prompt:
Chapter: Mr Verloc returning from the Continent at the end of ten days, brought
back a mind evidently unrefreshed by the wonders of foreign travel and a
countenance unlighted by the joys of home-coming.  He entered in the
clatter of the shop bell with an air of sombre and vexed exhaustion.  His
bag in hand, his head lowered, he strode straight behind the counter, and
let himself fall into the chair, as though he had tramped all the way
from Dover.  It was early morning.  Stevie, dusting various objects
displayed in the front windows, turned to gape at him with reverence and
awe.

"Here!" said Mr Verloc, giving a slight kick to the gladstone bag on the
floor; and Stevie flung himself upon it, seized it, bore it off with
triumphant devotion.  He was so prompt that Mr Verloc was distinctly
surprised.

Already at the clatter of the shop bell Mrs Neale, blackleading the
parlour grate, had looked through the door, and rising from her knees had
gone, aproned, and grimy with everlasting toil, to tell Mrs Verloc in the
kitchen that "there was the master come back."

Winnie came no farther than the inner shop door.

"You'll want some breakfast," she said from a distance.

Mr Verloc moved his hands slightly, as if overcome by an impossible
suggestion.  But once enticed into the parlour he did not reject the food
set before him.  He ate as if in a public place, his hat pushed off his
forehead, the skirts of his heavy overcoat hanging in a triangle on each
side of the chair.  And across the length of the table covered with brown
oil-cloth Winnie, his wife, talked evenly at him the wifely talk, as
artfully adapted, no doubt, to the circumstances of this return as the
talk of Penelope to the return of the wandering Odysseus.  Mrs Verloc,
however, had done no weaving during her husband's absence.  But she had
had all the upstairs room cleaned thoroughly, had sold some wares, had
seen Mr Michaelis several times.  He had told her the last time that he
was going away to live in a cottage in the country, somewhere on the
London, Chatham, and Dover line.  Karl Yundt had come too, once, led
under the arm by that "wicked old housekeeper of his."  He was "a
disgusting old man."  Of Comrade Ossipon, whom she had received curtly,
entrenched behind the counter with a stony face and a faraway gaze, she
said nothing, her mental reference to the robust anarchist being marked
by a short pause, with the faintest possible blush.  And bringing in her
brother Stevie as soon as she could into the current of domestic events,
she mentioned that the boy had moped a good deal.

"It's all along of mother leaving us like this."

Mr Verloc neither said, "Damn!" nor yet "Stevie be hanged!"  And Mrs
Verloc, not let into the secret of his thoughts, failed to appreciate the
generosity of this restraint.

"It isn't that he doesn't work as well as ever," she continued.  "He's
been making himself very useful.  You'd think he couldn't do enough for
us."

Mr Verloc directed a casual and somnolent glance at Stevie, who sat on
his right, delicate, pale-faced, his rosy mouth open vacantly.  It was
not a critical glance.  It had no intention.  And if Mr Verloc thought
for a moment that his wife's brother looked uncommonly useless, it was
only a dull and fleeting thought, devoid of that force and durability
which enables sometimes a thought to move the world.  Leaning back, Mr
Verloc uncovered his head.  Before his extended arm could put down the
hat Stevie pounced upon it, and bore it off reverently into the kitchen.
And again Mr Verloc was surprised.

"You could do anything with that boy, Adolf," Mrs Verloc said, with her
best air of inflexible calmness.  "He would go through fire for you.
He--"

She paused attentive, her ear turned towards the door of the kitchen.

There Mrs Neale was scrubbing the floor.  At Stevie's appearance she
groaned lamentably, having observed that he could be induced easily to
bestow for the benefit of her infant children the shilling his sister
Winnie presented him with from time to time.  On all fours amongst the
puddles, wet and begrimed, like a sort of amphibious and domestic animal
living in ash-bins and dirty water, she uttered the usual exordium: "It's
all very well for you, kept doing nothing like a gentleman."  And she
followed it with the everlasting plaint of the poor, pathetically
mendacious, miserably authenticated by the horrible breath of cheap rum
and soap-suds.  She scrubbed hard, snuffling all the time, and talking
volubly.  And she was sincere.  And on each side of her thin red nose her
bleared, misty eyes swam in tears, because she felt really the want of
some sort of stimulant in the morning.

In the parlour Mrs Verloc observed, with knowledge:

"There's Mrs Neale at it again with her harrowing tales about her little
children.  They can't be all so little as she makes them out.  Some of
them must be big enough by now to try to do something for themselves.  It
only makes Stevie angry."

These words were confirmed by a thud as of a fist striking the kitchen
table.  In the normal evolution of his sympathy Stevie had become angry
on discovering that he had no shilling in his pocket.  In his inability
to relieve at once Mrs Neale's "little 'uns'" privations, he felt that
somebody should be made to suffer for it.  Mrs Verloc rose, and went into
the kitchen to "stop that nonsense."  And she did it firmly but gently.
She was well aware that directly Mrs Neale received her money she went
round the corner to drink ardent spirits in a mean and musty
public-house--the unavoidable station on the _via dolorosa_ of her life.
Mrs Verloc's comment upon this practice had an unexpected profundity, as
coming from a person disinclined to look under the surface of things.
"Of course, what is she to do to keep up?  If I were like Mrs Neale I
expect I wouldn't act any different."

In the afternoon of the same day, as Mr Verloc, coming with a start out
of the last of a long series of dozes before the parlour fire, declared
his intention of going out for a walk, Winnie said from the shop:

"I wish you would take that boy out with you, Adolf."

For the third time that day Mr Verloc was surprised.  He stared stupidly
at his wife.  She continued in her steady manner.  The boy, whenever he
was not doing anything, moped in the house.  It made her uneasy; it made
her nervous, she confessed.  And that from the calm Winnie sounded like
exaggeration.  But, in truth, Stevie moped in the striking fashion of an
unhappy domestic animal.  He would go up on the dark landing, to sit on
the floor at the foot of the tall clock, with his knees drawn up and his
head in his hands.  To come upon his pallid face, with its big eyes
gleaming in the dusk, was discomposing; to think of him up there was
uncomfortable.

Mr Verloc got used to the startling novelty of the idea.  He was fond of
his wife as a man should be--that is, generously.  But a weighty
objection presented itself to his mind, and he formulated it.

"He'll lose sight of me perhaps, and get lost in the street," he said.

Mrs Verloc shook her head competently.

"He won't.  You don't know him.  That boy just worships you.  But if you
should miss him--"

Mrs Verloc paused for a moment, but only for a moment.

"You just go on, and have your walk out.  Don't worry.  He'll be all
right.  He's sure to turn up safe here before very long."

This optimism procured for Mr Verloc his fourth surprise of the day.

"Is he?" he grunted doubtfully.  But perhaps his brother-in-law was not
such an idiot as he looked.  His wife would know best.  He turned away
his heavy eyes, saying huskily: "Well, let him come along, then," and
relapsed into the clutches of black care, that perhaps prefers to sit
behind a horseman, but knows also how to tread close on the heels of
people not sufficiently well off to keep horses--like Mr Verloc, for
instance.

Winnie, at the shop door, did not see this fatal attendant upon Mr
Verloc's walks.  She watched the two figures down the squalid street, one
tall and burly, the other slight and short, with a thin neck, and the
peaked shoulders raised slightly under the large semi-transparent ears.
The material of their overcoats was the same, their hats were black and
round in shape.  Inspired by the similarity of wearing apparel, Mrs
Verloc gave rein to her fancy.

"Might be father and son," she said to herself.  She thought also that Mr
Verloc was as much of a father as poor Stevie ever had in his life.  She
was aware also that it was her work.  And with peaceful pride she
congratulated herself on a certain resolution she had taken a few years
before.  It had cost her some effort, and even a few tears.

She congratulated herself still more on observing in the course of days
that Mr Verloc seemed to be taking kindly to Stevie's companionship.
Now, when ready to go out for his walk, Mr Verloc called aloud to the
boy, in the spirit, no doubt, in which a man invites the attendance of
the household dog, though, of course, in a different manner.  In the
house Mr Verloc could be detected staring curiously at Stevie a good
deal.  His own demeanour had changed.  Taciturn still, he was not so
listless.  Mrs Verloc thought that he was rather jumpy at times.  It
might have been regarded as an improvement.  As to Stevie, he moped no
longer at the foot of the clock, but muttered to himself in corners
instead in a threatening tone.  When asked "What is it you're saying,
Stevie?" he merely opened his mouth, and squinted at his sister.  At odd
times he clenched his fists without apparent cause, and when discovered
in solitude would be scowling at the wall, with the sheet of paper and
the pencil given him for drawing circles lying blank and idle on the
kitchen table.  This was a change, but it was no improvement.  Mrs Verloc
including all these vagaries under the general definition of excitement,
began to fear that Stevie was hearing more than was good for him of her
husband's conversations with his friends.  During his "walks" Mr Verloc,
of course, met and conversed with various persons.  It could hardly be
otherwise.  His walks were an integral part of his outdoor activities,
which his wife had never looked deeply into.  Mrs Verloc felt that the
position was delicate, but she faced it with the same impenetrable
calmness which impressed and even astonished the customers of the shop
and made the other visitors keep their distance a little wonderingly.
No!  She feared that there were things not good for Stevie to hear of,
she told her husband.  It only excited the poor boy, because he could not
help them being so.  Nobody could.

It was in the shop.  Mr Verloc made no comment.  He made no retort, and
yet the retort was obvious.  But he refrained from pointing out to his
wife that the idea of making Stevie the companion of his walks was her
own, and nobody else's.  At that moment, to an impartial observer, Mr
Verloc would have appeared more than human in his magnanimity.  He took
down a small cardboard box from a shelf, peeped in to see that the
contents were all right, and put it down gently on the counter.  Not till
that was done did he break the silence, to the effect that most likely
Stevie would profit greatly by being sent out of town for a while; only
he supposed his wife could not get on without him.

