________________________________________________
_ Such was the house, the household, and the business Mr Verloc left
behind him on his way westward at the hour of half-past ten in the
morning. It was unusually early for him; his whole person exhaled
the charm of almost dewy freshness; he wore his blue cloth overcoat
unbuttoned; his boots were shiny; his cheeks, freshly shaven, had a
sort of gloss; and even his heavy-lidded eyes, refreshed by a night
of peaceful slumber, sent out glances of comparative alertness.
Through the park railings these glances beheld men and women riding
in the Row, couples cantering past harmoniously, others advancing
sedately at a walk, loitering groups of three or four, solitary
horsemen looking unsociable, and solitary women followed at a long
distance by a groom with a cockade to his hat and a leather belt
over his tight-fitting coat. Carriages went bowling by, mostly
two-horse broughams, with here and there a victoria with the skin
of some wild beast inside and a woman's face and hat emerging above
the folded hood. And a peculiarly London sun - against which
nothing could be said except that it looked bloodshot - glorified
all this by its stare. It hung at a moderate elevation above Hyde
Park Corner with an air of punctual and benign vigilance. The very
pavement under Mr Verloc's feet had an old-gold tinge in that
diffused light, in which neither wall, nor tree, nor beast, nor man
cast a shadow. Mr Verloc was going westward through a town without
shadows in an atmosphere of powdered old gold. There were red,
coppery gleams on the roofs of houses, on the corners of walls, on
the panels of carriages, on the very coats of the horses, and on
the broad back of Mr Verloc's overcoat, where they produced a dull
effect of rustiness. But Mr Verloc was not in the least conscious
of having got rusty. He surveyed through the park railings the
evidences of the town's opulence and luxury with an approving eye.
All these people had to be protected. Protection is the first
necessity of opulence and luxury. They had to be protected; and
their horses, carriages, houses, servants had to be protected; and
the source of their wealth had to be protected in the heart of the
city and the heart of the country; the whole social order
favourable to their hygienic idleness had to be protected against
the shallow enviousness of unhygienic labour. It had to - and Mr
Verloc would have rubbed his hands with satisfaction had he not
been constitutionally averse from every superfluous exertion. His
idleness was not hygienic, but it suited him very well. He was in
a manner devoted to it with a sort of inert fanaticism, or perhaps
rather with a fanatical inertness. Born of industrious parents for
a life of toil, he had embraced indolence from an impulse as
profound as inexplicable and as imperious as the impulse which
directs a man's preference for one particular woman in a given
thousand. He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman
orator, for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He
required a more perfect form of ease; or it might have been that he
was the victim of a philosophical unbelief in the effectiveness of
every human effort. Such a form of indolence requires, implies, a
certain amount of intelligence. Mr Verloc was not devoid of
intelligence - and at the notion of a menaced social order he would
perhaps have winked to himself if there had not been an effort to
make in that sign of scepticism. His big, prominent eyes were not
well adapted to winking. They were rather of the sort that closes
solemnly in slumber with majestic effect.
Undemonstrative and burly in a fat-pig style, Mr Verloc, without
either rubbing his hands with satisfaction or winking sceptically
at his thoughts, proceeded on his way. He trod the pavement
heavily with his shiny boots, and his general get-up was that of a
well-to-do mechanic in business for himself. He might have been
anything from a picture-frame maker to a lock-smith; an employer of
labour in a small way. But there was also about him an
indescribable air which no mechanic could have acquired in the
practice of his handicraft however dishonestly exercised: the air
common to men who live on the vices, the follies, or the baser
fears of mankind; the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of
gambling hells and disorderly houses; to private detectives and
inquiry agents; to drink sellers and, I should say, to the sellers
of invigorating electric belts and to the inventors of patent
medicines. But of that last I am not sure, not having carried my
investigations so far into the depths. For all I know, the
expression of these last may be perfectly diabolic. I shouldn't be
surprised. What I want to affirm is that Mr Verloc's expression
was by no means diabolic.
Before reaching Knightsbridge, Mr Verloc took a turn to the left
out of the busy main thoroughfare, uproarious with the traffic of
swaying omnibuses and trotting vans, in the almost silent, swift
flow of hansoms. Under his hat, worn with a slight backward tilt,
his hair had been carefully brushed into respectful sleekness; for
his business was with an Embassy. And Mr Verloc, steady like a
rock - a soft kind of rock - marched now along a street which could
with every propriety be described as private. In its breadth,
emptiness, and extent it had the majesty of inorganic nature, of
matter that never dies. The only reminder of mortality was a
doctor's brougham arrested in august solitude close to the
curbstone. The polished knockers of the doors gleamed as far as
the eye could reach, the clean windows shone with a dark opaque
lustre. And all was still. But a milk cart rattled noisily across
the distant perspective; a butcher boy, driving with the noble
recklessness of a charioteer at Olympic Games, dashed round the
corner sitting high above a pair of red wheels. A guilty-looking
cat issuing from under the stones ran for a while in front of Mr
Verloc, then dived into another basement; and a thick police
constable, looking a stranger to every emotion, as if he too were
part of inorganic nature, surging apparently out of a lamp-post,
took not the slightest notice of Mr Verloc. With a turn to the
left Mr Verloc pursued his way along a narrow street by the side of
a yellow wall which, for some inscrutable reason, had No. 1 Chesham
Square written on it in black letters. Chesham Square was at least
sixty yards away, and Mr Verloc, cosmopolitan enough not to be
deceived by London's topographical mysteries, held on steadily,
without a sign of surprise or indignation. At last, with business-
like persistency, he reached the Square, and made diagonally for
the number 10. This belonged to an imposing carriage gate in a
high, clean wall between two houses, of which one rationally enough
bore the number 9 and the other was numbered 37; but the fact that
this last belonged to Porthill Street, a street well known in the
neighbourhood, was proclaimed by an inscription placed above the
ground-floor windows by whatever highly efficient authority is
charged with the duty of keeping track of London's strayed houses.
