CHAPTER XI

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_ After Chief Inspector Heat had left him Mr Verloc moved about the
parlour.

From time to time he eyed his wife through the open door. "She
knows all about it now," he thought to himself with commiseration
for her sorrow and with some satisfaction as regarded himself. Mr
Verloc's soul, if lacking greatness perhaps, was capable of tender
sentiments. The prospect of having to break the news to her had
put him into a fever. Chief Inspector Heat had relieved him of the
task. That was good as far as it went. It remained for him now to
face her grief.

Mr Verloc had never expected to have to face it on account of
death, whose catastrophic character cannot be argued away by
sophisticated reasoning or persuasive eloquence. Mr Verloc never
meant Stevie to perish with such abrupt violence. He did not mean
him to perish at all. Stevie dead was a much greater nuisance than
ever he had been when alive. Mr Verloc had augured a favourable
issue to his enterprise, basing himself not on Stevie's
intelligence, which sometimes plays queer tricks with a man, but on
the blind docility and on the blind devotion of the boy. Though
not much of a psychologist, Mr Verloc had gauged the depth of
Stevie's fanaticism. He dared cherish the hope of Stevie walking
away from the walls of the Observatory as he had been instructed to
do, taking the way shown to him several times previously, and
rejoining his brother-in-law, the wise and good Mr Verloc, outside
the precincts of the park. Fifteen minutes ought to have been
enough for the veriest fool to deposit the engine and walk away.
And the Professor had guaranteed more than fifteen minutes. But
Stevie had stumbled within five minutes of being left to himself.
And Mr Verloc was shaken morally to pieces. He had foreseen
everything but that. He had foreseen Stevie distracted and lost -
sought for - found in some police station or provincial workhouse
in the end. He had foreseen Stevie arrested, and was not afraid,
because Mr Verloc had a great opinion of Stevie's loyalty, which
had been carefully indoctrinated with the necessity of silence in
the course of many walks. Like a peripatetic philosopher, Mr
Verloc, strolling along the streets of London, had modified
Stevie's view of the police by conversations full of subtle
reasonings. Never had a sage a more attentive and admiring
disciple. The submission and worship were so apparent that Mr
Verloc had come to feel something like a liking for the boy. In
any case, he had not foreseen the swift bringing home of his
connection. That his wife should hit upon the precaution of sewing
the boy's address inside his overcoat was the last thing Mr Verloc
would have thought of. One can't think of everything. That was
what she meant when she said that he need not worry if he lost
Stevie during their walks. She had assured him that the boy would
turn up all right. Well, he had turned up with a vengeance!

"Well, well," muttered Mr Verloc in his wonder. What did she mean
by it? Spare him the trouble of keeping an anxious eye on Stevie?
Most likely she had meant well. Only she ought to have told him of
the precaution she had taken.

Mr Verloc walked behind the counter of the shop. His intention was
not to overwhelm his wife with bitter reproaches. Mr Verloc felt
no bitterness. The unexpected march of events had converted him to
the doctrine of fatalism. Nothing could be helped now. He said:

"I didn't mean any harm to come to the boy."

Mrs Verloc shuddered at the sound of her husband's voice. She did
not uncover her face. The trusted secret agent of the late Baron
Stott-Wartenheim looked at her for a time with a heavy, persistent,
undiscerning glance. The torn evening paper was lying at her feet.
It could not have told her much. Mr Verloc felt the need of
talking to his wife.

"It's that damned Heat - eh?" he said. "He upset you. He's a
brute, blurting it out like this to a woman. I made myself ill
thinking how to break it to you. I sat for hours in the little
parlour of Cheshire Cheese thinking over the best way. You
understand I never meant any harm to come to that boy."

Mr Verloc, the Secret Agent, was speaking the truth. It was his
marital affection that had received the greatest shock from the
premature explosion. He added:

"I didn't feel particularly gay sitting there and thinking of you."

He observed another slight shudder of his wife, which affected his
sensibility. As she persisted in hiding her face in her hands, he
thought he had better leave her alone for a while. On this
delicate impulse Mr Verloc withdrew into the parlour again, where
the gas jet purred like a contented cat. Mrs Verloc's wifely
forethought had left the cold beef on the table with carving knife
and fork and half a loaf of bread for Mr Verloc's supper. He
noticed all these things now for the first time, and cutting
himself a piece of bread and meat, began to eat.

His appetite did not proceed from callousness. Mr Verloc had not
eaten any breakfast that day. He had left his home fasting. Not
being an energetic man, he found his resolution in nervous
excitement, which seemed to hold him mainly by the throat. He
could not have swallowed anything solid. Michaelis' cottage was as
destitute of provisions as the cell of a prisoner. The ticket-of-
leave apostle lived on a little milk and crusts of stale bread.
Moreover, when Mr Verloc arrived he had already gone upstairs after
his frugal meal. Absorbed in the toil and delight of literary
composition, he had not even answered Mr Verloc's shout up the
little staircase.

"I am taking this young fellow home for a day or two."

And, in truth, Mr Verloc did not wait for an answer, but had
marched out of the cottage at once, followed by the obedient
Stevie.

Now that all action was over and his fate taken out of his hands
with unexpected swiftness, Mr Verloc felt terribly empty
physically. He carved the meat, cut the bread, and devoured his
supper standing by the table, and now and then casting a glance
towards his wife. Her prolonged immobility disturbed the comfort
of his refection. He walked again into the shop, and came up very
close to her. This sorrow with a veiled face made Mr Verloc
uneasy. He expected, of course, his wife to be very much upset,
but he wanted her to pull herself together. He needed all her
assistance and all her loyalty in these new conjunctures his
fatalism had already accepted.

"Can't be helped," he said in a tone of gloomy sympathy. "Come,
Winnie, we've got to think of to-morrow. You'll want all your wits
about you after I am taken away."

He paused. Mrs Verloc's breast heaved convulsively. This was not
reassuring to Mr Verloc, in whose view the newly created situation
required from the two people most concerned in it calmness,
decision, and other qualities incompatible with the mental disorder
of passionate sorrow. Mr Verloc was a humane man; he had come home
prepared to allow every latitude to his wife's affection for her
brother.

Only he did not understand either the nature or the whole extent of
that sentiment. And in this he was excusable, since it was
impossible for him to understand it without ceasing to be himself.
He was startled and disappointed, and his speech conveyed it by a
certain roughness of tone.

"You might look at a fellow," he observed after waiting a while.

As if forced through the hands covering Mrs Verloc's face the
answer came, deadened, almost pitiful.

"I don't want to look at you as long as I live."