"Could not get on without him!" repeated Mrs Verloc slowly.  "I couldn't
get on without him if it were for his good!  The idea!  Of course, I can
get on without him.  But there's nowhere for him to go."

Mr Verloc got out some brown paper and a ball of string; and meanwhile he
muttered that Michaelis was living in a little cottage in the country.
Michaelis wouldn't mind giving Stevie a room to sleep in.  There were no
visitors and no talk there.  Michaelis was writing a book.

Mrs Verloc declared her affection for Michaelis; mentioned her abhorrence
of Karl Yundt, "nasty old man"; and of Ossipon she said nothing.  As to
Stevie, he could be no other than very pleased.  Mr Michaelis was always
so nice and kind to him.  He seemed to like the boy.  Well, the boy was a
good boy.

"You too seem to have grown quite fond of him of late," she added, after
a pause, with her inflexible assurance.

Mr Verloc tying up the cardboard box into a parcel for the post, broke
the string by an injudicious jerk, and muttered several swear words
confidentially to himself.  Then raising his tone to the usual husky
mutter, he announced his willingness to take Stevie into the country
himself, and leave him all safe with Michaelis.

He carried out this scheme on the very next day.  Stevie offered no
objection.  He seemed rather eager, in a bewildered sort of way.  He
turned his candid gaze inquisitively to Mr Verloc's heavy countenance at
frequent intervals, especially when his sister was not looking at him.
His expression was proud, apprehensive, and concentrated, like that of a
small child entrusted for the first time with a box of matches and the
permission to strike a light.  But Mrs Verloc, gratified by her brother's
docility, recommended him not to dirty his clothes unduly in the country.
At this Stevie gave his sister, guardian and protector a look, which for
the first time in his life seemed to lack the quality of perfect
childlike trustfulness.  It was haughtily gloomy.  Mrs Verloc smiled.

"Goodness me!  You needn't be offended.  You know you do get yourself
very untidy when you get a chance, Stevie."

Mr Verloc was already gone some way down the street.

Thus in consequence of her mother's heroic proceedings, and of her
brother's absence on this villegiature, Mrs Verloc found herself oftener
than usual all alone not only in the shop, but in the house.  For Mr
Verloc had to take his walks.  She was alone longer than usual on the day
of the attempted bomb outrage in Greenwich Park, because Mr Verloc went
out very early that morning and did not come back till nearly dusk.  She
did not mind being alone.  She had no desire to go out.  The weather was
too bad, and the shop was cosier than the streets.  Sitting behind the
counter with some sewing, she did not raise her eyes from her work when
Mr Verloc entered in the aggressive clatter of the bell.  She had
recognised his step on the pavement outside.

She did not raise her eyes, but as Mr Verloc, silent, and with his hat
rammed down upon his forehead, made straight for the parlour door, she
said serenely:

"What a wretched day.  You've been perhaps to see Stevie?"

"No!  I haven't," said Mr Verloc softly, and slammed the glazed parlour
door behind him with unexpected energy.

For some time Mrs Verloc remained quiescent, with her work dropped in her
lap, before she put it away under the counter and got up to light the
gas.  This done, she went into the parlour on her way to the kitchen.  Mr
Verloc would want his tea presently.  Confident of the power of her
charms, Winnie did not expect from her husband in the daily intercourse
of their married life a ceremonious amenity of address and courtliness of
manner; vain and antiquated forms at best, probably never very exactly
observed, discarded nowadays even in the highest spheres, and always
foreign to the standards of her class.  She did not look for courtesies
from him.  But he was a good husband, and she had a loyal respect for his
rights.

Mrs Verloc would have gone through the parlour and on to her domestic
duties in the kitchen with the perfect serenity of a woman sure of the
power of her charms.  But a slight, very slight, and rapid rattling sound
grew upon her hearing.  Bizarre and incomprehensible, it arrested Mrs
Verloc's attention.  Then as its character became plain to the ear she
stopped short, amazed and concerned.  Striking a match on the box she
held in her hand, she turned on and lighted, above the parlour table, one
of the two gas-burners, which, being defective, first whistled as if
astonished, and then went on purring comfortably like a cat.

Mr Verloc, against his usual practice, had thrown off his overcoat.  It
was lying on the sofa.  His hat, which he must also have thrown off,
rested overturned under the edge of the sofa.  He had dragged a chair in
front of the fireplace, and his feet planted inside the fender, his head
held between his hands, he was hanging low over the glowing grate.  His
teeth rattled with an ungovernable violence, causing his whole enormous
back to tremble at the same rate.  Mrs Verloc was startled.

"You've been getting wet," she said.

"Not very," Mr Verloc managed to falter out, in a profound shudder.  By a
great effort he suppressed the rattling of his teeth.

"I'll have you laid up on my hands," she said, with genuine uneasiness.

"I don't think so," remarked Mr Verloc, snuffling huskily.

He had certainly contrived somehow to catch an abominable cold between
seven in the morning and five in the afternoon.  Mrs Verloc looked at his
bowed back.

"Where have you been to-day?" she asked.

"Nowhere," answered Mr Verloc in a low, choked nasal tone.  His attitude
suggested aggrieved sulks or a severe headache.  The unsufficiency and
uncandidness of his answer became painfully apparent in the dead silence
of the room.  He snuffled apologetically, and added: "I've been to the
bank."

Mrs Verloc became attentive.

"You have!" she said dispassionately.  "What for?"

Mr Verloc mumbled, with his nose over the grate, and with marked
unwillingness.

"Draw the money out!"

"What do you mean?  All of it?"

"Yes.  All of it."

Mrs Verloc spread out with care the scanty table-cloth, got two knives
and two forks out of the table drawer, and suddenly stopped in her
methodical proceedings.

"What did you do that for?"

"May want it soon," snuffled vaguely Mr Verloc, who was coming to the end
of his calculated indiscretions.

"I don't know what you mean," remarked his wife in a tone perfectly
casual, but standing stock still between the table and the cupboard.

"You know you can trust me," Mr Verloc remarked to the grate, with hoarse
feeling.

Mrs Verloc turned slowly towards the cupboard, saying with deliberation:

"Oh yes.  I can trust you."

And she went on with her methodical proceedings.  She laid two plates,
got the bread, the butter, going to and fro quietly between the table and
the cupboard in the peace and silence of her home.  On the point of
taking out the jam, she reflected practically: "He will be feeling
hungry, having been away all day," and she returned to the cupboard once
more to get the cold beef.  She set it under the purring gas-jet, and
with a passing glance at her motionless husband hugging the fire, she
went (down two steps) into the kitchen.  It was only when coming back,
carving knife and fork in hand, that she spoke again.

"If I hadn't trusted you I wouldn't have married you."

Bowed under the overmantel, Mr Verloc, holding his head in both hands,
seemed to have gone to sleep.  Winnie made the tea, and called out in an
undertone:

"Adolf."

Mr Verloc got up at once, and staggered a little before he sat down at
the table.  His wife examining the sharp edge of the carving knife,
placed it on the dish, and called his attention to the cold beef.  He
remained insensible to the suggestion, with his chin on his breast.

"You should feed your cold," Mrs Verloc said dogmatically.

He looked up, and shook his head.  His eyes were bloodshot and his face
red.  His fingers had ruffled his hair into a dissipated untidiness.
Altogether he had a disreputable aspect, expressive of the discomfort,
the irritation and the gloom following a heavy debauch.  But Mr Verloc
was not a debauched man.  In his conduct he was respectable.  His
appearance might have been the effect of a feverish cold.  He drank three
cups of tea, but abstained from food entirely.  He recoiled from it with
sombre aversion when urged by Mrs Verloc, who said at last:

"Aren't your feet wet?  You had better put on your slippers.  You aren't
going out any more this evening."

Mr Verloc intimated by morose grunts and signs that his feet were not
wet, and that anyhow he did not care.  The proposal as to slippers was
disregarded as beneath his notice.  But the question of going out in the
evening received an unexpected development.  It was not of going out in
the evening that Mr Verloc was thinking.  His thoughts embraced a vaster
scheme.  From moody and incomplete phrases it became apparent that Mr
Verloc had been considering the expediency of emigrating.  It was not
very clear whether he had in his mind France or California.

The utter unexpectedness, improbability, and inconceivableness of such an
event robbed this vague declaration of all its effect.  Mrs Verloc, as
placidly as if her husband had been threatening her with the end of the
world, said:

"The idea!"

Mr Verloc declared himself sick and tired of everything, and besides--She
interrupted him.

"You've a bad cold."

It was indeed obvious that Mr Verloc was not in his usual state,
physically and even mentally.  A sombre irresolution held him silent for
a while.  Then he murmured a few ominous generalities on the theme of
necessity.

"Will have to," repeated Winnie, sitting calmly back, with folded arms,
opposite her husband.  "I should like to know who's to make you.  You
ain't a slave.  No one need be a slave in this country--and don't you
make yourself one."  She paused, and with invincible and steady candour.
"The business isn't so bad," she went on.  "You've a comfortable home."

She glanced all round the parlour, from the corner cupboard to the good
fire in the grate.  Ensconced cosily behind the shop of doubtful wares,
with the mysteriously dim window, and its door suspiciously ajar in the
obscure and narrow street, it was in all essentials of domestic propriety
and domestic comfort a respectable home.  Her devoted affection missed
out of it her brother Stevie, now enjoying a damp villegiature in the
Kentish lanes under the care of Mr Michaelis.  She missed him poignantly,
with all the force of her protecting passion.  This was the boy's home
too--the roof, the cupboard, the stoked grate.  On this thought Mrs
Verloc rose, and walking to the other end of the table, said in the
fulness of her heart:

"And you are not tired of me."