Why powers are not asked of Parliament (a short act would do) for
compelling those edifices to return where they belong is one of the
mysteries of municipal administration. Mr Verloc did not trouble
his head about it, his mission in life being the protection of the
social mechanism, not its perfectionment or even its criticism.
It was so early that the porter of the Embassy issued hurriedly out
of his lodge still struggling with the left sleeve of his livery
coat. His waistcoat was red, and he wore knee-breeches, but his
aspect was flustered. Mr Verloc, aware of the rush on his flank,
drove it off by simply holding out an envelope stamped with the
arms of the Embassy, and passed on. He produced the same talisman
also to the footman who opened the door, and stood back to let him
enter the hall.
A clear fire burned in a tall fireplace, and an elderly man
standing with his back to it, in evening dress and with a chain
round his neck, glanced up from the newspaper he was holding spread
out in both hands before his calm and severe face. He didn't move;
but another lackey, in brown trousers and claw-hammer coat edged
with thin yellow cord, approaching Mr Verloc listened to the murmur
of his name, and turning round on his heel in silence, began to
walk, without looking back once. Mr Verloc, thus led along a
ground-floor passage to the left of the great carpeted staircase,
was suddenly motioned to enter a quite small room furnished with a
heavy writing-table and a few chairs. The servant shut the door,
and Mr Verloc remained alone. He did not take a seat. With his
hat and stick held in one hand he glanced about, passing his other
podgy hand over his uncovered sleek head.
Another door opened noiselessly, and Mr Verloc immobilising his
glance in that direction saw at first only black clothes, the bald
top of a head, and a drooping dark grey whisker on each side of a
pair of wrinkled hands. The person who had entered was holding a
batch of papers before his eyes and walked up to the table with a
rather mincing step, turning the papers over the while. Privy
Councillor Wurmt, Chancelier d'Ambassade, was rather short-sighted.
This meritorious official laying the papers on the table, disclosed
a face of pasty complexion and of melancholy ugliness surrounded by
a lot of fine, long dark grey hairs, barred heavily by thick and
bushy eyebrows. He put on a black-framed pince-nez upon a blunt
and shapeless nose, and seemed struck by Mr Verloc's appearance.
Under the enormous eyebrows his weak eyes blinked pathetically
through the glasses.
He made no sign of greeting; neither did Mr Verloc, who certainly
knew his place; but a subtle change about the general outlines of
his shoulders and back suggested a slight bending of Mr Verloc's
spine under the vast surface of his overcoat. The effect was of
unobtrusive deference.
"I have here some of your reports," said the bureaucrat in an
unexpectedly soft and weary voice, and pressing the tip of his
forefinger on the papers with force. He paused; and Mr Verloc, who
had recognised his own handwriting very well, waited in an almost
breathless silence. "We are not very satisfied with the attitude
of the police here," the other continued, with every appearance of
mental fatigue.
The shoulders of Mr Verloc, without actually moving, suggested a
shrug. And for the first time since he left his home that morning
his lips opened.
"Every country has its police," he said philosophically. But as
the official of the Embassy went on blinking at him steadily he
felt constrained to add: "Allow me to observe that I have no means
of action upon the police here."
"What is desired," said the man of papers, "is the occurrence of
something definite which should stimulate their vigilance. That is
within your province - is it not so?"
Mr Verloc made no answer except by a sigh, which escaped him
involuntarily, for instantly he tried to give his face a cheerful
expression. The official blinked doubtfully, as if affected by the
dim light of the room. He repeated vaguely.
"The vigilance of the police - and the severity of the magistrates.
The general leniency of the judicial procedure here, and the utter
absence of all repressive measures, are a scandal to Europe. What
is wished for just now is the accentuation of the unrest - of the
fermentation which undoubtedly exists - "
"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly," broke in Mr Verloc in a deep
deferential bass of an oratorical quality, so utterly different
from the tone in which he had spoken before that his interlocutor
remained profoundly surprised. "It exists to a dangerous degree.
My reports for the last twelve months make it sufficiently clear."
"Your reports for the last twelve months," State Councillor Wurmt
began in his gentle and dispassionate tone, "have been read by me.
I failed to discover why you wrote them at all."
A sad silence reigned for a time. Mr Verloc seemed to have
swallowed his tongue, and the other gazed at the papers on the
table fixedly. At last he gave them a slight push.
"The state of affairs you expose there is assumed to exist as the
first condition of your employment. What is required at present is
not writing, but the bringing to light of a distinct, significant
fact - I would almost say of an alarming fact."
"I need not say that all my endeavours shall be directed to that
end," Mr Verloc said, with convinced modulations in his
conversational husky tone. But the sense of being blinked at
watchfully behind the blind glitter of these eye-glasses on the
other side of the table disconcerted him. He stopped short with a
gesture of absolute devotion. The useful, hard-working, if obscure
member of the Embassy had an air of being impressed by some newly-
born thought.