"Eh? What!" Mr Verloc was merely startled by the superficial and
literal meaning of this declaration. It was obviously
unreasonable, the mere cry of exaggerated grief. He threw over it
the mantle of his marital indulgence. The mind of Mr Verloc lacked
profundity. Under the mistaken impression that the value of
individuals consists in what they are in themselves, he could not
possibly comprehend the value of Stevie in the eyes of Mrs Verloc.
She was taking it confoundedly hard, he thought to himself. It was
all the fault of that damned Heat. What did he want to upset the
woman for? But she mustn't be allowed, for her own good, to carry
on so till she got quite beside herself.

"Look here! You can't sit like this in the shop," he said with
affected severity, in which there was some real annoyance; for
urgent practical matters must be talked over if they had to sit up
all night. "Somebody might come in at any minute," he added, and
waited again. No effect was produced, and the idea of the finality
of death occurred to Mr Verloc during the pause. He changed his
tone. "Come. This won't bring him back," he said gently, feeling
ready to take her in his arms and press her to his breast, where
impatience and compassion dwelt side by side. But except for a
short shudder Mrs Verloc remained apparently unaffected by the
force of that terrible truism. It was Mr Verloc himself who was
moved. He was moved in his simplicity to urge moderation by
asserting the claims of his own personality.

"Do be reasonable, Winnie. What would it have been if you had lost
me!"

He had vaguely expected to hear her cry out. But she did not
budge. She leaned back a little, quieted down to a complete
unreadable stillness. Mr Verloc's heart began to beat faster with
exasperation and something resembling alarm. He laid his hand on
her shoulder, saying:

"Don't be a fool, Winnie."

She gave no sign. It was impossible to talk to any purpose with a
woman whose face one cannot see. Mr Verloc caught hold of his
wife's wrists. But her hands seemed glued fast. She swayed
forward bodily to his tug, and nearly went off the chair. Startled
to feel her so helplessly limp, he was trying to put her back on
the chair when she stiffened suddenly all over, tore herself out of
his hands, ran out of the shop, across the parlour, and into the
kitchen. This was very swift. He had just a glimpse of her face
and that much of her eyes that he knew she had not looked at him.

It all had the appearance of a struggle for the possession of a
chair, because Mr Verloc instantly took his wife's place in it. Mr
Verloc did not cover his face with his hands, but a sombre
thoughtfulness veiled his features. A term of imprisonment could
not be avoided. He did not wish now to avoid it. A prison was a
place as safe from certain unlawful vengeances as the grave, with
this advantage, that in a prison there is room for hope. What he
saw before him was a term of imprisonment, an early release and
then life abroad somewhere, such as he had contemplated already, in
case of failure. Well, it was a failure, if not exactly the sort
of failure he had feared. It had been so near success that he
could have positively terrified Mr Vladimir out of his ferocious
scoffing with this proof of occult efficiency. So at least it
seemed now to Mr Verloc. His prestige with the Embassy would have
been immense if - if his wife had not had the unlucky notion of
sewing on the address inside Stevie's overcoat. Mr Verloc, who was
no fool, had soon perceived the extraordinary character of the
influence he had over Stevie, though he did not understand exactly
its origin - the doctrine of his supreme wisdom and goodness
inculcated by two anxious women. In all the eventualities he had
foreseen Mr Verloc had calculated with correct insight on Stevie's
instinctive loyalty and blind discretion. The eventuality he had
not foreseen had appalled him as a humane man and a fond husband.
From every other point of view it was rather advantageous. Nothing
can equal the everlasting discretion of death. Mr Verloc, sitting
perplexed and frightened in the small parlour of the Cheshire
Cheese, could not help acknowledging that to himself, because his
sensibility did not stand in the way of his judgment. Stevie's
violent disintegration, however disturbing to think about, only
assured the success; for, of course, the knocking down of a wall
was not the aim of Mr Vladimir's menaces, but the production of a
moral effect. With much trouble and distress on Mr Verloc's part
the effect might be said to have been produced. When, however,
most unexpectedly, it came home to roost in Brett Street, Mr
Verloc, who had been struggling like a man in a nightmare for the
preservation of his position, accepted the blow in the spirit of a
convinced fatalist. The position was gone through no one's fault
really. A small, tiny fact had done it. It was like slipping on a
bit of orange peel in the dark and breaking your leg.

Mr Verloc drew a weary breath. He nourished no resentment against
his wife. He thought: She will have to look after the shop while
they keep me locked up. And thinking also how cruelly she would
miss Stevie at first, he felt greatly concerned about her health
and spirits. How would she stand her solitude - absolutely alone
in that house? It would not do for her to break down while he was
locked up? What would become of the shop then? The shop was an
asset. Though Mr Verloc's fatalism accepted his undoing as a
secret agent, he had no mind to be utterly ruined, mostly, it must
be owned, from regard for his wife.

Silent, and out of his line of sight in the kitchen, she frightened
him. If only she had had her mother with her. But that silly old
woman - An angry dismay possessed Mr Verloc. He must talk with his
wife. He could tell her certainly that a man does get desperate
under certain circumstances. But he did not go incontinently to
impart to her that information. First of all, it was clear to him
that this evening was no time for business. He got up to close the
street door and put the gas out in the shop.

Having thus assured a solitude around his hearthstone Mr Verloc
walked into the parlour, and glanced down into the kitchen. Mrs
Verloc was sitting in the place where poor Stevie usually
established himself of an evening with paper and pencil for the
pastime of drawing these coruscations of innumerable circles
suggesting chaos and eternity. Her arms were folded on the table,
and her head was lying on her arms. Mr Verloc contemplated her
back and the arrangement of her hair for a time, then walked away
from the kitchen door. Mrs Verloc's philosophical, almost
disdainful incuriosity, the foundation of their accord in domestic
life made it extremely difficult to get into contact with her, now
this tragic necessity had arisen. Mr Verloc felt this difficulty
acutely. He turned around the table in the parlour with his usual
air of a large animal in a cage.

Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, - a
systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious.
Every time he passed near the door Mr Verloc glanced at his wife
uneasily. It was not that he was afraid of her. Mr Verloc
imagined himself loved by that woman. But she had not accustomed
him to make confidences. And the confidence he had to make was of
a profound psychological order. How with his want of practice
could he tell her what he himself felt but vaguely: that there are
conspiracies of fatal destiny, that a notion grows in a mind
sometimes till it acquires an outward existence, an independent
power of its own, and even a suggestive voice? He could not inform
her that a man may be haunted by a fat, witty, clean-shaved face
till the wildest expedient to get rid of it appears a child of
wisdom.

On this mental reference to a First Secretary of a great Embassy,
Mr Verloc stopped in the doorway, and looking down into the kitchen
with an angry face and clenched fists, addressed his wife.

"You don't know what a brute I had to deal with."

He started off to make another perambulation of the table; then
when he had come to the door again he stopped, glaring in from the
height of two steps.

"A silly, jeering, dangerous brute, with no more sense than -
After all these years! A man like me! And I have been playing my
head at that game. You didn't know. Quite right, too. What was
the good of telling you that I stood the risk of having a knife
stuck into me any time these seven years we've been married? I am
not a chap to worry a woman that's fond of me. You had no business
to know." Mr Verloc took another turn round the parlour, fuming.