Mr Verloc made no sound.  Winnie leaned on his shoulder from behind, and
pressed her lips to his forehead.  Thus she lingered.  Not a whisper
reached them from the outside world.

The sound of footsteps on the pavement died out in the discreet dimness
of the shop.  Only the gas-jet above the table went on purring equably in
the brooding silence of the parlour.

During the contact of that unexpected and lingering kiss Mr Verloc,
gripping with both hands the edges of his chair, preserved a hieratic
immobility.  When the pressure was removed he let go the chair, rose, and
went to stand before the fireplace.  He turned no longer his back to the
room.  With his features swollen and an air of being drugged, he followed
his wife's movements with his eyes.

Mrs Verloc went about serenely, clearing up the table.  Her tranquil
voice commented the idea thrown out in a reasonable and domestic tone.
It wouldn't stand examination.  She condemned it from every point of
view.  But her only real concern was Stevie's welfare.  He appeared to
her thought in that connection as sufficiently "peculiar" not to be taken
rashly abroad.  And that was all.  But talking round that vital point,
she approached absolute vehemence in her delivery.  Meanwhile, with
brusque movements, she arrayed herself in an apron for the washing up of
cups.  And as if excited by the sound of her uncontradicted voice, she
went so far as to say in a tone almost tart:

"If you go abroad you'll have to go without me."

"You know I wouldn't," said Mr Verloc huskily, and the unresonant voice
of his private life trembled with an enigmatical emotion.

Already Mrs Verloc was regretting her words.  They had sounded more
unkind than she meant them to be.  They had also the unwisdom of
unnecessary things.  In fact, she had not meant them at all.  It was a
sort of phrase that is suggested by the demon of perverse inspiration.
But she knew a way to make it as if it had not been.

She turned her head over her shoulder and gave that man planted heavily
in front of the fireplace a glance, half arch, half cruel, out of her
large eyes--a glance of which the Winnie of the Belgravian mansion days
would have been incapable, because of her respectability and her
ignorance.  But the man was her husband now, and she was no longer
ignorant.  She kept it on him for a whole second, with her grave face
motionless like a mask, while she said playfully:

"You couldn't.  You would miss me too much."

Mr Verloc started forward.

"Exactly," he said in a louder tone, throwing his arms out and making a
step towards her.  Something wild and doubtful in his expression made it
appear uncertain whether he meant to strangle or to embrace his wife.
But Mrs Verloc's attention was called away from that manifestation by the
clatter of the shop bell.

"Shop, Adolf.  You go."

He stopped, his arms came down slowly.

"You go," repeated Mrs Verloc.  "I've got my apron on."

Mr Verloc obeyed woodenly, stony-eyed, and like an automaton whose face
had been painted red.  And this resemblance to a mechanical figure went
so far that he had an automaton's absurd air of being aware of the
machinery inside of him.

He closed the parlour door, and Mrs Verloc moving briskly, carried the
tray into the kitchen.  She washed the cups and some other things before
she stopped in her work to listen.  No sound reached her.  The customer
was a long time in the shop.  It was a customer, because if he had not
been Mr Verloc would have taken him inside.  Undoing the strings of her
apron with a jerk, she threw it on a chair, and walked back to the
parlour slowly.

At that precise moment Mr Verloc entered from the shop.

He had gone in red.  He came out a strange papery white.  His face,
losing its drugged, feverish stupor, had in that short time acquired a
bewildered and harassed expression.  He walked straight to the sofa, and
stood looking down at his overcoat lying there, as though he were afraid
to touch it.

"What's the matter?" asked Mrs Verloc in a subdued voice.  Through the
door left ajar she could see that the customer was not gone yet.

"I find I'll have to go out this evening," said Mr Verloc.  He did not
attempt to pick up his outer garment.

Without a word Winnie made for the shop, and shutting the door after her,
walked in behind the counter.  She did not look overtly at the customer
till she had established herself comfortably on the chair.  But by that
time she had noted that he was tall and thin, and wore his moustaches
twisted up.  In fact, he gave the sharp points a twist just then.  His
long, bony face rose out of a turned-up collar.  He was a little
splashed, a little wet.  A dark man, with the ridge of the cheek-bone
well defined under the slightly hollow temple.  A complete stranger.  Not
a customer either.

Mrs Verloc looked at him placidly.

"You came over from the Continent?" she said after a time.

The long, thin stranger, without exactly looking at Mrs Verloc, answered
only by a faint and peculiar smile.

Mrs Verloc's steady, incurious gaze rested on him.

"You understand English, don't you?"

"Oh yes.  I understand English."

There was nothing foreign in his accent, except that he seemed in his
slow enunciation to be taking pains with it.  And Mrs Verloc, in her
varied experience, had come to the conclusion that some foreigners could
speak better English than the natives.  She said, looking at the door of
the parlour fixedly:

"You don't think perhaps of staying in England for good?"

The stranger gave her again a silent smile.  He had a kindly mouth and
probing eyes.  And he shook his head a little sadly, it seemed.

"My husband will see you through all right.  Meantime for a few days you
couldn't do better than take lodgings with Mr Giugliani.  Continental
Hotel it's called.  Private.  It's quiet.  My husband will take you
there."

"A good idea," said the thin, dark man, whose glance had hardened
suddenly.

"You knew Mr Verloc before--didn't you?  Perhaps in France?"

"I have heard of him," admitted the visitor in his slow, painstaking
tone, which yet had a certain curtness of intention.

There was a pause.  Then he spoke again, in a far less elaborate manner.

"Your husband has not gone out to wait for me in the street by chance?"

"In the street!" repeated Mrs Verloc, surprised.  "He couldn't.  There's
no other door to the house."

For a moment she sat impassive, then left her seat to go and peep through
the glazed door.  Suddenly she opened it, and disappeared into the
parlour.

Mr Verloc had done no more than put on his overcoat.  But why he should
remain afterwards leaning over the table propped up on his two arms as
though he were feeling giddy or sick, she could not understand.  "Adolf,"
she called out half aloud; and when he had raised himself:

"Do you know that man?" she asked rapidly.

"I've heard of him," whispered uneasily Mr Verloc, darting a wild glance
at the door.

Mrs Verloc's fine, incurious eyes lighted up with a flash of abhorrence.

"One of Karl Yundt's friends--beastly old man."

"No!  No!" protested Mr Verloc, busy fishing for his hat.  But when he
got it from under the sofa he held it as if he did not know the use of a
hat.

"Well--he's waiting for you," said Mrs Verloc at last.  "I say, Adolf, he
ain't one of them Embassy people you have been bothered with of late?"

"Bothered with Embassy people," repeated Mr Verloc, with a heavy start of
surprise and fear.  "Who's been talking to you of the Embassy people?"

"Yourself."

"I!  I!  Talked of the Embassy to you!"

Mr Verloc seemed scared and bewildered beyond measure.  His wife
explained:

"You've been talking a little in your sleep of late, Adolf."

"What--what did I say?  What do you know?"

"Nothing much.  It seemed mostly nonsense.  Enough to let me guess that
something worried you."

Mr Verloc rammed his hat on his head.  A crimson flood of anger ran over
his face.

"Nonsense--eh?  The Embassy people!  I would cut their hearts out one
after another.  But let them look out.  I've got a tongue in my head."

He fumed, pacing up and down between the table and the sofa, his open
overcoat catching against the angles.  The red flood of anger ebbed out,
and left his face all white, with quivering nostrils.  Mrs Verloc, for
the purposes of practical existence, put down these appearances to the
cold.

"Well," she said, "get rid of the man, whoever he is, as soon as you can,
and come back home to me.  You want looking after for a day or two."

Mr Verloc calmed down, and, with resolution imprinted on his pale face,
had already opened the door, when his wife called him back in a whisper:

"Adolf!  Adolf!"  He came back startled.  "What about that money you drew
out?" she asked.  "You've got it in your pocket?  Hadn't you better--"

Mr Verloc gazed stupidly into the palm of his wife's extended hand for
some time before he slapped his brow.

"Money!  Yes!  Yes!  I didn't know what you meant."

He drew out of his breast pocket a new pigskin pocket-book.  Mrs Verloc
received it without another word, and stood still till the bell,
clattering after Mr Verloc and Mr Verloc's visitor, had quieted down.
Only then she peeped in at the amount, drawing the notes out for the
purpose.  After this inspection she looked round thoughtfully, with an
air of mistrust in the silence and solitude of the house.  This abode of
her married life appeared to her as lonely and unsafe as though it had
been situated in the midst of a forest.  No receptacle she could think of
amongst the solid, heavy furniture seemed other but flimsy and
particularly tempting to her conception of a house-breaker.  It was an
ideal conception, endowed with sublime faculties and a miraculous
insight.  The till was not to be thought of.  It was the first spot a
thief would make for.  Mrs Verloc unfastening hastily a couple of hooks,
slipped the pocket-book under the bodice of her dress.  Having thus
disposed of her husband's capital, she was rather glad to hear the
clatter of the door bell, announcing an arrival.  Assuming the fixed,
unabashed stare and the stony expression reserved for the casual
customer, she walked in behind the counter.

A man standing in the middle of the shop was inspecting it with a swift,
cool, all-round glance.  His eyes ran over the walls, took in the
ceiling, noted the floor--all in a moment.  The points of a long fair
moustache fell below the line of the jaw.  He smiled the smile of an old
if distant acquaintance, and Mrs Verloc remembered having seen him
before.  Not a customer.  She softened her "customer stare" to mere
indifference, and faced him across the counter.

He approached, on his side, confidentially, but not too markedly so.

"Husband at home, Mrs Verloc?" he asked in an easy, full tone.

"No.  He's gone out."

"I am sorry for that.  I've called to get from him a little private
information."