"You are very corpulent," he said.
This observation, really of a psychological nature, and advanced
with the modest hesitation of an officeman more familiar with ink
and paper than with the requirements of active life, stung Mr
Verloc in the manner of a rude personal remark. He stepped back a
pace.
"Eh? What were you pleased to say?" he exclaimed, with husky
resentment.
The Chancelier d'Ambassade entrusted with the conduct of this
interview seemed to find it too much for him.
"I think," he said, "that you had better see Mr Vladimir. Yes,
decidedly I think you ought to see Mr Vladimir. Be good enough to
wait here," he added, and went out with mincing steps.
At once Mr Verloc passed his hand over his hair. A slight
perspiration had broken out on his forehead. He let the air escape
from his pursed-up lips like a man blowing at a spoonful of hot
soup. But when the servant in brown appeared at the door silently,
Mr Verloc had not moved an inch from the place he had occupied
throughout the interview. He had remained motionless, as if
feeling himself surrounded by pitfalls.
He walked along a passage lighted by a lonely gas-jet, then up a
flight of winding stairs, and through a glazed and cheerful
corridor on the first floor. The footman threw open a door, and
stood aside. The feet of Mr Verloc felt a thick carpet. The room
was large, with three windows; and a young man with a shaven, big
face, sitting in a roomy arm-chair before a vast mahogany writing-
table, said in French to the Chancelier d'Ambassade, who was going
out with, the papers in his hand:
"You are quite right, mon cher. He's fat - the animal."
Mr Vladimir, First Secretary, had a drawing-room reputation as an
agreeable and entertaining man. He was something of a favourite in
society. His wit consisted in discovering droll connections
between incongruous ideas; and when talking in that strain he sat
well forward of his seat, with his left hand raised, as if
exhibiting his funny demonstrations between the thumb and
forefinger, while his round and clean-shaven face wore an
expression of merry perplexity.
But there was no trace of merriment or perplexity in the way he
looked at Mr Verloc. Lying far back in the deep arm-chair, with
squarely spread elbows, and throwing one leg over a thick knee, he
had with his smooth and rosy countenance the air of a
preternaturally thriving baby that will not stand nonsense from
anybody.
"You understand French, I suppose?" he said.
Mr Verloc stated huskily that he did. His whole vast bulk had a
forward inclination. He stood on the carpet in the middle of the
room, clutching his hat and stick in one hand; the other hung
lifelessly by his side. He muttered unobtrusively somewhere deep
down in his throat something about having done his military service
in the French artillery. At once, with contemptuous perversity, Mr
Vladimir changed the language, and began to speak idiomatic English
without the slightest trace of a foreign accent.
"Ah! Yes. Of course. Let's see. How much did you get for
obtaining the design of the improved breech-block of their new
field-gun?"
"Five years' rigorous confinement in a fortress," Mr Verloc
answered unexpectedly, but without any sign of feeling.
"You got off easily," was Mr Vladimir's comment. "And, anyhow, it
served you right for letting yourself get caught. What made you go
in for that sort of thing - eh?"
Mr Verloc's husky conversational voice was heard speaking of youth,
of a fatal infatuation for an unworthy -
"Aha! Cherchez la femme," Mr Vladimir deigned to interrupt,
unbending, but without affability; there was, on the contrary, a
touch of grimness in his condescension. "How long have you been
employed by the Embassy here?" he asked.
"Ever since the time of the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim," Mr Verloc
answered in subdued tones, and protruding his lips sadly, in sign
of sorrow for the deceased diplomat. The First Secretary observed
this play of physiognomy steadily.
"Ah! ever since. Well! What have you got to say for yourself?" he
asked sharply.
Mr Verloc answered with some surprise that he was not aware of
having anything special to say. He had been summoned by a letter -
And he plunged his hand busily into the side pocket of his
overcoat, but before the mocking, cynical watchfulness of Mr
Vladimir, concluded to leave it there.
"Bah!" said that latter. "What do you mean by getting out of
condition like this? You haven't got even the physique of your
profession. You - a member of a starving proletariat - never! You
- a desperate socialist or anarchist - which is it?"
"Anarchist," stated Mr Verloc in a deadened tone.
"Bosh!" went on Mr Vladimir, without raising his voice. "You
startled old Wurmt himself. You wouldn't deceive an idiot. They
all are that by-the-by, but you seem to me simply impossible. So
you began your connection with us by stealing the French gun
designs. And you got yourself caught. That must have been very
disagreeable to our Government. You don't seem to be very smart."
Mr Verloc tried to exculpate himself huskily.
"As I've had occasion to observe before, a fatal infatuation for an
unworthy - "
Mr Vladimir raised a large white, plump hand. "Ah, yes. The
unlucky attachment - of your youth. She got hold of the money, and
then sold you to the police - eh?"
The doleful change in Mr Verloc's physiognomy, the momentary
drooping of his whole person, confessed that such was the
regrettable case. Mr Vladimir's hand clasped the ankle reposing on
his knee. The sock was of dark blue silk.
"You see, that was not very clever of you. Perhaps you are too
susceptible."
Mr Verloc intimated in a throaty, veiled murmur that he was no
longer young.
"Oh! That's a failing which age does not cure," Mr Vladimir
remarked, with sinister familiarity. "But no! You are too fat for
that. You could not have come to look like this if you had been at
all susceptible. I'll tell you what I think is the matter: you are
a lazy fellow. How long have you been drawing pay from this
Embassy?"
