While attempting to win George Syme over to his anarchist cause, Lucian Gregory invites Syme to join him in attending a mysterious event at the end of Chapter 1. His invitation is an example of foreshadowing:
“I will promise you a very entertaining evening.” Syme suddenly took off his hat.
“Your offer,” he said, “is far too idiotic to be declined. You say that a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least that he is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as a Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, that I will not report anything of this, whatever it is, to the police. And now, in the name of Colney Hatch, what is it?”
The “very entertaining evening” promised by Lucian Gregory in the passage above is an instance which directly foreshadows Syme’s infiltration of the Central Anarchist Council. The meeting Syme is about to attend with Gregory will give him unparalleled access to the very group he aims to subvert—access offered freely of the anarchist Gregory’s own volition. Beyond this first layer of foreshadowing the literal event about to unfold, however, the matter of who the evening will be entertaining for is not directly specified in this passage. Thus, Gregory’s statement is left open to interpretation, foreshadowing the fact that the entire council meeting and Syme’s own recruitment are actually entertainment fodder for Sunday’s larger elaborate ruse.
The conversation at the start of Chapter 3 between George Syme and the anarchist Lucian Gregory following the revelation that Syme is an undercover policeman foreshadows the remainder of the novel’s plot:
Don’t you see we’ve checkmated each other? [...] I can’t tell the police you are an anarchist. You can’t tell the anarchists I’m a policeman. I can only watch you, knowing what you are; you can only watch me, knowing what I am. In short, it’s a lonely, intellectual duel, my head against yours. I’m a policeman deprived of the help of the police. You, my poor fellow, are an anarchist deprived of the help of that law and organization which is so essential to anarchy.”
In the passage above, Chesterton explicitly outlines the two sides of the central conflict of The Man Who Was Thursday: the good and moral policemen and the dastardly anarchists (in other words, the fight between good and evil). By drawing this distinct line in the sand, Chesterton sets Syme up to embark on a greater journey of self discovery and personal revelation, as he learns to challenge his assumptions and recover his faith. The “lonely, individual intellectual duel” that Syme and Gregory are engaged in is therefore an effective microcosm of the novel’s larger conflict between good and evil. Syme continues:
The one solitary difference is in your favour. You are not surrounded by inquisitive policemen; I am surrounded by inquisitive anarchists. I cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely.
With this final emphatic declaration, Syme states that he will “betray” himself, and invites Gregory to wait and watch as he does so. This speech outlines the specific ways in which Syme will infiltrate the anarchist movement, outwardly betraying his ideals in order to serve a greater purpose (defeating the enemy from the inside). Furthermore, Syme’s declaration can also be taken as directed at the reader, not just Gregory. Using Syme as a mouthpiece, Chesterton essentially dares his audience to read on and learn what Syme will do in order to achieve his goals, foreshadowing an intriguing story to come.
This exchange in Chapter 6 foreshadows the fact that all of the members of the council are actually spies by revealing the existence of the first spy in the group, Gogol:
“Strangers overhearing us matters nothing. They assume that we are joking. But what would matter, even unto death, is this, that there should be one actually among us who is not of us, who knows our grave purpose, but does not share it, who—”
The secretary screamed out suddenly like a woman.
“It can’t be!” he cried, leaping. “There can’t—”
The president flapped his large flat hand on the table like the fin of some huge fish.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “there is a spy in this room. There is a traitor at this table. I will waste no more words. His name—”
Tension builds as Syme prepares for his own name to be announced, only for Sunday to name another member of the Central Anarchist Council instead, offering Chesterton’s protagonist swift (if momentary) relief. However, the suspicion of traitors present in the Council’s midst does not end with the discovery of Gogol. The Secretary’s frightened scream right before Sunday’s reveal signals that Syme is not the only one with personal fears regarding the identification of a spy in their group. The Secretary's terror and repeated denials foreshadow that he himself will soon be revealed as an undercover spy, concerned in this moment with keeping his cover secure. Readers must therefore wonder along with Syme whether he (or any other potential spies) will be exposed as the novel progresses.