This was the exact truth.  Chief Inspector Heat had been all the way
home, and had even gone so far as to think of getting into his slippers,
since practically he was, he told himself, chucked out of that case.  He
indulged in some scornful and in a few angry thoughts, and found the
occupation so unsatisfactory that he resolved to seek relief out of
doors.  Nothing prevented him paying a friendly call to Mr Verloc,
casually as it were.  It was in the character of a private citizen that
walking out privately he made use of his customary conveyances.  Their
general direction was towards Mr Verloc's home.  Chief Inspector Heat
respected his own private character so consistently that he took especial
pains to avoid all the police constables on point and patrol duty in the
vicinity of Brett Street.  This precaution was much more necessary for a
man of his standing than for an obscure Assistant Commissioner.  Private
Citizen Heat entered the street, manoeuvring in a way which in a member
of the criminal classes would have been stigmatised as slinking.  The
piece of cloth picked up in Greenwich was in his pocket.  Not that he had
the slightest intention of producing it in his private capacity.  On the
contrary, he wanted to know just what Mr Verloc would be disposed to say
voluntarily.  He hoped Mr Verloc's talk would be of a nature to
incriminate Michaelis.  It was a conscientiously professional hope in the
main, but not without its moral value.  For Chief Inspector Heat was a
servant of justice.  Finding Mr Verloc from home, he felt disappointed.

"I would wait for him a little if I were sure he wouldn't be long," he
said.

Mrs Verloc volunteered no assurance of any kind.

"The information I need is quite private," he repeated.  "You understand
what I mean?  I wonder if you could give me a notion where he's gone to?"

Mrs Verloc shook her head.

"Can't say."

She turned away to range some boxes on the shelves behind the counter.
Chief Inspector Heat looked at her thoughtfully for a time.

"I suppose you know who I am?" he said.

Mrs Verloc glanced over her shoulder.  Chief Inspector Heat was amazed at
her coolness.

"Come!  You know I am in the police," he said sharply.

"I don't trouble my head much about it," Mrs Verloc remarked, returning
to the ranging of her boxes.

"My name is Heat.  Chief Inspector Heat of the Special Crimes section."

Mrs Verloc adjusted nicely in its place a small cardboard box, and
turning round, faced him again, heavy-eyed, with idle hands hanging down.
A silence reigned for a time.

"So your husband went out a quarter of an hour ago!  And he didn't say
when he would be back?"

"He didn't go out alone," Mrs Verloc let fall negligently.

"A friend?"

Mrs Verloc touched the back of her hair.  It was in perfect order.

"A stranger who called."

"I see.  What sort of man was that stranger?  Would you mind telling me?"

Mrs Verloc did not mind.  And when Chief Inspector Heat heard of a man
dark, thin, with a long face and turned up moustaches, he gave signs of
perturbation, and exclaimed:

"Dash me if I didn't think so!  He hasn't lost any time."

He was intensely disgusted in the secrecy of his heart at the unofficial
conduct of his immediate chief.  But he was not quixotic.  He lost all
desire to await Mr Verloc's return.  What they had gone out for he did
not know, but he imagined it possible that they would return together.
The case is not followed properly, it's being tampered with, he thought
bitterly.

"I am afraid I haven't time to wait for your husband," he said.

Mrs Verloc received this declaration listlessly.  Her detachment had
impressed Chief Inspector Heat all along.  At this precise moment it
whetted his curiosity.  Chief Inspector Heat hung in the wind, swayed by
his passions like the most private of citizens.

"I think," he said, looking at her steadily, "that you could give me a
pretty good notion of what's going on if you liked."

Forcing her fine, inert eyes to return his gaze, Mrs Verloc murmured:

"Going on!  What _is_ going on?"

"Why, the affair I came to talk about a little with your husband."

That day Mrs Verloc had glanced at a morning paper as usual.  But she had
not stirred out of doors.  The newsboys never invaded Brett Street.  It
was not a street for their business.  And the echo of their cries
drifting along the populous thoroughfares, expired between the dirty
brick walls without reaching the threshold of the shop.  Her husband had
not brought an evening paper home.  At any rate she had not seen it.  Mrs
Verloc knew nothing whatever of any affair.  And she said so, with a
genuine note of wonder in her quiet voice.

Chief Inspector Heat did not believe for a moment in so much ignorance.
Curtly, without amiability, he stated the bare fact.

Mrs Verloc turned away her eyes.

"I call it silly," she pronounced slowly.  She paused.  "We ain't
downtrodden slaves here."

The Chief Inspector waited watchfully.  Nothing more came.

"And your husband didn't mention anything to you when he came home?"

Mrs Verloc simply turned her face from right to left in sign of negation.
A languid, baffling silence reigned in the shop.  Chief Inspector Heat
felt provoked beyond endurance.

"There was another small matter," he began in a detached tone, "which I
wanted to speak to your husband about.  There came into our hands
a--a--what we believe is--a stolen overcoat."

Mrs Verloc, with her mind specially aware of thieves that evening,
touched lightly the bosom of her dress.

"We have lost no overcoat," she said calmly.

"That's funny," continued Private Citizen Heat.  "I see you keep a lot of
marking ink here--"

He took up a small bottle, and looked at it against the gas-jet in the
middle of the shop.

"Purple--isn't it?" he remarked, setting it down again.  "As I said, it's
strange.  Because the overcoat has got a label sewn on the inside with
your address written in marking ink."

Mrs Verloc leaned over the counter with a low exclamation.

"That's my brother's, then."

"Where's your brother?  Can I see him?" asked the Chief Inspector
briskly.  Mrs Verloc leaned a little more over the counter.

"No.  He isn't here.  I wrote that label myself."

"Where's your brother now?"

"He's been away living with--a friend--in the country."

"The overcoat comes from the country.  And what's the name of the
friend?"

"Michaelis," confessed Mrs Verloc in an awed whisper.

The Chief Inspector let out a whistle.  His eyes snapped.

"Just so.  Capital.  And your brother now, what's he like--a sturdy,
darkish chap--eh?"

"Oh no," exclaimed Mrs Verloc fervently.  "That must be the thief.
Stevie's slight and fair."

"Good," said the Chief Inspector in an approving tone.  And while Mrs
Verloc, wavering between alarm and wonder, stared at him, he sought for
information.  Why have the address sewn like this inside the coat?  And
he heard that the mangled remains he had inspected that morning with
extreme repugnance were those of a youth, nervous, absent-minded,
peculiar, and also that the woman who was speaking to him had had the
charge of that boy since he was a baby.

"Easily excitable?" he suggested.

"Oh yes.  He is.  But how did he come to lose his coat--"

Chief Inspector Heat suddenly pulled out a pink newspaper he had bought
less than half-an-hour ago.  He was interested in horses.  Forced by his
calling into an attitude of doubt and suspicion towards his
fellow-citizens, Chief Inspector Heat relieved the instinct of credulity
implanted in the human breast by putting unbounded faith in the sporting
prophets of that particular evening publication.  Dropping the extra
special on to the counter, he plunged his hand again into his pocket, and
pulling out the piece of cloth fate had presented him with out of a heap
of things that seemed to have been collected in shambles and rag shops,
he offered it to Mrs Verloc for inspection.

"I suppose you recognise this?"

She took it mechanically in both her hands.  Her eyes seemed to grow
bigger as she looked.

"Yes," she whispered, then raised her head, and staggered backward a
little.

"Whatever for is it torn out like this?"

The Chief Inspector snatched across the counter the cloth out of her
hands, and she sat heavily on the chair.  He thought: identification's
perfect.  And in that moment he had a glimpse into the whole amazing
truth.  Verloc was the "other man."

"Mrs Verloc," he said, "it strikes me that you know more of this bomb
affair than even you yourself are aware of."

Mrs Verloc sat still, amazed, lost in boundless astonishment.  What was
the connection?  And she became so rigid all over that she was not able
to turn her head at the clatter of the bell, which caused the private
investigator Heat to spin round on his heel.  Mr Verloc had shut the
door, and for a moment the two men looked at each other.

Mr Verloc, without looking at his wife, walked up to the Chief Inspector,
who was relieved to see him return alone.

"You here!" muttered Mr Verloc heavily.  "Who are you after?"

"No one," said Chief Inspector Heat in a low tone.  "Look here, I would
like a word or two with you."

Mr Verloc, still pale, had brought an air of resolution with him.  Still
he didn't look at his wife.  He said:

"Come in here, then."  And he led the way into the parlour.

The door was hardly shut when Mrs Verloc, jumping up from the chair, ran
to it as if to fling it open, but instead of doing so fell on her knees,
with her ear to the keyhole.  The two men must have stopped directly they
were through, because she heard plainly the Chief Inspector's voice,
though she could not see his finger pressed against her husband's breast
emphatically.

"You are the other man, Verloc.  Two men were seen entering the park."

And the voice of Mr Verloc said:

"Well, take me now.  What's to prevent you?  You have the right."

"Oh no!  I know too well who you have been giving yourself away to.
He'll have to manage this little affair all by himself.  But don't you
make a mistake, it's I who found you out."

Then she heard only muttering.  Inspector Heat must have been showing to
Mr Verloc the piece of Stevie's overcoat, because Stevie's sister,
guardian, and protector heard her husband a little louder.

"I never noticed that she had hit upon that dodge."

Again for a time Mrs Verloc heard nothing but murmurs, whose
mysteriousness was less nightmarish to her brain than the horrible
suggestions of shaped words.  Then Chief Inspector Heat, on the other
side of the door, raised his voice.

"You must have been mad."

And Mr Verloc's voice answered, with a sort of gloomy fury:

"I have been mad for a month or more, but I am not mad now.  It's all
over.  It shall all come out of my head, and hang the consequences."

There was a silence, and then Private Citizen Heat murmured:

"What's coming out?"

"Everything," exclaimed the voice of Mr Verloc, and then sank very low.

After a while it rose again.

"You have known me for several years now, and you've found me useful,
too.  You know I was a straight man.  Yes, straight."