"Eleven years," was the answer, after a moment of sulky hesitation.
"I've been charged with several missions to London while His
Excellency Baron Stott-Wartenheim was still Ambassador in Paris.
Then by his Excellency's instructions I settled down in London. I
am English."
"You are! Are you? Eh?"
"A natural-born British subject," Mr Verloc said stolidly. "But my
father was French, and so - "
"Never mind explaining," interrupted the other. "I daresay you
could have been legally a Marshal of France and a Member of
Parliament in England - and then, indeed, you would have been of
some use to our Embassy."
This flight of fancy provoked something like a faint smile on Mr
Verloc's face. Mr Vladimir retained an imperturbable gravity.
"But, as I've said, you are a lazy fellow; you don't use your
opportunities. In the time of Baron Stott-Wartenheim we had a lot
of soft-headed people running this Embassy. They caused fellows of
your sort to form a false conception of the nature of a secret
service fund. It is my business to correct this misapprehension by
telling you what the secret service is not. It is not a
philanthropic institution. I've had you called here on purpose to
tell you this."
Mr Vladimir observed the forced expression of bewilderment on
Verloc's face, and smiled sarcastically.
"I see that you understand me perfectly. I daresay you are
intelligent enough for your work. What we want now is activity -
activity."
On repeating this last word Mr Vladimir laid a long white
forefinger on the edge of the desk. Every trace of huskiness
disappeared from Verloc's voice. The nape of his gross neck became
crimson above the velvet collar of his overcoat. His lips quivered
before they came widely open.
"If you'll only be good enough to look up my record," he boomed out
in his great, clear oratorical bass, "you'll see I gave a warning
only three months ago, on the occasion of the Grand Duke Romuald's
visit to Paris, which was telegraphed from here to the French
police, and - "
"Tut, tut!" broke out Mr Vladimir, with a frowning grimace. "The
French police had no use for your warning. Don't roar like this.
What the devil do you mean?"
With a note of proud humility Mr Verloc apologised for forgetting
himself. His voice, - famous for years at open-air meetings and at
workmen's assemblies in large halls, had contributed, he said, to
his reputation of a good and trustworthy comrade. It was,
therefore, a part of his usefulness. It had inspired confidence in
his principles. "I was always put up to speak by the leaders at a
critical moment," Mr Verloc declared, with obvious satisfaction.
There was no uproar above which he could not make himself heard, he
added; and suddenly he made a demonstration.
"Allow me," he said. With lowered forehead, without looking up,
swiftly and ponderously he crossed the room to one of the French
windows. As if giving way to an uncontrollable impulse, he opened
it a little. Mr Vladimir, jumping up amazed from the depths of the
arm-chair, looked over his shoulder; and below, across the
courtyard of the Embassy, well beyond the open gate, could be seen
the broad back of a policeman watching idly the gorgeous
perambulator of a wealthy baby being wheeled in state across the
Square.
"Constable!" said Mr Verloc, with no more effort than if he were
whispering; and Mr Vladimir burst into a laugh on seeing the
policeman spin round as if prodded by a sharp instrument. Mr
Verloc shut the window quietly, and returned to the middle of the
room.
"With a voice like that," he said, putting on the husky
conversational pedal, "I was naturally trusted. And I knew what to
say, too."
Mr Vladimir, arranging his cravat, observed him in the glass over
the mantelpiece.
"I daresay you have the social revolutionary jargon by heart well
enough," he said contemptuously. "Vox et. . . You haven't ever
studied Latin - have you?"
"No," growled Mr Verloc. "You did not expect me to know it. I
belong to the million. Who knows Latin? Only a few hundred
imbeciles who aren't fit to take care of themselves."
For some thirty seconds longer Mr Vladimir studied in the mirror
the fleshy profile, the gross bulk, of the man behind him. And at
the same time he had the advantage of seeing his own face, clean-
shaved and round, rosy about the gills, and with the thin sensitive
lips formed exactly for the utterance of those delicate witticisms
which had made him such a favourite in the very highest society.
Then he turned, and advanced into the room with such determination
that the very ends of his quaintly old-fashioned bow necktie seemed
to bristle with unspeakable menaces. The movement was so swift and
fierce that Mr Verloc, casting an oblique glance, quailed inwardly.
"Aha! You dare be impudent," Mr Vladimir began, with an amazingly
guttural intonation not only utterly un-English, but absolutely un-
European, and startling even to Mr Verloc's experience of
cosmopolitan slums. "You dare! Well, I am going to speak plain
English to you. Voice won't do. We have no use for your voice.
We don't want a voice. We want facts - startling facts - damn
you," he added, with a sort of ferocious discretion, right into Mr
Verloc's face.
"Don't you try to come over me with your Hyperborean manners," Mr
Verloc defended himself huskily, looking at the carpet. At this
his interlocutor, smiling mockingly above the bristling bow of his
necktie, switched the conversation into French.
"You give yourself for an `agent provocateur.' The proper business
of an `agent provocateur' is to provoke. As far as I can judge
from your record kept here, you have done nothing to earn your
money for the last three years."
"Nothing!" exclaimed Verloc, stirring not a limb, and not raising
his eyes, but with the note of sincere feeling in his tone. "I
have several times prevented what might have been - "
"There is a proverb in this country which says prevention is better
than cure," interrupted Mr Vladimir, throwing himself into the arm-
chair. "It is stupid in a general way. There is no end to
prevention. But it is characteristic. They dislike finality in
this country. Don't you be too English. And in this particular
instance, don't be absurd. The evil is already here. We don't
want prevention - we want cure."
