guy who was first on the scene and who collected all of the bomber's body parts with a shovel. For a guy who just did such a gruesome job, this constable is actually pretty chatty.
- Inspector Heat knows that the dead man must have died instantly, but can't look at the chunks of charred flesh without thinking that the dude must have suffered intense anguish. He wonders if time slows down for people when they die, or if people can endure a lifetime of pain in the single second it takes for them to die.
- Yes, this novel just keeps getting cheerier and cheerier.
- The constable tells Heat that the dead man was "a fair-haired fellow" (5.25). An old woman has confirmed this by saying that she saw two men leave a train at a rural station called Maze Hill. One was chubbier, the other skinny, and the skinny one was carrying a "tin varnish can" in one hand. This is the exact type of can that the Professor described to Ossipon as being the case for his bomb.
- The constable says that the skinny person must have set off his bomb by stumbling over the exposed tree roots that are all over the Greenwich Park. The roots are easy to trip over, and it's a foggy day, so they'd be tough to see. Even though he's grossed out, Inspector Heat reaches into the chunks of flesh and pulls out "a narrow strip of velvet with a larger triangular piece of dark blue cloth hanging from it" (5.31).
- While the constable continues to talk, Heat goes over to a window and examines something hanging from the piece of cloth. With a quick jerk, he detaches the piece he's examining and secretly shoves it into his pocket. After this, he grabs a train back into the heart of London. It's on his way back to the police headquarters that Heat has run into the Professor.
- Heat tells the Professor that sooner or later, he's going to take out the little squirt. The Professor responds by saying that he hopes Inspector Heat doesn't mind the two of them being buried together, since people will never be able to sort out their chunks if the Professor decided to set off his bomb. Heat says that he's not afraid of the Professor. The Professor glances around, and seeing no one else, tells Heat to go ahead, since he might never have a better opportunity to take him out without killing other people in the process.
- Heat replies that at the end of the day, the side he's on will win the battle against the Professor and men like him. The Professor stays pretty cocky through all this, until Heat remarks, "You'll find we are too many for you" (5.53). This appeal to the masses of London puts the Professor back where he was when he felt surrounded by the London "multitudes."
- There's something about the idea of multitudes that undermines his fantasy of being a great individual. As Conrad tells us, "[t]he resisting power of numbers, the unattackable stolidity of a great multitude, [is] the haunting fear of his sinister loneliness" (5.56).
- With this, the conversation breaks off, and Inspector Heat walks away feeling better about himself than the Professor does. Heat: 1, Professor: 0
- When he gets back to headquarters, Heat visits the office of the Assistant Commissioner. The Assistant Commissioner starts by saying that Heat was right, and that none of the anarchists under police watch were the ones who committed the crime.
- Inspector Heat delivers all the information he's collected so far, but leaves out the detail about the piece of cloth he retrieved from the body. It turns out that the second man at the scene (the one who didn't blow himself up) carried the varnish can out of the train at Greenwich Park Station and gave it to the skinnier one to go ahead and do the job alone.
- The Assistant Commissioner questions the reliability of the old woman who described these two men, considering that the day was really foggy. But Inspector Heat says that there are people at the train station who can back up her description. The Assistant Commissioner walks over to the window and complains about how wet the London weather has been for the past few weeks (But it's London, dude. What do you expect?).
- Heat gives the official description of the two men, who seem like "two respectable working-men of a superior sort—sign painters or house decorators" (5.76).
- The Assistant Commissioner is still not very convinced, because if every London anarchist is accounted for, the two men must be foreign terrorists. And there is a really low chance of two foreign terrorists boarding a train at Maze Hill, which is a tiny country station.
- Heat says that yes, this would be unusual, if Maze Hill weren't exactly where the convicted radical Michaelis was known to be living! Cue the ominous music.