This appeal to old acquaintance must have been extremely distasteful to
the Chief Inspector.

His voice took on a warning note.

"Don't you trust so much to what you have been promised.  If I were you I
would clear out.  I don't think we will run after you."

Mr Verloc was heard to laugh a little.

"Oh yes; you hope the others will get rid of me for you--don't you?  No,
no; you don't shake me off now.  I have been a straight man to those
people too long, and now everything must come out."

"Let it come out, then," the indifferent voice of Chief Inspector Heat
assented.  "But tell me now how did you get away."

"I was making for Chesterfield Walk," Mrs Verloc heard her husband's
voice, "when I heard the bang.  I started running then.  Fog.  I saw no
one till I was past the end of George Street.  Don't think I met anyone
till then."

"So easy as that!" marvelled the voice of Chief Inspector Heat.  "The
bang startled you, eh?"

"Yes; it came too soon," confessed the gloomy, husky voice of Mr Verloc.

Mrs Verloc pressed her ear to the keyhole; her lips were blue, her hands
cold as ice, and her pale face, in which the two eyes seemed like two
black holes, felt to her as if it were enveloped in flames.

On the other side of the door the voices sank very low.  She caught words
now and then, sometimes in her husband's voice, sometimes in the smooth
tones of the Chief Inspector.  She heard this last say:

"We believe he stumbled against the root of a tree?"

There was a husky, voluble murmur, which lasted for some time, and then
the Chief Inspector, as if answering some inquiry, spoke emphatically.

"Of course.  Blown to small bits: limbs, gravel, clothing, bones,
splinters--all mixed up together.  I tell you they had to fetch a shovel
to gather him up with."

Mrs Verloc sprang up suddenly from her crouching position, and stopping
her ears, reeled to and fro between the counter and the shelves on the
wall towards the chair.  Her crazed eyes noted the sporting sheet left by
the Chief Inspector, and as she knocked herself against the counter she
snatched it up, fell into the chair, tore the optimistic, rosy sheet
right across in trying to open it, then flung it on the floor.  On the
other side of the door, Chief Inspector Heat was saying to Mr Verloc, the
secret agent:

"So your defence will be practically a full confession?"

"It will.  I am going to tell the whole story."

"You won't be believed as much as you fancy you will."

And the Chief Inspector remained thoughtful.  The turn this affair was
taking meant the disclosure of many things--the laying waste of fields of
knowledge, which, cultivated by a capable man, had a distinct value for
the individual and for the society.  It was sorry, sorry meddling.  It
would leave Michaelis unscathed; it would drag to light the Professor's
home industry; disorganise the whole system of supervision; make no end
of a row in the papers, which, from that point of view, appeared to him
by a sudden illumination as invariably written by fools for the reading
of imbeciles.  Mentally he agreed with the words Mr Verloc let fall at
last in answer to his last remark.

"Perhaps not.  But it will upset many things.  I have been a straight
man, and I shall keep straight in this--"

"If they let you," said the Chief Inspector cynically.  "You will be
preached to, no doubt, before they put you into the dock.  And in the end
you may yet get let in for a sentence that will surprise you.  I wouldn't
trust too much the gentleman who's been talking to you."

Mr Verloc listened, frowning.

"My advice to you is to clear out while you may.  I have no instructions.
There are some of them," continued Chief Inspector Heat, laying a
peculiar stress on the word "them," "who think you are already out of the
world."

"Indeed!" Mr Verloc was moved to say.  Though since his return from
Greenwich he had spent most of his time sitting in the tap-room of an
obscure little public-house, he could hardly have hoped for such
favourable news.

"That's the impression about you."  The Chief Inspector nodded at him.
"Vanish.  Clear out."

"Where to?" snarled Mr Verloc.  He raised his head, and gazing at the
closed door of the parlour, muttered feelingly: "I only wish you would
take me away to-night.  I would go quietly."

"I daresay," assented sardonically the Chief Inspector, following the
direction of his glance.

The brow of Mr Verloc broke into slight moisture.  He lowered his husky
voice confidentially before the unmoved Chief Inspector.

"The lad was half-witted, irresponsible.  Any court would have seen that
at once.  Only fit for the asylum.  And that was the worst that would've
happened to him if--"

The Chief Inspector, his hand on the door handle, whispered into Mr
Verloc's face.

"He may've been half-witted, but you must have been crazy.  What drove
you off your head like this?"

Mr Verloc, thinking of Mr Vladimir, did not hesitate in the choice of
words.

"A Hyperborean swine," he hissed forcibly.  "A what you might call a--a
gentleman."

The Chief Inspector, steady-eyed, nodded briefly his comprehension, and
opened the door.  Mrs Verloc, behind the counter, might have heard but
did not see his departure, pursued by the aggressive clatter of the bell.
She sat at her post of duty behind the counter.  She sat rigidly erect in
the chair with two dirty pink pieces of paper lying spread out at her
feet.  The palms of her hands were pressed convulsively to her face, with
the tips of the fingers contracted against the forehead, as though the
skin had been a mask which she was ready to tear off violently.  The
perfect immobility of her pose expressed the agitation of rage and
despair, all the potential violence of tragic passions, better than any
shallow display of shrieks, with the beating of a distracted head against
the walls, could have done.  Chief Inspector Heat, crossing the shop at
his busy, swinging pace, gave her only a cursory glance.  And when the
cracked bell ceased to tremble on its curved ribbon of steel nothing
stirred near Mrs Verloc, as if her attitude had the locking power of a
spell.  Even the butterfly-shaped gas flames posed on the ends of the
suspended T-bracket burned without a quiver.  In that shop of shady wares
fitted with deal shelves painted a dull brown, which seemed to devour the
sheen of the light, the gold circlet of the wedding ring on Mrs Verloc's
left hand glittered exceedingly with the untarnished glory of a piece
from some splendid treasure of jewels, dropped in a dust-bin.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mr. Verloc returns from his trip to the Continent after being gone for ten days, but doesn't seem to be any happier. He enters his shop "sombre and vexed" and goes straight to the chair behind the counter to sit down. Stevie is in the shop dusting a few things, and he stares at Verloc "with reverence and awe" . Mr. Verloc kicks his bag on the floor and Stevie pounces on it to take it away for him. The motion is "so prompt that Mr. Verloc directly surprised" . Several people have come to visit Winnie during Verloc's absence, including Michaelis, who came to tell her that he was going to go live "in a cottage in the country" . While this doesn't sound like a major statement, it drastically affects the timeline of the book, because at this moment, you realize that everything that's been happening since the beginning of chapter eight has happened before the bomb goes off in Greenwich Park. Without telling you, Conrad has thrown you back a few weeks in time in the shift from chapter seven to chapter eight. Winnie tells Verloc that Stevie has moped a great deal since his mother left. Verloc doesn't want to hear about Stevie, but keeps silent out of generosity. At this point, Winnie makes a point of telling Verloc, "you could do anything with that boy, Adolph would go through fire for you" . Winnie turns her ear to the door of the kitchen and hears Mrs. Neale complaining to Stevie about what a hard life she has with all of her children to feed. Mrs. Neale does this because she's discovered that Stevie will hand over his allowance to her. Winnie knows that Mrs. Neale doesn't spend this money on her kids at all, but just drinks it away at a bar. Winnie can hear Stevie striking the kitchen table out of anger at the injustice of the world. She goes in to calm him down and to tell Mrs. Neale to stop being such a jerk. Later that day, Verloc says he's going to head out for a walk, and Winnie asks him to bring Stevie along, since Stevie's been in such horrible moods lately. Mr. Verloc says he doesn't want to be responsible if Stevie wanders away. But Winnie assures him that Stevie will find his way home eventually. More foreshadowing... Verloc agrees to take Stevie with him, and Winnie watches as the two of them walk away together. They both wear similar hats and coats, and seeing them from behind, Winnie muses that they even look a little bit like father and son. She congratulates herself on getting Verloc to take such good care of Stevie. Winnie even notices that even though Verloc is still a little bit quiet, he's not so depressed as he was before. Stevie, though, starts coming home angry and "mutter to himself in corners" . Winnie asks him what's the matter, but Stevie keeps it tight. He stops drawing his circles and instead walks around the house with his fists clenched. Winnie begins to fear that Stevie is hearing too much of Mr. Verloc's conversations with his anarchist friends. Winnie talks to Verloc about not letting Stevie hear too much of his radical friend's beliefs. Verloc counters by suggesting that Stevie should spend some time in the country to calm down. He suggests that Stevie should go stay with Michaelis, since "There no visitors and no talk there" . Winnie agrees, and the next day, Verloc takes Stevie out into the country. At this point, your dread might be starting to build, since you know that the person who blew himself up at Greenwich boarded a train at the rural town where Michaelis is staying. The next day, Stevie agrees to go without any hassle. Winnie tells him not to get his clothes dirty in the country, and Stevie gives her a look he's never given her before: a "don't treat me like a kid" sort of look. While Stevie's gone, Winnie is often at the shop alone, since Mr. Verloc still takes his long walks. This eventually brings us to the day of "the attempted bomb outrage in Greenwich Park" , a day when Winnie spends all of her time alone, since Stevie is in the country and Mr. Verloc "went out early that morning and did not come back till nearly dusk" . She sits and sews until Mr. Verloc finally comes in. She asks him if he's been to see Stevie, and Mr. Verloc softly slams the parlor door and says he hasn't. Winnie gets ready to make Verloc some tea, but finds him sitting by the fire and shaking all over. She's worried that he's catching a cold from being out on such a wet day. She asks where he's been, but he says "Nowhere" . Then Verloc adds that he's been to the bank to withdraw all of their savings. Winnie is dumbstruck at this news and wants to know why he took out their money. She gets out knives and forks and starts setting the table to give Verloc some food to feed his cold. Verloc tells her she can trust him, and she agrees as she calls him to the dinner table for some grub. His eyes are bloodshot, his hair ruffled. She tells him he can't go out again that evening, and he answers that he's not thinking about going out, but only of going to maybe France or California. Winnie is dumbstruck again, having no clue about what's going on. She tries to blame Verloc's cold for his crazy thinking, but he keeps going on and on about how they'll have to leave the country. Winnie tells him to stop being stupid, and suddenly wishes she had Stevie back around the house. When the shop's bell rings, Verloc goes into the shop and comes back quickly after. Winnie notices that "He gone in red out a strange papery white" . Winnie asks what's wrong, and he tells her that he needs to go out. Winnie decides to go into the shop to check out the customer who's messed up her husband. The man is tall and thin, and wears his mustache twisted up at the ends. He is a "dark man, with the ridge of the cheekbone well defined under the slightly hollow temple" . She does not recognize him, and knows that he's not a normal customer. She starts asking the dude questions about where he's come from, probably assuming he's some radical that Verloc is supposed to find a place for in England. The man keeps giving mysterious, annoying answers to her questions. Winnie gets impatient and goes back into the house, finding Verloc still leaning against the table and staring forward. She then asks if the man outside is one of the people from the Embassy who have been bothering Verloc. Verloc loses his mind and demands to know how Winnie knows about his connection with the Embassy. Winnie says that he's been talking in his sleep and revealing things, although she doesn't seem to know the exact nature of his connection with the Embassy. Verloc gets angry and rams his hat onto his head, saying "The Embassy people! I would cut their hearts out one after another. But let them look out. I've got a tongue in my head" . Winnie tells him to get rid of the man outside however he can, and to let her look after him. Just when he's about to leave, she calls him back and orders him to give her the savings he took out of the bank. After he gives it to her, she stuffs it "under the bodice of her dress" . Verloc leaves, but soon afterwards another person comes into the shop. The narrator informs us that the new dude is Chief Inspector Heat, who's also looking for Verloc. Winnie tells him that Verloc just went out with someone, and Heat gets angry when he realizes that the Assistant Commissioner has beaten him to the punch by just a few minutes. Heat tells Winnie he doesn't have time to wait for Verloc, but then asks Winnie about the bomb outrage at Greenwich Park. Winnie hasn't been out of the house all day and doesn't even know about any bomb yet. Heat then drops a total bomb , and mentions that he's come into the possession of a stolen overcoat. He talks about the piece of cloth he took from the crime scene, and Winnie gets really nervous, saying that it belongs to her brother's coat. Heat asks where this brother is, and Winnie says he's been living out in the country with Michaelis. Now, you can really start to see Conrad's dreadful threads being drawn together. Heat asks why his address was sewn inside his coat, and Winnie explains that Stevie is mentally disabled and needs to be taken care of. Winnie asks how Stevie came to lose his coat, and Heat pulls out a newspaper from that day. He also plunges his hand into his pocket and pulls out the tattered piece of cloth. Winnie is alarmed by the piece of cloth, and asks why it's so mangled. Heat snatches the cloth back from her, having identified the victim of the bomb. At this moment, "he a glimpse into the whole amazing truth. Verloc the other man" . At this point, we're pretty certain that Verloc passed the bomb to Stevie after leaving the train at Greenwich, and Stevie somehow tripped and blew himself up. Good ol' gruesome Conrad does it again. Heat tries to explain the whole thing to Winnie, but just before he can, Verloc walks back into the shop. He's mad at seeing Heat there, and calls him into the parlor to talk. Winnie runs to the keyhole to listen as they speak. In a fragmented version, she hears about Verloc's involvement with the bomb at Greenwich Park. Heat tells Verloc he must have been crazy to hatch a plan like he did, and Verloc says it doesn't matter, because the whole truth is going to come out. He's going to sell out the embassy and tell everything he knows in court. It's the only way he can bring Mr. Vladimir down with him. Heat says if Verloc left the country, the police wouldn't come after him. All this time, Winnie is putting together the pieces of what her husband's done. She listens as Heat explains how the body had to be scooped up with a shovel. At this, she jumps up and plugs her ears, going insane with shock and grief. She notices the newspaper left by the Chief Inspector, tears it up, and throws it on the floor. On the other side of the door, Heat finally concedes that Verloc will make a full confession. Heat is not satisfied with this, since he wants to keep Verloc as a private resource and doesn't want to lose all of the secret information networks that this confession will tear down. Heat's also sorry that the whole affair will leave Michaelis free to go. The only people who will go down are the ones who're actually useful for fighting crime. Heat again advises Verloc to get out of town, saying that everyone probably already thinks that he's dead. Verloc is happy to hear this news, but he's got no clue where he'd flee to. Verloc then tries to argue that the court won't punish him for leading Stevie to his death, since "the lad was half-witted, irresponsible" . Heat interrupts him and says the boy may have been half-witted, but he must have been crazy for doing what he did. After this, Heat leaves. As he goes, the narrator's focus shifts to Winnie, who is now sitting behind the shop's counter. And in the final lines of this chapter, we learn of how "the gold circlet of wedding ring on Mrs Verloc's left hand dropped in a dust-bin" . There's no doubt now. Winnie knows what Verloc has done, and it turns out that murdering her brother is a total deal-breaker.