He paused, turned to the desk, and turning over some papers lying
there, spoke in a changed business-like tone, without looking at Mr
Verloc.
"You know, of course, of the International Conference assembled in
Milan?"
Mr Verloc intimated hoarsely that he was in the habit of reading
the daily papers. To a further question his answer was that, of
course, he understood what he read. At this Mr Vladimir, smiling
faintly at the documents he was still scanning one after another,
murmured "As long as it is not written in Latin, I suppose."
"Or Chinese," added Mr Verloc stolidly.
"H'm. Some of your revolutionary friends' effusions are written in
a CHARABIA every bit as incomprehensible as Chinese - " Mr
Vladimir let fall disdainfully a grey sheet of printed matter.
"What are all these leaflets headed F. P., with a hammer, pen, and
torch crossed? What does it mean, this F. P.?" Mr Verloc
approached the imposing writing-table.
"The Future of the Proletariat. It's a society," he explained,
standing ponderously by the side of the arm-chair, "not anarchist
in principle, but open to all shades of revolutionary opinion."
"Are you in it?"
"One of the Vice-Presidents," Mr Verloc breathed out heavily; and
the First Secretary of the Embassy raised his head to look at him.
"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said incisively.
"Isn't your society capable of anything else but printing this
prophetic bosh in blunt type on this filthy paper eh? Why don't
you do something? Look here. I've this matter in hand now, and I
tell you plainly that you will have to earn your money. The good
old Stott-Wartenheim times are over. No work, no pay."
Mr Verloc felt a queer sensation of faintness in his stout legs.
He stepped back one pace, and blew his nose loudly.
He was, in truth, startled and alarmed. The rusty London sunshine
struggling clear of the London mist shed a lukewarm brightness into
the First Secretary's private room; and in the silence Mr Verloc
heard against a window-pane the faint buzzing of a fly - his first
fly of the year - heralding better than any number of swallows the
approach of spring. The useless fussing of that tiny energetic
organism affected unpleasantly this big man threatened in his
indolence.
In the pause Mr Vladimir formulated in his mind a series of
disparaging remarks concerning Mr Verloc's face and figure. The
fellow was unexpectedly vulgar, heavy, and impudently
unintelligent. He looked uncommonly like a master plumber come to
present his bill. The First Secretary of the Embassy, from his
occasional excursions into the field of American humour, had formed
a special notion of that class of mechanic as the embodiment of
fraudulent laziness and incompetency.
This was then the famous and trusty secret agent, so secret that he
was never designated otherwise but by the symbol [delta] in the
late Baron Stott-Wartenheim's official, semi-official, and
confidential correspondence; the celebrated agent [delta], whose
warnings had the power to change the schemes and the dates of
royal, imperial, grand ducal journeys, and sometimes caused them to
be put off altogether! This fellow! And Mr Vladimir indulged
mentally in an enormous and derisive fit of merriment, partly at
his own astonishment, which he judged naive, but mostly at the
expense of the universally regretted Baron Stott-Wartenheim. His
late Excellency, whom the august favour of his Imperial master had
imposed as Ambassador upon several reluctant Ministers of Foreign
Affairs, had enjoyed in his lifetime a fame for an owlish,
pessimistic gullibility. His Excellency had the social revolution
on the brain. He imagined himself to be a diplomatist set apart by
a special dispensation to watch the end of diplomacy, and pretty
nearly the end of the world, in a horrid democratic upheaval. His
prophetic and doleful despatches had been for years the joke of
Foreign Offices. He was said to have exclaimed on his deathbed
(visited by his Imperial friend and master): "Unhappy Europe! Thou
shalt perish by the moral insanity of thy children!" He was fated
to be the victim of the first humbugging rascal that came along,
thought Mr Vladimir, smiling vaguely at Mr Verloc.
"You ought to venerate the memory of Baron Stott-Wartenheim," he
exclaimed suddenly.
The lowered physiognomy of Mr Verloc expressed a sombre and weary
annoyance.
"Permit me to observe to you," he said, "that I came here because I
was summoned by a peremptory letter. I have been here only twice
before in the last eleven years, and certainly never at eleven in
the morning. It isn't very wise to call me up like this. There is
just a chance of being seen. And that would be no joke for me."
Mr Vladimir shrugged his shoulders.
"It would destroy my usefulness," continued the other hotly.
"That's your affair," murmured Mr Vladimir, with soft brutality.
"When you cease to be useful you shall cease to be employed. Yes.
Right off. Cut short. You shall - " Mr Vladimir, frowning,
paused, at a loss for a sufficiently idiomatic expression, and
instantly brightened up, with a grin of beautifully white teeth.
"You shall be chucked," he brought out ferociously.
Once more Mr Verloc had to react with all the force of his will
against that sensation of faintness running down one's legs which
once upon a time had inspired some poor devil with the felicitous
expression: "My heart went down into my boots." Mr Verloc, aware
of the sensation, raised his head bravely.
Mr Vladimir bore the look of heavy inquiry with perfect serenity.
"What we want is to administer a tonic to the Conference in Milan,"
he said airily. "Its deliberations upon international action for
the suppression of political crime don't seem to get anywhere.