"A venomous beast," he began again from the doorway. "Drive me out
into a ditch to starve for a joke. I could see he thought it was a
damned good joke. A man like me! Look here! Some of the highest
in the world got to thank me for walking on their two legs to this
day. That's the man you've got married to, my girl!"

He perceived that his wife had sat up. Mrs Verloc's arms remained
lying stretched on the table. Mr Verloc watched at her back as if
he could read there the effect of his words.

"There isn't a murdering plot for the last eleven years that I
hadn't my finger in at the risk of my life. There's scores of
these revolutionists I've sent off, with their bombs in their
blamed pockets, to get themselves caught on the frontier. The old
Baron knew what I was worth to his country. And here suddenly a
swine comes along - an ignorant, overbearing swine."

Mr Verloc, stepping slowly down two steps, entered the kitchen,
took a tumbler off the dresser, and holding it in his hand,
approached the sink, without looking at his wife. "It wasn't the
old Baron who would have had the wicked folly of getting me to call
on him at eleven in the morning. There are two or three in this
town that, if they had seen me going in, would have made no bones
about knocking me on the head sooner or later. It was a silly,
murderous trick to expose for nothing a man - like me."

Mr Verloc, turning on the tap above the sink, poured three glasses
of water, one after another, down his throat to quench the fires of
his indignation. Mr Vladimir's conduct was like a hot brand which
set his internal economy in a blaze. He could not get over the
disloyalty of it. This man, who would not work at the usual hard
tasks which society sets to its humbler members, had exercised his
secret industry with an indefatigable devotion. There was in Mr
Verloc a fund of loyalty. He had been loyal to his employers, to
the cause of social stability, - and to his affections too - as
became apparent when, after standing the tumbler in the sink, he
turned about, saying:

"If I hadn't thought of you I would have taken the bullying brute
by the throat and rammed his head into the fireplace. I'd have
been more than a match for that pink-faced, smooth-shaved - "

Mr Verloc, neglected to finish the sentence, as if there could be
no doubt of the terminal word. For the first time in his life he
was taking that incurious woman into his confidence. The
singularity of the event, the force and importance of the personal
feelings aroused in the course of this confession, drove Stevie's
fate clean out of Mr Verloc's mind. The boy's stuttering existence
of fears and indignations, together with the violence of his end,
had passed out of Mr Verloc's mental sight for a time. For that
reason, when he looked up he was startled by the inappropriate
character of his wife's stare. It was not a wild stare, and it was
not inattentive, but its attention was peculiar and not
satisfactory, inasmuch that it seemed concentrated upon some point
beyond Mr Verloc's person. The impression was so strong that Mr
Verloc glanced over his shoulder. There was nothing behind him:
there was just the whitewashed wall. The excellent husband of
Winnie Verloc saw no writing on the wall. He turned to his wife
again, repeating, with some emphasis:

"I would have taken him by the throat. As true as I stand here, if
I hadn't thought of you then I would have half choked the life out
of the brute before I let him get up. And don't you think he would
have been anxious to call the police either. He wouldn't have
dared. You understand why - don't you?"

He blinked at his wife knowingly.

"No," said Mrs Verloc in an unresonant voice, and without looking
at him at all. "What are you talking about?"

A great discouragement, the result of fatigue, came upon Mr Verloc.
He had had a very full day, and his nerves had been tried to the
utmost. After a month of maddening worry, ending in an unexpected
catastrophe, the storm-tossed spirit of Mr Verloc longed for
repose. His career as a secret agent had come to an end in a way
no one could have foreseen; only, now, perhaps he could manage to
get a night's sleep at last. But looking at his wife, he doubted
it. She was taking it very hard - not at all like herself, he
thought. He made an effort to speak.

"You'll have to pull yourself together, my girl," he said
sympathetically. "What's done can't be undone."

Mrs Verloc gave a slight start, though not a muscle of her white
face moved in the least. Mr Verloc, who was not looking at her,
continued ponderously.

"You go to bed now. What you want is a good cry."

This opinion had nothing to recommend it but the general consent of
mankind. It is universally understood that, as if it were nothing
more substantial than vapour floating in the sky, every emotion of
a woman is bound to end in a shower. And it is very probable that
had Stevie died in his bed under her despairing gaze, in her
protecting arms, Mrs Verloc's grief would have found relief in a
flood of bitter and pure tears. Mrs Verloc, in common with other
human beings, was provided with a fund of unconscious resignation
sufficient to meet the normal manifestation of human destiny.
Without "troubling her head about it," she was aware that it "did
not stand looking into very much." But the lamentable
circumstances of Stevie's end, which to Mr Verloc's mind had only
an episodic character, as part of a greater disaster, dried her
tears at their very source. It was the effect of a white-hot iron
drawn across her eyes; at the same time her heart, hardened and
chilled into a lump of ice, kept her body in an inward shudder, set
her features into a frozen contemplative immobility addressed to a
whitewashed wall with no writing on it. The exigencies of Mrs
Verloc's temperament, which, when stripped of its philosophical
reserve, was maternal and violent, forced her to roll a series of
thoughts in her motionless head. These thoughts were rather
imagined than expressed. Mrs Verloc was a woman of singularly few
words, either for public or private use. With the rage and dismay
of a betrayed woman, she reviewed the tenor of her life in visions
concerned mostly with Stevie's difficult existence from its
earliest days. It was a life of single purpose and of a noble
unity of inspiration, like those rare lives that have left their
mark on the thoughts and feelings of mankind. But the visions of
Mrs Verloc lacked nobility and magnificence. She saw herself
putting the boy to bed by the light of a single candle on the
deserted top floor of a "business house," dark under the roof and
scintillating exceedingly with lights and cut glass at the level of
the street like a fairy palace. That meretricious splendour was
the only one to be met in Mrs Verloc's visions. She remembered
brushing the boy's hair and tying his pinafores - herself in a
pinafore still; the consolations administered to a small and badly
scared creature by another creature nearly as small but not quite
so badly scared; she had the vision of the blows intercepted (often
with her own head), of a door held desperately shut against a man's
rage (not for very long); of a poker flung once (not very far),
which stilled that particular storm into the dumb and awful silence
which follows a thunder-clap. And all these scenes of violence
came and went accompanied by the unrefined noise of deep
vociferations proceeding from a man wounded in his paternal pride,
declaring himself obviously accursed since one of his kids was a
"slobbering idjut and the other a wicked she-devil." It was of her
that this had been said many years ago.