prompt:
Chapter: The Assistant Commissioner, driven rapidly in a hansom from the
neighbourhood of Soho in the direction of Westminster, got out at the
very centre of the Empire on which the sun never sets.  Some stalwart
constables, who did not seem particularly impressed by the duty of
watching the august spot, saluted him.  Penetrating through a portal by
no means lofty into the precincts of the House which is _the_ House, _par
excellence_ in the minds of many millions of men, he was met at last by
the volatile and revolutionary Toodles.

That neat and nice young man concealed his astonishment at the early
appearance of the Assistant Commissioner, whom he had been told to look
out for some time about midnight.  His turning up so early he concluded
to be the sign that things, whatever they were, had gone wrong.  With an
extremely ready sympathy, which in nice youngsters goes often with a
joyous temperament, he felt sorry for the great Presence he called "The
Chief," and also for the Assistant Commissioner, whose face appeared to
him more ominously wooden than ever before, and quite wonderfully long.
"What a queer, foreign-looking chap he is," he thought to himself,
smiling from a distance with friendly buoyancy.  And directly they came
together he began to talk with the kind intention of burying the
awkwardness of failure under a heap of words.  It looked as if the great
assault threatened for that night were going to fizzle out.  An inferior
henchman of "that brute Cheeseman" was up boring mercilessly a very thin
House with some shamelessly cooked statistics.  He, Toodles, hoped he
would bore them into a count out every minute.  But then he might be only
marking time to let that guzzling Cheeseman dine at his leisure.  Anyway,
the Chief could not be persuaded to go home.

"He will see you at once, I think.  He's sitting all alone in his room
thinking of all the fishes of the sea," concluded Toodles airily.  "Come
along."

Notwithstanding the kindness of his disposition, the young private
secretary (unpaid) was accessible to the common failings of humanity.  He
did not wish to harrow the feelings of the Assistant Commissioner, who
looked to him uncommonly like a man who has made a mess of his job.  But
his curiosity was too strong to be restrained by mere compassion.  He
could not help, as they went along, to throw over his shoulder lightly:

"And your sprat?"

"Got him," answered the Assistant Commissioner with a concision which did
not mean to be repellent in the least.

"Good.  You've no idea how these great men dislike to be disappointed in
small things."

After this profound observation the experienced Toodles seemed to
reflect.  At any rate he said nothing for quite two seconds.  Then:

"I'm glad.  But--I say--is it really such a very small thing as you make
it out?"

"Do you know what may be done with a sprat?" the Assistant Commissioner
asked in his turn.

"He's sometimes put into a sardine box," chuckled Toodles, whose
erudition on the subject of the fishing industry was fresh and, in
comparison with his ignorance of all other industrial matters, immense.
"There are sardine canneries on the Spanish coast which--"

The Assistant Commissioner interrupted the apprentice statesman.

"Yes.  Yes.  But a sprat is also thrown away sometimes in order to catch
a whale."

"A whale.  Phew!" exclaimed Toodles, with bated breath.  "You're after a
whale, then?"

"Not exactly.  What I am after is more like a dog-fish.  You don't know
perhaps what a dog-fish is like."

"Yes; I do.  We're buried in special books up to our necks--whole shelves
full of them--with plates. . . . It's a noxious, rascally-looking,
altogether detestable beast, with a sort of smooth face and moustaches."

"Described to a T," commended the Assistant Commissioner.  "Only mine is
clean-shaven altogether.  You've seen him.  It's a witty fish."

"I have seen him!" said Toodles incredulously.  "I can't conceive where I
could have seen him."

"At the Explorers, I should say," dropped the Assistant Commissioner
calmly.  At the name of that extremely exclusive club Toodles looked
scared, and stopped short.

"Nonsense," he protested, but in an awe-struck tone.  "What do you mean?
A member?"

"Honorary," muttered the Assistant Commissioner through his teeth.

"Heavens!"

Toodles looked so thunderstruck that the Assistant Commissioner smiled
faintly.

"That's between ourselves strictly," he said.

"That's the beastliest thing I've ever heard in my life," declared
Toodles feebly, as if astonishment had robbed him of all his buoyant
strength in a second.

The Assistant Commissioner gave him an unsmiling glance.  Till they came
to the door of the great man's room, Toodles preserved a scandalised and
solemn silence, as though he were offended with the Assistant
Commissioner for exposing such an unsavoury and disturbing fact.  It
revolutionised his idea of the Explorers' Club's extreme selectness, of
its social purity.  Toodles was revolutionary only in politics; his
social beliefs and personal feelings he wished to preserve unchanged
through all the years allotted to him on this earth which, upon the
whole, he believed to be a nice place to live on.

He stood aside.

"Go in without knocking," he said.