England lags. This country is absurd with its sentimental regard
for individual liberty. It's intolerable to think that all your
friends have got only to come over to - "
"In that way I have them all under my eye," Mr Verloc interrupted
huskily.
"It would be much more to the point to have them all under lock and
key. England must be brought into line. The imbecile bourgeoisie
of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people
whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in
ditches. And they have the political power still, if they only had
the sense to use it for their preservation. I suppose you agree
that the middle classes are stupid?"
Mr Verloc agreed hoarsely.
"They are."
"They have no imagination. They are blinded by an idiotic vanity.
What they want just now is a jolly good scare. This is the
psychological moment to set your friends to work. I have had you
called here to develop to you my idea."
And Mr Vladimir developed his idea from on high, with scorn and
condescension, displaying at the same time an amount of ignorance
as to the real aims, thoughts, and methods of the revolutionary
world which filled the silent Mr Verloc with inward consternation.
He confounded causes with effects more than was excusable; the most
distinguished propagandists with impulsive bomb throwers; assumed
organisation where in the nature of things it could not exist;
spoke of the social revolutionary party one moment as of a
perfectly disciplined army, where the word of chiefs was supreme,
and at another as if it had been the loosest association of
desperate brigands that ever camped in a mountain gorge. Once Mr
Verloc had opened his mouth for a protest, but the raising of a
shapely, large white hand arrested him. Very soon he became too
appalled to even try to protest. He listened in a stillness of
dread which resembled the immobility of profound attention.
"A series of outrages," Mr Vladimir continued calmly, "executed
here in this country; not only PLANNED here - that would not do -
they would not mind. Your friends could set half the Continent on
fire without influencing the public opinion here in favour of a
universal repressive legislation. They will not look outside their
backyard here."
Mr Verloc cleared his throat, but his heart failed him, and he said
nothing.
"These outrages need not be especially sanguinary," Mr Vladimir
went on, as if delivering a scientific lecture, "but they must be
sufficiently startling - effective. Let them be directed against
buildings, for instance. What is the fetish of the hour that all
the bourgeoisie recognise - eh, Mr Verloc?"
Mr Verloc opened his hands and shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"You are too lazy to think," was Mr Vladimir's comment upon that
gesture. "Pay attention to what I say. The fetish of to-day is
neither royalty nor religion. Therefore the palace and the church
should be left alone. You understand what I mean, Mr Verloc?"
The dismay and the scorn of Mr Verloc found vent in an attempt at
levity.
"Perfectly. But what of the Embassies? A series of attacks on the
various Embassies," he began; but he could not withstand the cold,
watchful stare of the First Secretary.
"You can be facetious, I see," the latter observed carelessly.
"That's all right. It may enliven your oratory at socialistic
congresses. But this room is no place for it. It would be
infinitely safer for you to follow carefully what I am saying. As
you are being called upon to furnish facts instead of cock-and-bull
stories, you had better try to make your profit off what I am
taking the trouble to explain to you. The sacrosanct fetish of to-
day is science. Why don't you get some of your friends to go for
that wooden-faced panjandrum - eh? Is it not part of these
institutions which must be swept away before the F. P. comes
along?"
Mr Verloc said nothing. He was afraid to open his lips lest a
groan should escape him.
"This is what you should try for. An attempt upon a crowned head
or on a president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much
as it used to be. It has entered into the general conception of
the existence of all chiefs of state. It's almost conventional -
especially since so many presidents have been assassinated. Now
let us take an outrage upon - say a church. Horrible enough at
first sight, no doubt, and yet not so effective as a person of an
ordinary mind might think. No matter how revolutionary and
anarchist in inception, there would be fools enough to give such an
outrage the character of a religious manifestation. And that would
detract from the especial alarming significance we wish to give to
the act. A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would
suffer in the same way from the suggestion of non-political
passion: the exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social
revenge. All this is used up; it is no longer instructive as an
object lesson in revolutionary anarchism. Every newspaper has
ready-made phrases to explain such manifestations away. I am about
to give you the philosophy of bomb throwing from my point of view;
from the point of view you pretend to have been serving for the
last eleven years. I will try not to talk above your head. The
sensibilities of the class you are attacking are soon blunted.
Property seems to them an indestructible thing. You can't count
upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb
outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond
the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely
destructive. It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest
suspicion of any other object. You anarchists should make it clear
that you are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the
whole social creation. But how to get that appallingly absurd
notion into the heads of the middle classes so that there should be
no mistake? That's the question. By directing your blows at
something outside the ordinary passions of humanity is the answer.
Of course, there is art. A bomb in the National Gallery would make
some noise. But it would not be serious enough. Art has never
been their fetish. It's like breaking a few back windows in a
man's house; whereas, if you want to make him really sit up, you
must try at least to raise the roof. There would be some screaming
of course, but from whom? Artists - art critics and such like -
people of no account. Nobody minds what they say. But there is
learning - science. Any imbecile that has got an income believes
in that. He does not know why, but he believes it matters somehow.
It is the sacrosanct fetish. All the damned professors are
radicals at heart. Let them know that their great panjandrum has
got to go too, to make room for the Future of the Proletariat. A
howl from all these intellectual idiots is bound to help forward
the labours of the Milan Conference. They will be writing to the
papers. Their indignation would be above suspicion, no material
interests being openly at stake, and it will alarm every
selfishness of the class which should be impressed. They believe
that in some mysterious way science is at the source of their
material prosperity. They do. And the absurd ferocity of such a
demonstration will affect them more profoundly than the mangling of
a whole street - or theatre - full of their own kind. To that last
they can always say: `Oh! it's mere class hate.' But what is one
to say to an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be
incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in fact, mad?
Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate
it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes. Moreover, I am a
civilised man. I would never dream of directing you to organise a
mere butchery, even if I expected the best results from it. But I
wouldn't expect from a butchery the result I want. Murder is
always with us. It is almost an institution. The demonstration
must be against learning - science. But not every science will
do. The attack must have all the shocking senselessness of
gratuitous blasphemy. Since bombs are your means of expression, it
would be really telling if one could throw a bomb into pure
mathematics. But that is impossible. I have been trying to
educate you; I have expounded to you the higher philosophy of your
usefulness, and suggested to you some serviceable arguments. The
practical application of my teaching interests YOU mostly. But
from the moment I have undertaken to interview you I have also
given some attention to the practical aspect of the question. What
do you think of having a go at astronomy?"
For sometime already Mr Verloc's immobility by the side of the arm-
chair resembled a state of collapsed coma - a sort of passive
insensibility interrupted by slight convulsive starts, such as may
be observed in the domestic dog having a nightmare on the
hearthrug. And it was in an uneasy doglike growl that he repeated
the word:
"Astronomy."
He had not recovered thoroughly as yet from that state of
bewilderment brought about by the effort to follow Mr Vladimir's
rapid incisive utterance. It had overcome his power of
assimilation. It had made him angry. This anger was complicated
by incredulity. And suddenly it dawned upon him that all this was
an elaborate joke. Mr Vladimir exhibited his white teeth in a
smile, with dimples on his round, full face posed with a complacent
inclination above the bristling bow of his neck-tie. The favourite
of intelligent society women had assumed his drawing-room attitude
accompanying the delivery of delicate witticisms. Sitting well
forward, his white hand upraised, he seemed to hold delicately
between his thumb and forefinger the subtlety of his suggestion.
"There could be nothing better. Such an outrage combines the
greatest possible regard for humanity with the most alarming
display of ferocious imbecility. I defy the ingenuity of
journalists to persuade their public that any given member of the
proletariat can have a personal grievance against astronomy.
Starvation itself could hardly be dragged in there - eh? And there
are other advantages. The whole civilised world has heard of
Greenwich. The very boot-blacks in the basement of Charing Cross
Station know something of it. See?"
The features of Mr Vladimir, so well known in the best society by
their humorous urbanity, beamed with cynical self-satisfaction,
which would have astonished the intelligent women his wit
entertained so exquisitely. "Yes," he continued, with a
contemptuous smile, "the blowing up of the first meridian is bound
to raise a howl of execration."
"A difficult business," Mr Verloc mumbled, feeling that this was
the only safe thing to say.
"What is the matter? Haven't you the whole gang under your hand?
The very pick of the basket? That old terrorist Yundt is here. I
see him walking about Piccadilly in his green havelock almost every
day. And Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle - you don't mean
to say you don't know where he is? Because if you don't, I can
tell you," Mr Vladimir went on menacingly. "If you imagine that
you are the only one on the secret fund list, you are mistaken."
This perfectly gratuitous suggestion caused Mr Verloc to shuffle
his feet slightly.
"And the whole Lausanne lot - eh? Haven't they been flocking over
here at the first hint of the Milan Conference? This is an absurd
country."
"It will cost money," Mr Verloc said, by a sort of instinct.
"That cock won't fight," Mr Vladimir retorted, with an amazingly
genuine English accent. "You'll get your screw every month, and no
more till something happens. And if nothing happens very soon you
won't get even that. What's your ostensible occupation? What are
you supposed to live by?"
"I keep a shop," answered Mr Verloc.
"A shop! What sort of shop?"
"Stationery, newspapers. My wife - "
"Your what?" interrupted Mr Vladimir in his guttural Central Asian
tones.
"My wife." Mr Verloc raised his husky voice slightly. "I am
married."
"That be damned for a yarn," exclaimed the other in unfeigned
astonishment. "Married! And you a professed anarchist, too! What
is this confounded nonsense? But I suppose it's merely a manner of
speaking. Anarchists don't marry. It's well known. They can't.
It would be apostasy."
"My wife isn't one," Mr Verloc mumbled sulkily. "Moreover, it's no
concern of yours."
"Oh yes, it is," snapped Mr Vladimir. "I am beginning to be
convinced that you are not at all the man for the work you've been
employed on. Why, you must have discredited yourself completely in
your own world by your marriage. Couldn't you have managed
without? This is your virtuous attachment - eh? What with one
sort of attachment and another you are doing away with your
usefulness."
Mr Verloc, puffing out his cheeks, let the air escape violently,
and that was all. He had armed himself with patience. It was not
to be tried much longer. The First Secretary became suddenly very
curt, detached, final.
"You may go now," he said. "A dynamite outrage must be provoked.
I give you a month. The sittings of the Conference are suspended.
Before it reassembles again something must have happened here, or
your connection with us ceases."
He changed the note once more with an unprincipled versatility.
"Think over my philosophy, Mr - Mr - Verloc," he said, with a sort
of chaffing condescension, waving his hand towards the door. "Go
for the first meridian. You don't know the middle classes as well
as I do. Their sensibilities are jaded. The first meridian.
Nothing better, and nothing easier, I should think."