Mrs Verloc heard the words again in a ghostly fashion, and then the
dreary shadow of the Belgravian mansion descended upon her
shoulders. It was a crushing memory, an exhausting vision of
countless breakfast trays carried up and down innumerable stairs,
of endless haggling over pence, of the endless drudgery of
sweeping, dusting, cleaning, from basement to attics; while the
impotent mother, staggering on swollen legs, cooked in a grimy
kitchen, and poor Stevie, the unconscious presiding genius of all
their toil, blacked the gentlemen's boots in the scullery. But
this vision had a breath of a hot London summer in it, and for a
central figure a young man wearing his Sunday best, with a straw
hat on his dark head and a wooden pipe in his mouth. Affectionate
and jolly, he was a fascinating companion for a voyage down the
sparkling stream of life; only his boat was very small. There was
room in it for a girl-partner at the oar, but no accommodation for
passengers. He was allowed to drift away from the threshold of the
Belgravian mansion while Winnie averted her tearful eyes. He was
not a lodger. The lodger was Mr Verloc, indolent, and keeping late
hours, sleepily jocular of a morning from under his bed-clothes,
but with gleams of infatuation in his heavy lidded eyes, and always
with some money in his pockets. There was no sparkle of any kind
on the lazy stream of his life. It flowed through secret places.
But his barque seemed a roomy craft, and his taciturn magnanimity
accepted as a matter of course the presence of passengers.

Mrs Verloc pursued the visions of seven years' security for Stevie,
loyally paid for on her part; of security growing into confidence,
into a domestic feeling, stagnant and deep like a placid pool,
whose guarded surface hardly shuddered on the occasional passage of
Comrade Ossipon, the robust anarchist with shamelessly inviting
eyes, whose glance had a corrupt clearness sufficient to enlighten
any woman not absolutely imbecile.

A few seconds only had elapsed since the last word had been uttered
aloud in the kitchen, and Mrs Verloc was staring already at the
vision of an episode not more than a fortnight old. With eyes
whose pupils were extremely dilated she stared at the vision of her
husband and poor Stevie walking up Brett Street side by side away
from the shop. It was the last scene of an existence created by
Mrs Verloc's genius; an existence foreign to all grace and charm,
without beauty and almost without decency, but admirable in the
continuity of feeling and tenacity of purpose. And this last
vision has such plastic relief, such nearness of form, such a
fidelity of suggestive detail, that it wrung from Mrs Verloc an
anguished and faint murmur, reproducing the supreme illusion of her
life, an appalled murmur that died out on her blanched lips.

"Might have been father and son."

Mr Verloc stopped, and raised a care-worn face. "Eh? What did you
say?" he asked. Receiving no reply, he resumed his sinister
tramping. Then with a menacing flourish of a thick, fleshy fist,
he burst out:

"Yes. The Embassy people. A pretty lot, ain't they! Before a
week's out I'll make some of them wish themselves twenty feet
underground. Eh? What?"

He glanced sideways, with his head down. Mrs Verloc gazed at the
whitewashed wall. A blank wall - perfectly blank. A blankness to
run at and dash your head against. Mrs Verloc remained immovably
seated. She kept still as the population of half the globe would
keep still in astonishment and despair, were the sun suddenly put
out in the summer sky by the perfidy of a trusted providence.

"The Embassy," Mr Verloc began again, after a preliminary grimace
which bared his teeth wolfishly. "I wish I could get loose in
there with a cudgel for half-an-hour. I would keep on hitting till
there wasn't a single unbroken bone left amongst the whole lot.
But never mind, I'll teach them yet what it means trying to throw
out a man like me to rot in the streets. I've a tongue in my head.
All the world shall know what I've done for them. I am not afraid.
I don't care. Everything'll come out. Every damned thing. Let
them look out!"

In these terms did Mr Verloc declare his thirst for revenge. It
was a very appropriate revenge. It was in harmony with the
promptings of Mr Verloc's genius. It had also the advantage of
being within the range of his powers and of adjusting itself easily
to the practice of his life, which had consisted precisely in
betraying the secret and unlawful proceedings of his fellow-men.
Anarchists or diplomats were all one to him. Mr Verloc was
temperamentally no respecter of persons. His scorn was equally
distributed over the whole field of his operations. But as a
member of a revolutionary proletariat - which he undoubtedly was -
he nourished a rather inimical sentiment against social
distinction.

"Nothing on earth can stop me now," he added, and paused, looking
fixedly at his wife, who was looking fixedly at a blank wall.

The silence in the kitchen was prolonged, and Mr Verloc felt
disappointed. He had expected his wife to say something. But Mrs
Verloc's lips, composed in their usual form, preserved a statuesque
immobility like the rest of her face. And Mr Verloc was
disappointed. Yet the occasion did not, he recognised, demand
speech from her. She was a woman of very few words. For reasons
involved in the very foundation of his psychology, Mr Verloc was
inclined to put his trust in any woman who had given herself to
him. Therefore he trusted his wife. Their accord was perfect, but
it was not precise. It was a tacit accord, congenial to Mrs
Verloc's incuriosity and to Mr Verloc's habits of mind, which were
indolent and secret. They refrained from going to the bottom of
facts and motives.

This reserve, expressing, in a way, their profound confidence in
each other, introduced at the same time a certain element of
vagueness into their intimacy. No system of conjugal relations is
perfect. Mr Verloc presumed that his wife had understood him, but
he would have been glad to hear her say what she thought at the
moment. It would have been a comfort.

There were several reasons why this comfort was denied him. There
was a physical obstacle: Mrs Verloc had no sufficient command over
her voice. She did not see any alternative between screaming and
silence, and instinctively she chose the silence. Winnie Verloc
was temperamentally a silent person. And there was the paralysing
atrocity of the thought which occupied her. Her cheeks were
blanched, her lips ashy, her immobility amazing. And she thought
without looking at Mr Verloc: "This man took the boy away to murder
him. He took the boy away from his home to murder him. He took
the boy away from me to murder him!"

Mrs Verloc's whole being was racked by that inconclusive and
maddening thought. It was in her veins, in her bones, in the roots
of her hair. Mentally she assumed the biblical attitude of
mourning - the covered face, the rent garments; the sound of
wailing and lamentation filled her head. But her teeth were
violently clenched, and her tearless eyes were hot with rage,
because she was not a submissive creature. The protection she had
extended over her brother had been in its origin of a fierce an
indignant complexion. She had to love him with a militant love.
She had battled for him - even against herself. His loss had the
bitterness of defeat, with the anguish of a baffled passion. It
was not an ordinary stroke of death. Moreover, it was not death
that took Stevie from her. It was Mr Verloc who took him away.
She had seen him. She had watched him, without raising a hand,
take the boy away. And she had let him go, like - like a fool - a
blind fool. Then after he had murdered the boy he came home to
her. Just came home like any other man would come home to his
wife. . . .

Through her set teeth Mrs Verloc muttered at the wall:

"And I thought he had caught a cold."

Mr Verloc heard these words and appropriated them.

"It was nothing," he said moodily. "I was upset. I was upset on
your account."