Shades of green silk fitted low over all the lights imparted to the room
something of a forest's deep gloom.  The haughty eyes were physically the
great man's weak point.  This point was wrapped up in secrecy.  When an
opportunity offered, he rested them conscientiously.

The Assistant Commissioner entering saw at first only a big pale hand
supporting a big head, and concealing the upper part of a big pale face.
An open despatch-box stood on the writing-table near a few oblong sheets
of paper and a scattered handful of quill pens.  There was absolutely
nothing else on the large flat surface except a little bronze statuette
draped in a toga, mysteriously watchful in its shadowy immobility.  The
Assistant Commissioner, invited to take a chair, sat down.  In the dim
light, the salient points of his personality, the long face, the black
hair, his lankness, made him look more foreign than ever.

The great man manifested no surprise, no eagerness, no sentiment
whatever.  The attitude in which he rested his menaced eyes was
profoundly meditative.  He did not alter it the least bit.  But his tone
was not dreamy.

"Well!  What is it that you've found out already?  You came upon
something unexpected on the first step."

"Not exactly unexpected, Sir Ethelred.  What I mainly came upon was a
psychological state."

The Great Presence made a slight movement.  "You must be lucid, please."

"Yes, Sir Ethelred.  You know no doubt that most criminals at some time
or other feel an irresistible need of confessing--of making a clean
breast of it to somebody--to anybody.  And they do it often to the
police.  In that Verloc whom Heat wished so much to screen I've found a
man in that particular psychological state.  The man, figuratively
speaking, flung himself on my breast.  It was enough on my part to
whisper to him who I was and to add 'I know that you are at the bottom of
this affair.'  It must have seemed miraculous to him that we should know
already, but he took it all in the stride.  The wonderfulness of it never
checked him for a moment.  There remained for me only to put to him the
two questions: Who put you up to it? and Who was the man who did it?  He
answered the first with remarkable emphasis.  As to the second question,
I gather that the fellow with the bomb was his brother-in-law--quite a
lad--a weak-minded creature. . . . It is rather a curious affair--too
long perhaps to state fully just now."

"What then have you learned?" asked the great man.

"First, I've learned that the ex-convict Michaelis had nothing to do with
it, though indeed the lad had been living with him temporarily in the
country up to eight o'clock this morning.  It is more than likely that
Michaelis knows nothing of it to this moment."

"You are positive as to that?" asked the great man.

"Quite certain, Sir Ethelred.  This fellow Verloc went there this
morning, and took away the lad on the pretence of going out for a walk in
the lanes.  As it was not the first time that he did this, Michaelis
could not have the slightest suspicion of anything unusual.  For the
rest, Sir Ethelred, the indignation of this man Verloc had left nothing
in doubt--nothing whatever.  He had been driven out of his mind almost by
an extraordinary performance, which for you or me it would be difficult
to take as seriously meant, but which produced a great impression
obviously on him."

The Assistant Commissioner then imparted briefly to the great man, who
sat still, resting his eyes under the screen of his hand, Mr Verloc's
appreciation of Mr Vladimir's proceedings and character.  The Assistant
Commissioner did not seem to refuse it a certain amount of competency.
But the great personage remarked:

"All this seems very fantastic."

"Doesn't it?  One would think a ferocious joke.  But our man took it
seriously, it appears.  He felt himself threatened.  In the time, you
know, he was in direct communication with old Stott-Wartenheim himself,
and had come to regard his services as indispensable.  It was an
extremely rude awakening.  I imagine that he lost his head.  He became
angry and frightened.  Upon my word, my impression is that he thought
these Embassy people quite capable not only to throw him out but, to give
him away too in some manner or other--"

"How long were you with him," interrupted the Presence from behind his
big hand.

"Some forty minutes, Sir Ethelred, in a house of bad repute called
Continental Hotel, closeted in a room which by-the-by I took for the
night.  I found him under the influence of that reaction which follows
the effort of crime.  The man cannot be defined as a hardened criminal.
It is obvious that he did not plan the death of that wretched lad--his
brother-in-law.  That was a shock to him--I could see that.  Perhaps he
is a man of strong sensibilities.  Perhaps he was even fond of the
lad--who knows?  He might have hoped that the fellow would get clear
away; in which case it would have been almost impossible to bring this
thing home to anyone.  At any rate he risked consciously nothing more but
arrest for him."

The Assistant Commissioner paused in his speculations to reflect for a
moment.

"Though how, in that last case, he could hope to have his own share in
the business concealed is more than I can tell," he continued, in his
ignorance of poor Stevie's devotion to Mr Verloc (who was _good_), and of
his truly peculiar dumbness, which in the old affair of fireworks on the
stairs had for many years resisted entreaties, coaxing, anger, and other
means of investigation used by his beloved sister.  For Stevie was loyal.
. . .  "No, I can't imagine.  It's possible that he never thought of that
at all.  It sounds an extravagant way of putting it, Sir Ethelred, but
his state of dismay suggested to me an impulsive man who, after
committing suicide with the notion that it would end all his troubles,
had discovered that it did nothing of the kind."

The Assistant Commissioner gave this definition in an apologetic voice.
But in truth there is a sort of lucidity proper to extravagant language,
and the great man was not offended.  A slight jerky movement of the big
body half lost in the gloom of the green silk shades, of the big head
leaning on the big hand, accompanied an intermittent stifled but powerful
sound.  The great man had laughed.

"What have you done with him?"

The Assistant Commissioner answered very readily:

"As he seemed very anxious to get back to his wife in the shop I let him
go, Sir Ethelred."

"You did?  But the fellow will disappear."

"Pardon me.  I don't think so.  Where could he go to?  Moreover, you must
remember that he has got to think of the danger from his comrades too.
He's there at his post.  How could he explain leaving it?  But even if
there were no obstacles to his freedom of action he would do nothing.  At
present he hasn't enough moral energy to take a resolution of any sort.
Permit me also to point out that if I had detained him we would have been
committed to a course of action on which I wished to know your precise
intentions first."

The great personage rose heavily, an imposing shadowy form in the
greenish gloom of the room.

"I'll see the Attorney-General to-night, and will send for you to-morrow
morning.  Is there anything more you'd wish to tell me now?"

The Assistant Commissioner had stood up also, slender and flexible.

"I think not, Sir Ethelred, unless I were to enter into details which--"

"No.  No details, please."

The great shadowy form seemed to shrink away as if in physical dread of
details; then came forward, expanded, enormous, and weighty, offering a
large hand.  "And you say that this man has got a wife?"

"Yes, Sir Ethelred," said the Assistant Commissioner, pressing
deferentially the extended hand.  "A genuine wife and a genuinely,
respectably, marital relation.  He told me that after his interview at
the Embassy he would have thrown everything up, would have tried to sell
his shop, and leave the country, only he felt certain that his wife would
not even hear of going abroad.  Nothing could be more characteristic of
the respectable bond than that," went on, with a touch of grimness, the
Assistant Commissioner, whose own wife too had refused to hear of going
abroad.  "Yes, a genuine wife.  And the victim was a genuine
brother-in-law.  From a certain point of view we are here in the presence
of a domestic drama."

The Assistant Commissioner laughed a little; but the great man's thoughts
seemed to have wandered far away, perhaps to the questions of his
country's domestic policy, the battle-ground of his crusading valour
against the paynim Cheeseman.  The Assistant Commissioner withdrew
quietly, unnoticed, as if already forgotten.

He had his own crusading instincts.  This affair, which, in one way or
another, disgusted Chief Inspector Heat, seemed to him a providentially
given starting-point for a crusade.  He had it much at heart to begin.
He walked slowly home, meditating that enterprise on the way, and
thinking over Mr Verloc's psychology in a composite mood of repugnance
and satisfaction.  He walked all the way home.  Finding the drawing-room
dark, he went upstairs, and spent some time between the bedroom and the
dressing-room, changing his clothes, going to and fro with the air of a
thoughtful somnambulist.  But he shook it off before going out again to
join his wife at the house of the great lady patroness of Michaelis.

He knew he would be welcomed there.  On entering the smaller of the two
drawing-rooms he saw his wife in a small group near the piano.  A
youngish composer in pass of becoming famous was discoursing from a music
stool to two thick men whose backs looked old, and three slender women
whose backs looked young.  Behind the screen the great lady had only two
persons with her: a man and a woman, who sat side by side on arm-chairs
at the foot of her couch.  She extended her hand to the Assistant
Commissioner.

"I never hoped to see you here to-night.  Annie told me--"

"Yes.  I had no idea myself that my work would be over so soon."

The Assistant Commissioner added in a low tone: "I am glad to tell you
that Michaelis is altogether clear of this--"

The patroness of the ex-convict received this assurance indignantly.

"Why?  Were your people stupid enough to connect him with--"

"Not stupid," interrupted the Assistant Commissioner, contradicting
deferentially.  "Clever enough--quite clever enough for that."

A silence fell.  The man at the foot of the couch had stopped speaking to
the lady, and looked on with a faint smile.

"I don't know whether you ever met before," said the great lady.

Mr Vladimir and the Assistant Commissioner, introduced, acknowledged each
other's existence with punctilious and guarded courtesy.

"He's been frightening me," declared suddenly the lady who sat by the
side of Mr Vladimir, with an inclination of the head towards that
gentleman.  The Assistant Commissioner knew the lady.

"You do not look frightened," he pronounced, after surveying her
conscientiously with his tired and equable gaze.  He was thinking
meantime to himself that in this house one met everybody sooner or later.
Mr Vladimir's rosy countenance was wreathed in smiles, because he was
witty, but his eyes remained serious, like the eyes of convinced man.

"Well, he tried to at least," amended the lady.

"Force of habit perhaps," said the Assistant Commissioner, moved by an
irresistible inspiration.