He had got up, and with his thin sensitive lips twitching
humorously, watched in the glass over the mantelpiece Mr Verloc
backing out of the room heavily, hat and stick in hand. The door
closed.
The footman in trousers, appearing suddenly in the corridor, let Mr
Verloc another way out and through a small door in the corner of
the courtyard. The porter standing at the gate ignored his exit
completely; and Mr Verloc retraced the path of his morning's
pilgrimage as if in a dream - an angry dream. This detachment from
the material world was so complete that, though the mortal envelope
of Mr Verloc had not hastened unduly along the streets, that part
of him to which it would be unwarrantably rude to refuse
immortality, found itself at the shop door all at once, as if borne
from west to east on the wings of a great wind. He walked straight
behind the counter, and sat down on a wooden chair that stood
there. No one appeared to disturb his solitude. Stevie, put into
a green baize apron, was now sweeping and dusting upstairs, intent
and conscientious, as though he were playing at it; and Mrs Verloc,
warned in the kitchen by the clatter of the cracked bell, had
merely come to the glazed door of the parlour, and putting the
curtain aside a little, had peered into the dim shop. Seeing her
husband sitting there shadowy and bulky, with his hat tilted far
back on his head, she had at once returned to her stove. An hour
or more later she took the green baize apron off her brother
Stevie, and instructed him to wash his hands and face in the
peremptory tone she had used in that connection for fifteen years
or so - ever since she had, in fact, ceased to attend to the boy's
hands and face herself. She spared presently a glance away from
her dishing-up for the inspection of that face and those hands
which Stevie, approaching the kitchen table, offered for her
approval with an air of self-assurance hiding a perpetual residue
of anxiety. Formerly the anger of the father was the supremely
effective sanction of these rites, but Mr Verloc's placidity in
domestic life would have made all mention of anger incredible even
to poor Stevie's nervousness. The theory was that Mr Verloc would
have been inexpressibly pained and shocked by any deficiency of
cleanliness at meal times. Winnie after the death of her father
found considerable consolation in the feeling that she need no
longer tremble for poor Stevie. She could not bear to see the boy
hurt. It maddened her. As a little girl she had often faced with
blazing eyes the irascible licensed victualler in defence of her
brother. Nothing now in Mrs Verloc's appearance could lead one to
suppose that she was capable of a passionate demonstration.
She finished her dishing-up. The table was laid in the parlour.
Going to the foot of the stairs, she screamed out "Mother!" Then
opening the glazed door leading to the shop, she said quietly
"Adolf!" Mr Verloc had not changed his position; he had not
apparently stirred a limb for an hour and a half. He got up
heavily, and came to his dinner in his overcoat and with his hat
on, without uttering a word. His silence in itself had nothing
startlingly unusual in this household, hidden in the shades of the
sordid street seldom touched by the sun, behind the dim shop with
its wares of disreputable rubbish. Only that day Mr Verloc's
taciturnity was so obviously thoughtful that the two women were
impressed by it. They sat silent themselves, keeping a watchful
eye on poor Stevie, lest he should break out into one of his fits
of loquacity. He faced Mr Verloc across the table, and remained
very good and quiet, staring vacantly. The endeavour to keep him
from making himself objectionable in any way to the master of the
house put no inconsiderable anxiety into these two women's lives.
"That boy," as they alluded to him softly between themselves, had
been a source of that sort of anxiety almost from the very day of
his birth. The late licensed victualler's humiliation at having
such a very peculiar boy for a son manifested itself by a
propensity to brutal treatment; for he was a person of fine
sensibilities, and his sufferings as a man and a father were
perfectly genuine. Afterwards Stevie had to be kept from making
himself a nuisance to the single gentlemen lodgers, who are
themselves a queer lot, and are easily aggrieved. And there was
always the anxiety of his mere existence to face. Visions of a
workhouse infirmary for her child had haunted the old woman in the
basement breakfast-room of the decayed Belgravian house. "If you
had not found such a good husband, my dear," she used to say to her
daughter, "I don't know what would have become of that poor boy."
Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to Stevie as a man not
particularly fond of animals may give to his wife's beloved cat;
and this recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially
of the same quality. Both women admitted to themselves that not
much more could be reasonably expected. It was enough to earn for
Mr Verloc the old woman's reverential gratitude. In the early
days, made sceptical by the trials of friendless life, she used
sometimes to ask anxiously: "You don't think, my dear, that Mr
Verloc is getting tired of seeing Stevie about?" To this Winnie
replied habitually by a slight toss of her head. Once, however,
she retorted, with a rather grim pertness: "He'll have to get tired
of me first." A long silence ensued. The mother, with her feet
propped up on a stool, seemed to be trying to get to the bottom of
that answer, whose feminine profundity had struck her all of a
heap. She had never really understood why Winnie had married Mr
Verloc. It was very sensible of her, and evidently had turned out
for the best, but her girl might have naturally hoped to find
somebody of a more suitable age. There had been a steady young
fellow, only son of a butcher in the next street, helping his
father in business, with whom Winnie had been walking out with
obvious gusto. He was dependent on his father, it is true; but the
business was good, and his prospects excellent. He took her girl
to the theatre on several evenings. Then just as she began to
dread to hear of their engagement (for what could she have done
with that big house alone, with Stevie on her hands), that romance
came to an abrupt end, and Winnie went about looking very dull.
But Mr Verloc, turning up providentially to occupy the first-floor
front bedroom, there had been no more question of the young
butcher. It was clearly providential. _
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