Mrs Verloc, turning her head slowly, transferred her stare from the
wall to her husband's person. Mr Verloc, with the tips of his
fingers between his lips, was looking on the ground.

"Can't be helped," he mumbled, letting his hand fall. "You must
pull yourself together. You'll want all your wits about you. It
is you who brought the police about our ears. Never mind, I won't
say anything more about it," continued Mr Verloc magnanimously.
"You couldn't know."

"I couldn't," breathed out Mrs Verloc. It was as if a corpse had
spoken. Mr Verloc took up the thread of his discourse.

"I don't blame you. I'll make them sit up. Once under lock and
key it will be safe enough for me to talk - you understand. You
must reckon on me being two years away from you," he continued, in
a tone of sincere concern. "It will be easier for you than for me.
You'll have something to do, while I - Look here, Winnie, what you
must do is to keep this business going for two years. You know
enough for that. You've a good head on you. I'll send you word
when it's time to go about trying to sell. You'll have to be extra
careful. The comrades will be keeping an eye on you all the time.
You'll have to be as artful as you know how, and as close as the
grave. No one must know what you are going to do. I have no mind
to get a knock on the head or a stab in the back directly I am let
out."

Thus spoke Mr Verloc, applying his mind with ingenuity and
forethought to the problems of the future. His voice was sombre,
because he had a correct sentiment of the situation. Everything
which he did not wish to pass had come to pass. The future had
become precarious. His judgment, perhaps, had been momentarily
obscured by his dread of Mr Vladimir's truculent folly. A man
somewhat over forty may be excusably thrown into considerable
disorder by the prospect of losing his employment, especially if
the man is a secret agent of political police, dwelling secure in
the consciousness of his high value and in the esteem of high
personages. He was excusable.

Now the thing had ended in a crash. Mr Verloc was cool; but he was
not cheerful. A secret agent who throws his secrecy to the winds
from desire of vengeance, and flaunts his achievements before the
public eye, becomes the mark for desperate and bloodthirsty
indignations. Without unduly exaggerating the danger, Mr Verloc
tried to bring it clearly before his wife's mind. He repeated that
he had no intention to let the revolutionises do away with him.

He looked straight into his wife's eyes. The enlarged pupils of
the woman received his stare into their unfathomable depths.

"I am too fond of you for that," he said, with a little nervous
laugh.

A faint flush coloured Mrs Verloc's ghastly and motionless face.
Having done with the visions of the past, she had not only heard,
but had also understood the words uttered by her husband. By their
extreme disaccord with her mental condition these words produced on
her a slightly suffocating effect. Mrs Verloc's mental condition
had the merit of simplicity; but it was not sound. It was governed
too much by a fixed idea. Every nook and cranny of her brain was
filled with the thought that this man, with whom she had lived
without distaste for seven years, had taken the "poor boy" away
from her in order to kill him - the man to whom she had grown
accustomed in body and mind; the man whom she had trusted, took the
boy away to kill him! In its form, in its substance, in its
effect, which was universal, altering even the aspect of inanimate
things, it was a thought to sit still and marvel at for ever and
ever. Mrs Verloc sat still. And across that thought (not across
the kitchen) the form of Mr Verloc went to and fro, familiarly in
hat and overcoat, stamping with his boots upon her brain. He was
probably talking too; but Mrs Verloc's thought for the most part
covered the voice.

Now and then, however, the voice would make itself heard. Several
connected words emerged at times. Their purport was generally
hopeful. On each of these occasions Mrs Verloc's dilated pupils,
losing their far-off fixity, followed her husband's movements with
the effect of black care and, impenetrable attention. Well
informed upon all matters relating to his secret calling, Mr Verloc
augured well for the success of his plans and combinations. He
really believed that it would be upon the whole easy for him to
escape the knife of infuriated revolutionists. He had exaggerated
the strength of their fury and the length of their arm (for
professional purposes) too often to have many illusions one way or
the other. For to exaggerate with judgment one must begin by
measuring with nicety. He knew also how much virtue and how much
infamy is forgotten in two years - two long years. His first
really confidential discourse to his wife was optimistic from
conviction. He also thought it good policy to display all the
assurance he could muster. It would put heart into the poor woman.
On his liberation, which, harmonising with the whole tenor of his
life, would be secret, of course, they would vanish together
without loss of time. As to covering up the tracks, he begged his
wife to trust him for that. He knew how it was to be done so that
the devil himself -

He waved his hand. He seemed to boast. He wished only to put
heart into her. It was a benevolent intention, but Mr Verloc had
the misfortune not to be in accord with his audience.

The self-confident tone grew upon Mrs Verloc's ear which let most
of the words go by; for what were words to her now? What could
words do to her, for good or evil in the face of her fixed idea?
Her black glance followed that man who was asserting his impunity -
the man who had taken poor Stevie from home to kill him somewhere.
Mrs Verloc could not remember exactly where, but her heart began to
beat very perceptibly.

Mr Verloc, in a soft and conjugal tone, was now expressing his firm
belief that there were yet a good few years of quiet life before
them both. He did not go into the question of means. A quiet life
it must be and, as it were, nestling in the shade, concealed among
men whose flesh is grass; modest, like the life of violets. The
words used by Mr Verloc were: "Lie low for a bit." And far from
England, of course. It was not clear whether Mr Verloc had in his
mind Spain or South America; but at any rate somewhere abroad.

This last word, falling into Mrs Verloc's ear, produced a definite
impression. This man was talking of going abroad. The impression
was completely disconnected; and such is the force of mental habit
that Mrs Verloc at once and automatically asked herself: "And what
of Stevie?"

It was a sort of forgetfulness; but instantly she became aware that
there was no longer any occasion for anxiety on that score. There
would never be any occasion any more. The poor boy had been taken
out and killed. The poor boy was dead.

This shaking piece of forgetfulness stimulated Mrs Verloc's
intelligence. She began to perceive certain consequences which
would have surprised Mr Verloc. There was no need for her now to
stay there, in that kitchen, in that house, with that man - since
the boy was gone for ever. No need whatever. And on that Mrs
Verloc rose as if raised by a spring. But neither could she see
what there was to keep her in the world at all. And this inability
arrested her. Mr Verloc watched her with marital solicitude.

"You're looking more like yourself," he said uneasily. Something
peculiar in the blackness of his wife's eyes disturbed his
optimism. At that precise moment Mrs Verloc began to look upon
herself as released from all earthly ties.

She had her freedom. Her contract with existence, as represented
by that man standing over there, was at an end. She was a free
woman. Had this view become in some way perceptible to Mr Verloc
he would have been extremely shocked. In his affairs of the heart
Mr Verloc had been always carelessly generous, yet always with no
other idea than that of being loved for himself. Upon this matter,
his ethical notions being in agreement with his vanity, he was
completely incorrigible. That this should be so in the case of his
virtuous and legal connection he was perfectly certain. He had
grown older, fatter, heavier, in the belief that he lacked no
fascination for being loved for his own sake. When he saw Mrs
Verloc starting to walk out of the kitchen without a word he was
disappointed.

"Where are you going to?" he called out rather sharply.
"Upstairs?"

Mrs Verloc in the doorway turned at the voice. An instinct of
prudence born of fear, the excessive fear of being approached and
touched by that man, induced her to nod at him slightly (from the
height of two steps), with a stir of the lips which the conjugal
optimism of Mr Verloc took for a wan and uncertain smile.

"That's right," he encouraged her gruffly. "Rest and quiet's what
you want. Go on. It won't be long before I am with you."

Mrs Verloc, the free woman who had had really no idea where she was
going to, obeyed the suggestion with rigid steadiness.

Mr Verloc watched her. She disappeared up the stairs. He was
disappointed. There was that within him which would have been more
satisfied if she had been moved to throw herself upon his breast.
But he was generous and indulgent. Winnie was always
undemonstrative and silent. Neither was Mr Verloc himself prodigal
of endearments and words as a rule. But this was not an ordinary
evening. It was an occasion when a man wants to be fortified and
strengthened by open proofs of sympathy and affection. Mr Verloc
sighed, and put out the gas in the kitchen. Mr Verloc's sympathy
with his wife was genuine and intense. It almost brought tears
into his eyes as he stood in the parlour reflecting on the
loneliness hanging over her head. In this mood Mr Verloc missed
Stevie very much out of a difficult world. He thought mournfully
of his end. If only that lad had not stupidly destroyed himself!

The sensation of unappeasable hunger, not unknown after the strain
of a hazardous enterprise to adventurers of tougher fibre than Mr
Verloc, overcame him again. The piece of roast beef, laid out in
the likeness of funereal baked meats for Stevie's obsequies,
offered itself largely to his notice. And Mr Verloc again partook.
He partook ravenously, without restraint and decency, cutting thick
slices with the sharp carving knife, and swallowing them without
bread. In the course of that refection it occurred to Mr Verloc
that he was not hearing his wife move about the bedroom as he
should have done. The thought of finding her perhaps sitting on
the bed in the dark not only cut Mr Verloc's appetite, but also
took from him the inclination to follow her upstairs just yet.
Laying down the carving knife, Mr Verloc listened with careworn
attention.

He was comforted by hearing her move at last. She walked suddenly
across the room, and threw the window up. After a period of
stillness up there, during which he figured her to himself with her
head out, he heard the sash being lowered slowly. Then she made a
few steps, and sat down. Every resonance of his house was familiar
to Mr Verloc, who was thoroughly domesticated. When next he heard
his wife's footsteps overhead he knew, as well as if he had seen
her doing it, that she had been putting on her walking shoes. Mr
Verloc wriggled his shoulders slightly at this ominous symptom, and
moving away from the table, stood with his back to the fireplace,
his head on one side, and gnawing perplexedly at the tips of his
fingers. He kept track of her movements by the sound. She walked
here and there violently, with abrupt stoppages, now before the
chest of drawers, then in front of the wardrobe. An immense load
of weariness, the harvest of a day of shocks and surprises, weighed
Mr Verloc's energies to the ground.

He did not raise his eyes till he heard his wife descending the
stairs. It was as he had guessed. She was dressed for going out.

Mrs Verloc was a free woman. She had thrown open the window of the
bedroom either with the intention of screaming Murder! Help! or of
throwing herself out. For she did not exactly know what use to
make of her freedom. Her personality seemed to have been torn into
two pieces, whose mental operations did not adjust themselves very
well to each other. The street, silent and deserted from end to
end, repelled her by taking sides with that man who was so certain
of his impunity. She was afraid to shout lest no one should come.
Obviously no one would come. Her instinct of self-preservation
recoiled from the depth of the fall into that sort of slimy, deep
trench. Mrs Verloc closed the window, and dressed herself to go
out into the street by another way. She was a free woman. She had
dressed herself thoroughly, down to the tying of a black veil over
her face. As she appeared before him in the light of the parlour,
Mr Verloc observed that she had even her little handbag hanging
from her left wrist. . . . Flying off to her mother, of course.

The thought that women were wearisome creatures after all presented
itself to his fatigued brain. But he was too generous to harbour
it for more than an instant. This man, hurt cruelly in his vanity,
remained magnanimous in his conduct, allowing himself no
satisfaction of a bitter smile or of a contemptuous gesture. With
true greatness of soul, he only glanced at the wooden clock on the
wall, and said in a perfectly calm but forcible manner:

"Five and twenty minutes past eight, Winnie. There's no sense in
going over there so late. You will never manage to get back to-
night."

Before his extended hand Mrs Verloc had stopped short. He added
heavily: "Your mother will be gone to bed before you get there.
This is the sort of news that can wait."

Nothing was further from Mrs Verloc's thoughts than going to her
mother. She recoiled at the mere idea, and feeling a chair behind
her, she obeyed the suggestion of the touch, and sat down. Her
intention had been simply to get outside the door for ever. And if
this feeling was correct, its mental form took an unrefined shape
corresponding to her origin and station. "I would rather walk the
streets all the days of my life," she thought. But this creature,
whose moral nature had been subjected to a shock of which, in the
physical order, the most violent earthquake of history could only
be a faint and languid rendering, was at the mercy of mere trifles,
of casual contacts. She sat down. With her hat and veil she had
the air of a visitor, of having looked in on Mr Verloc for a
moment. Her instant docility encouraged him, whilst her aspect of
only temporary and silent acquiescence provoked him a little.

"Let me tell you, Winnie," he said with authority, "that your place
is here this evening. Hang it all! you brought the damned police
high and low about my ears. I don't blame you - but it's your
doing all the same. You'd better take this confounded hat off. I
can't let you go out, old girl," he added in a softened voice.

Mrs Verloc's mind got hold of that declaration with morbid
tenacity. The man who had taken Stevie out from under her very
eyes to murder him in a locality whose name was at the moment not
present to her memory would not allow her go out. Of course he
wouldn't.

Now he had murdered Stevie he would never let her go. He would
want to keep her for nothing. And on this characteristic
reasoning, having all the force of insane logic, Mrs Verloc's
disconnected wits went to work practically. She could slip by him,
open the door, run out. But he would dash out after her, seize her
round the body, drag her back into the shop. She could scratch,
kick, and bite - and stab too; but for stabbing she wanted a knife.
Mrs Verloc sat still under her black veil, in her own house, like a
masked and mysterious visitor of impenetrable intentions.

Mr Verloc's magnanimity was not more than human. She had
exasperated him at last.

"Can't you say something? You have your own dodges for vexing a
man. Oh yes! I know your deaf-and-dumb trick. I've seen you at
it before to-day. But just now it won't do. And to begin with,
take this damned thing off. One can't tell whether one is talking
to a dummy or to a live woman."

He advanced, and stretching out his hand, dragged the veil off,
unmasking a still, unreadable face, against which his nervous
exasperation was shattered like a glass bubble flung against a
rock. "That's better," he said, to cover his momentary uneasiness,
and retreated back to his old station by the mantelpiece. It never
entered his head that his wife could give him up. He felt a little
ashamed of himself, for he was fond and generous. What could he
do? Everything had been said already. He protested vehemently.

"By heavens! You know that I hunted high and low. I ran the risk
of giving myself away to find somebody for that accursed job. And
I tell you again I couldn't find anyone crazy enough or hungry
enough. What do you take me for - a murderer, or what? The boy is
gone. Do you think I wanted him to blow himself up? He's gone.
His troubles are over. Ours are just going to begin, I tell you,
precisely because he did blow himself. I don't blame you. But
just try to understand that it was a pure accident; as much an
accident as if he had been run over by a `bus while crossing the
street."

His generosity was not infinite, because he was a human being - and
not a monster, as Mrs Verloc believed him to be. He paused, and a
snarl lifting his moustaches above a gleam of white teeth gave him
the expression of a reflective beast, not very dangerous - a slow
beast with a sleek head, gloomier than a seal, and with a husky
voice.

"And when it comes to that, it's as much your doing as mine.
That's so. You may glare as much as you like. I know what you can
do in that way. Strike me dead if I ever would have thought of the
lad for that purpose. It was you who kept on shoving him in my way
when I was half distracted with the worry of keeping the lot of us
out of trouble. What the devil made you? One would think you were
doing it on purpose. And I am damned if I know that you didn't.
There's no saying how much of what's going on you have got hold of
on the sly with your infernal don't-care-a-damn way of looking
nowhere in particular, and saying nothing at all. . . . "

His husky domestic voice ceased for a while. Mrs Verloc made no
reply. Before that silence he felt ashamed of what he had said.
But as often happens to peaceful men in domestic tiffs, being
ashamed he pushed another point.

"You have a devilish way of holding your tongue sometimes," he
began again, without raising his voice. "Enough to make some men
go mad. It's lucky for you that I am not so easily put out as some
of them would be by your deaf-and-dumb sulks. I am fond of you.
But don't you go too far. This isn't the time for it. We ought to
be thinking of what we've got to do. And I can't let you go out
to-night, galloping off to your mother with some crazy tale or
other about me. I won't have it. Don't you make any mistake about
it: if you will have it that I killed the boy, then you've killed
him as much as I."

In sincerity of feeling and openness of statement, these words went
far beyond anything that had ever been said in this home, kept up
on the wages of a secret industry eked out by the sale of more or
less secret wares: the poor expedients devised by a mediocre
mankind for preserving an imperfect society from the dangers of
moral and physical corruption, both secret too of their kind. They
were spoken because Mr Verloc had felt himself really outraged; but
the reticent decencies of this home life, nestling in a shady
street behind a shop where the sun never shone, remained apparently
undisturbed. Mrs Verloc heard him out with perfect propriety, and
then rose from her chair in her hat and jacket like a visitor at
the end of a call. She advanced towards her husband, one arm
extended as if for a silent leave-taking. Her net veil dangling
down by one end on the left side of her face gave an air of
disorderly formality to her restrained movements. But when she
arrived as far as the hearthrug, Mr Verloc was no longer standing
there. He had moved off in the direction of the sofa, without
raising his eyes to watch the effect of his tirade. He was tired,
resigned in a truly marital spirit. But he felt hurt in the tender
spot of his secret weakness. If she would go on sulking in that
dreadful overcharged silence - why then she must. She was a master
in that domestic art. Mr Verloc flung himself heavily upon the
sofa, disregarding as usual the fate of his hat, which, as if
accustomed to take care of itself, made for a safe shelter under
the table.

He was tired. The last particle of his nervous force had been
expended in the wonders and agonies of this day full of surprising
failures coming at the end of a harassing month of scheming and
insomnia. He was tired. A man isn't made of stone. Hang
everything! Mr Verloc reposed characteristically, clad in his
outdoor garments. One side of his open overcoat was lying partly
on the ground. Mr Verloc wallowed on his back. But he longed for
a more perfect rest - for sleep - for a few hours of delicious
forgetfulness. That would come later. Provisionally he rested.
And he thought: "I wish she would give over this damned nonsense.
It's exasperating."

There must have been something imperfect in Mrs Verloc's sentiment
of regained freedom. Instead of taking the way of the door she
leaned back, with her shoulders against the tablet of the
mantelpiece, as a wayfarer rests against a fence. A tinge of
wildness in her aspect was derived from the black veil hanging like
a rag against her cheek, and from the fixity of her black gaze
where the light of the room was absorbed and lost without the trace
of a single gleam. This woman, capable of a bargain the mere
suspicion of which would have been infinitely shocking to Mr
Verloc's idea of love, remained irresolute, as if scrupulously
aware of something wanting on her part for the formal closing of
the transaction.

On the sofa Mr Verloc wriggled his shoulders into perfect comfort,
and from the fulness of his heart emitted a wish which was
certainly as pious as anything likely to come from such a source.

"I wish to goodness," he growled huskily, "I had never seen
Greenwich Park or anything belonging to it."

The veiled sound filled the small room with its moderate volume,
well adapted to the modest nature of the wish. The waves of air of
the proper length, propagated in accordance with correct
mathematical formulas, flowed around all the inanimate things in
the room, lapped against Mrs Verloc's head as if it had been a head
of stone. And incredible as it may appear, the eyes of Mrs Verloc
seemed to grow still larger. The audible wish of Mr Verloc's
overflowing heart flowed into an empty place in his wife's memory.
Greenwich Park. A park! That's where the boy was killed. A park
- smashed branches, torn leaves, gravel, bits of brotherly flesh
and bone, all spouting up together in the manner of a firework.
She remembered now what she had heard, and she remembered it
pictorially. They had to gather him up with the shovel. Trembling
all over with irrepressible shudders, she saw before her the very
implement with its ghastly load scraped up from the ground. Mrs
Verloc closed her eyes desperately, throwing upon that vision the
night of her eyelids, where after a rainlike fall of mangled limbs
the decapitated head of Stevie lingered suspended alone, and fading
out slowly like the last star of a pyrotechnic display. Mrs Verloc
opened her eyes.

Her face was no longer stony. Anybody could have noted the subtle
change on her features, in the stare of her eyes, giving her a new
and startling expression; an expression seldom observed by
competent persons under the conditions of leisure and security
demanded for thorough analysis, but whose meaning could not be
mistaken at a glance. Mrs Verloc's doubts as to the end of the
bargain no longer existed; her wits, no longer disconnected, were
working under the control of her will. But Mr Verloc observed
nothing. He was reposing in that pathetic condition of optimism
induced by excess of fatigue. He did not want any more trouble -
with his wife too - of all people in the world. He had been
unanswerable in his vindication. He was loved for himself. The
present phase of her silence he interpreted favourably. This was
the time to make it up with her. The silence had lasted long
enough. He broke it by calling to her in an undertone.

"Winnie."

"Yes," answered obediently Mrs Verloc the free woman. She
commanded her wits now, her vocal organs; she felt herself to be in
an almost preternaturally perfect control of every fibre of her
body. It was all her own, because the bargain was at an end. She
was clear sighted. She had become cunning. She chose to answer
him so readily for a purpose. She did not wish that man to change
his position on the sofa which was very suitable to the
circumstances. She succeeded. The man did not stir. But after
answering him she remained leaning negligently against the
mantelpiece in the attitude of a resting wayfarer. She was
unhurried. Her brow was smooth. The head and shoulders of Mr
Verloc were hidden from her by the high side of the sofa. She kept
her eyes fixed on his feet.

She remained thus mysteriously still and suddenly collected till Mr
Verloc was heard with an accent of marital authority, and moving
slightly to make room for her to sit on the edge of the sofa.

"Come here," he said in a peculiar tone, which might have been the
tone of brutality, but, was intimately known to Mrs Verloc as the
note of wooing.

She started forward at once, as if she were still a loyal woman
bound to that man by an unbroken contract. Her right hand skimmed
slightly the end of the table, and when she had passed on towards
the sofa the carving knife had vanished without the slightest sound
from the side of the dish. Mr Verloc heard the creaky plank in the
floor, and was content. He waited. Mrs Verloc was coming. As if
the homeless soul of Stevie had flown for shelter straight to the
breast of his sister, guardian and protector, the resemblance of
her face with that of her brother grew at every step, even to the
droop of the lower lip, even to the slight divergence of the eyes.
But Mr Verloc did not see that. He was lying on his back and
staring upwards. He saw partly on the ceiling and partly on the
wall the moving shadow of an arm with a clenched hand holding a
carving knife. It flickered up and down. It's movements were
leisurely. They were leisurely enough for Mr Verloc to recognise
the limb and the weapon.

They were leisurely enough for him to take in the full meaning of
the portent, and to taste the flavour of death rising in his gorge.
His wife had gone raving mad - murdering mad. They were leisurely
enough for the first paralysing effect of this discovery to pass
away before a resolute determination to come out victorious from
the ghastly struggle with that armed lunatic. They were leisurely
enough for Mr Verloc to elaborate a plan of defence involving a
dash behind the table, and the felling of the woman to the ground
with a heavy wooden chair. But they were not leisurely enough to
allow Mr Verloc the time to move either hand or foot. The knife
was already planted in his breast. It met no resistance on its
way. Hazard has such accuracies. Into that plunging blow,
delivered over the side of the couch, Mrs Verloc had put all the
inheritance of her immemorial and obscure descent, the simple
ferocity of the age of caverns, and the unbalanced nervous fury of
the age of bar-rooms. Mr Verloc, the Secret Agent, turning
slightly on his side with the force of the blow, expired without
stirring a limb, in the muttered sound of the word "Don't" by way
of protest.

Mrs Verloc had let go the knife, and her extraordinary resemblance
to her late brother had faded, had become very ordinary now. She
drew a deep breath, the first easy breath since Chief Inspector
Heat had exhibited to her the labelled piece of Stevie's overcoat.
She leaned forward on her folded arms over the side of the sofa.
She adopted that easy attitude not in order to watch or gloat over
the body of Mr Verloc, but because of the undulatory and swinging
movements of the parlour, which for some time behaved as though it
were at sea in a tempest. She was giddy but calm. She had become
a free woman with a perfection of freedom which left her nothing to
desire and absolutely nothing to do, since Stevie's urgent claim on
her devotion no longer existed. Mrs Verloc, who thought in images,
was not troubled now by visions, because she did not think at all.
And she did not move. She was a woman enjoying her complete
irresponsibility and endless leisure, almost in the manner of a
corpse. She did not move, she did not think. Neither did the
mortal envelope of the late Mr Verloc reposing on the sofa. Except
for the fact that Mrs Verloc breathed these two would have been
perfect in accord: that accord of prudent reserve without
superfluous words, and sparing of signs, which had been the
foundation of their respectable home life. For it had been
respectable, covering by a decent reticence the problems that may
arise in the practice of a secret profession and the commerce of
shady wares. To the last its decorum had remained undisturbed by
unseemly shrieks and other misplaced sincerities of conduct. And
after the striking of the blow, this respectability was continued
in immobility and silence.

Nothing moved in the parlour till Mrs Verloc raised her head slowly
and looked at the clock with inquiring mistrust. She had become
aware of a ticking sound in the room. It grew upon her ear, while
she remembered clearly that the clock on the wall was silent, had
no audible tick. What did it mean by beginning to tick so loudly
all of a sudden? Its face indicated ten minutes to nine. Mrs
Verloc cared nothing for time, and the ticking went on. She
concluded it could not be the clock, and her sullen gaze moved
along the walls, wavered, and became vague, while she strained her
hearing to locate the sound. Tic, tic, tic.

After listening for some time Mrs Verloc lowered her gaze
deliberately on her husband's body. It's attitude of repose was so
home-like and familiar that she could do so without feeling
embarrassed by any pronounced novelty in the phenomena of her home
life. Mr Verloc was taking his habitual ease. He looked
comfortable.

By the position of the body the face of Mr Verloc was not visible
to Mrs Verloc, his widow. Her fine, sleepy eyes, travelling
downward on the track of the sound, became contemplative on meeting
a flat object of bone which protruded a little beyond the edge of
the sofa. It was the handle of the domestic carving knife with
nothing strange about it but its position at right angles to Mr
Verloc's waistcoat and the fact that something dripped from it.
Dark drops fell on the floorcloth one after another, with a sound
of ticking growing fast and furious like the pulse of an insane
clock. At its highest speed this ticking changed into a continuous
sound of trickling. Mrs Verloc watched that transformation with
shadows of anxiety coming and going on her face. It was a trickle,
dark, swift, thin. . . . Blood!

At this unforeseen circumstance Mrs Verloc abandoned her pose of
idleness and irresponsibility.

With a sudden snatch at her skirts and a faint shriek she ran to
the door, as if the trickle had been the first sign of a destroying
flood. Finding the table in her way she gave it a push with both
hands as though it had been alive, with such force that it went for
some distance on its four legs, making a loud, scraping racket,
whilst the big dish with the joint crashed heavily on the floor.

Then all became still. Mrs Verloc on reaching the door had
stopped. A round hat disclosed in the middle of the floor by the
moving of the table rocked slightly on its crown in the wind of her
flight. _

Read next: CHAPTER XII

Read previous: CHAPTER X

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