"He has been threatening society with all sorts of horrors," continued
the lady, whose enunciation was caressing and slow, "apropos of this
explosion in Greenwich Park.  It appears we all ought to quake in our
shoes at what's coming if those people are not suppressed all over the
world.  I had no idea this was such a grave affair."

Mr Vladimir, affecting not to listen, leaned towards the couch, talking
amiably in subdued tones, but he heard the Assistant Commissioner say:

"I've no doubt that Mr Vladimir has a very precise notion of the true
importance of this affair."

Mr Vladimir asked himself what that confounded and intrusive policeman
was driving at.  Descended from generations victimised by the instruments
of an arbitrary power, he was racially, nationally, and individually
afraid of the police.  It was an inherited weakness, altogether
independent of his judgment, of his reason, of his experience.  He was
born to it.  But that sentiment, which resembled the irrational horror
some people have of cats, did not stand in the way of his immense
contempt for the English police.  He finished the sentence addressed to
the great lady, and turned slightly in his chair.

"You mean that we have a great experience of these people.  Yes; indeed,
we suffer greatly from their activity, while you"--Mr Vladimir hesitated
for a moment, in smiling perplexity--"while you suffer their presence
gladly in your midst," he finished, displaying a dimple on each
clean-shaven cheek.  Then he added more gravely: "I may even say--because
you do."

When Mr Vladimir ceased speaking the Assistant Commissioner lowered his
glance, and the conversation dropped.  Almost immediately afterwards Mr
Vladimir took leave.

Directly his back was turned on the couch the Assistant Commissioner rose
too.

"I thought you were going to stay and take Annie home," said the lady
patroness of Michaelis.

"I find that I've yet a little work to do to-night."

"In connection--?"

"Well, yes--in a way."

"Tell me, what is it really--this horror?"

"It's difficult to say what it is, but it may yet be a _cause celebre_,"
said the Assistant Commissioner.

He left the drawing-room hurriedly, and found Mr Vladimir still in the
hall, wrapping up his throat carefully in a large silk handkerchief.
Behind him a footman waited, holding his overcoat.  Another stood ready
to open the door.  The Assistant Commissioner was duly helped into his
coat, and let out at once.  After descending the front steps he stopped,
as if to consider the way he should take.  On seeing this through the
door held open, Mr Vladimir lingered in the hall to get out a cigar and
asked for a light.  It was furnished to him by an elderly man out of
livery with an air of calm solicitude.  But the match went out; the
footman then closed the door, and Mr Vladimir lighted his large Havana
with leisurely care.

When at last he got out of the house, he saw with disgust the "confounded
policeman" still standing on the pavement.

"Can he be waiting for me," thought Mr Vladimir, looking up and down for
some signs of a hansom.  He saw none.  A couple of carriages waited by
the curbstone, their lamps blazing steadily, the horses standing
perfectly still, as if carved in stone, the coachmen sitting motionless
under the big fur capes, without as much as a quiver stirring the white
thongs of their big whips.  Mr Vladimir walked on, and the "confounded
policeman" fell into step at his elbow.  He said nothing.  At the end of
the fourth stride Mr Vladimir felt infuriated and uneasy.  This could not
last.

"Rotten weather," he growled savagely.

"Mild," said the Assistant Commissioner without passion.  He remained
silent for a little while.  "We've got hold of a man called Verloc," he
announced casually.

Mr Vladimir did not stumble, did not stagger back, did not change his
stride.  But he could not prevent himself from exclaiming: "What?"  The
Assistant Commissioner did not repeat his statement.  "You know him," he
went on in the same tone.

Mr Vladimir stopped, and became guttural.  "What makes you say that?"

"I don't.  It's Verloc who says that."

"A lying dog of some sort," said Mr Vladimir in somewhat Oriental
phraseology.  But in his heart he was almost awed by the miraculous
cleverness of the English police.  The change of his opinion on the
subject was so violent that it made him for a moment feel slightly sick.
He threw away his cigar, and moved on.

"What pleased me most in this affair," the Assistant went on, talking
slowly, "is that it makes such an excellent starting-point for a piece of
work which I've felt must be taken in hand--that is, the clearing out of
this country of all the foreign political spies, police, and that sort
of--of--dogs.  In my opinion they are a ghastly nuisance; also an element
of danger.  But we can't very well seek them out individually.  The only
way is to make their employment unpleasant to their employers.  The
thing's becoming indecent.  And dangerous too, for us, here."

Mr Vladimir stopped again for a moment.

"What do you mean?"

"The prosecution of this Verloc will demonstrate to the public both the
danger and the indecency."

"Nobody will believe what a man of that sort says," said Mr Vladimir
contemptuously.

"The wealth and precision of detail will carry conviction to the great
mass of the public," advanced the Assistant Commissioner gently.

"So that is seriously what you mean to do."

"We've got the man; we have no choice."

"You will be only feeding up the lying spirit of these revolutionary
scoundrels," Mr Vladimir protested.  "What do you want to make a scandal
for?--from morality--or what?"

Mr Vladimir's anxiety was obvious.  The Assistant Commissioner having
ascertained in this way that there must be some truth in the summary
statements of Mr Verloc, said indifferently:

"There's a practical side too.  We have really enough to do to look after
the genuine article.  You can't say we are not effective.  But we don't
intend to let ourselves be bothered by shams under any pretext whatever."

Mr Vladimir's tone became lofty.

"For my part, I can't share your view.  It is selfish.  My sentiments for
my own country cannot be doubted; but I've always felt that we ought to
be good Europeans besides--I mean governments and men."

"Yes," said the Assistant Commissioner simply.  "Only you look at Europe
from its other end.  But," he went on in a good-natured tone, "the
foreign governments cannot complain of the inefficiency of our police.
Look at this outrage; a case specially difficult to trace inasmuch as it
was a sham.  In less than twelve hours we have established the identity
of a man literally blown to shreds, have found the organiser of the
attempt, and have had a glimpse of the inciter behind him.  And we could
have gone further; only we stopped at the limits of our territory."

"So this instructive crime was planned abroad," Mr Vladimir said quickly.
"You admit it was planned abroad?"

"Theoretically.  Theoretically only, on foreign territory; abroad only by
a fiction," said the Assistant Commissioner, alluding to the character of
Embassies, which are supposed to be part and parcel of the country to
which they belong.  "But that's a detail.  I talked to you of this
business because it's your government that grumbles most at our police.
You see that we are not so bad.  I wanted particularly to tell you of our
success."

"I'm sure I'm very grateful," muttered Mr Vladimir through his teeth.

"We can put our finger on every anarchist here," went on the Assistant
Commissioner, as though he were quoting Chief Inspector Heat.  "All
that's wanted now is to do away with the agent provocateur to make
everything safe."

Mr Vladimir held up his hand to a passing hansom.

"You're not going in here," remarked the Assistant Commissioner, looking
at a building of noble proportions and hospitable aspect, with the light
of a great hall falling through its glass doors on a broad flight of
steps.

But Mr Vladimir, sitting, stony-eyed, inside the hansom, drove off
without a word.

The Assistant Commissioner himself did not turn into the noble building.
It was the Explorers' Club.  The thought passed through his mind that Mr
Vladimir, honorary member, would not be seen very often there in the
future.  He looked at his watch.  It was only half-past ten.  He had had
a very full evening.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Assistant Commissioner rides in a cab back to the parliament building. When he arrives, he runs into Toodles. Toodles is very surprised to find that the A.C. has returned so quickly, and assumes that something must have gone wrong with the investigation. He lets the A.C. in to see Ethelred, who is still waiting around. As they walk toward the office, Toodles asks the A.C. if he's captured the man he's looking for. The A.C. says yes, and tells Toodles that an honorary member of the exclusive Explorers' Club has been involved with the Greenwich bombing. Toodles is shocked, being someone who assumes that high-society folk could never get mixed up with crime. He's actually morally offended, and preserves "a scandalized and solemn silence" after the A.C. tells him this. The A.C. goes into Ethelred's office and recounts how he got a full confession out of Verloc. He says that Michaelis had nothing at all to do with Greenwich. Both Ethelred and the A.C. find it weird that Verloc would take such desperate actions because of Mr. Vladimir, but they don't fully understand Verloc's commitment to laziness, and his fear and anger at having his laziness threatened. The A.C. then muses about the man who blew himself up, who he confirms to be Verloc's brother-in-law, Stevie. He doesn't know how Stevie could've gotten away with the crime even if he'd lived, but the narrator tells us that the A.C. doesn't realize how loyal Stevie was to Verloc. After this meeting, the A.C. travels home for a moment, then goes out to meet his wife at the home of "the great lady patroness of Michaelis" . When he gets there, he sees the lady patroness sitting with two people, one man and one woman. At this point, the woman introduces the A.C. to the man sitting at the foot of her couch, who turns out to be Mr. Vladimir. Mr. Vladimir has supposedly been "frightening" the old woman with horror stories about left-wing radicals, trying to spread fear about them in the wake of the Greenwich Park incident. Realizing who Mr. Vladimir is, the A.C. now can't resist saying, "I've no doubt that Mr. Vladimir has a very precise notion of the true importance of this affair" . This sets Vladimir's thoughts churning, and he instantly wonders what the A.C. could mean by this comment. This is exactly what the A.C. wanted to provoke, since he knows from Verloc about Vladimir's involvement with the whole Greenwich affair. Vladimir responds that yes, his job has made him very familiar with radicals and their tactics. He tries to dig at the A.C. by saying that he wouldn't have to know so much if the English police knew their business and were a little more aggressive. After this, he gets up to leave, but the A.C. follows him. Once outside, the A.C. tells Vladimir that Verloc has exposed the connection between the Embassy, and the business in Greenwich Park. Vladimir says no one will ever believe Verloc, but the A.C. assures him that Verloc's knowledge of specific details will definitely convince the public. Vladimir starts to feel sick. The A.C. says that his favorite aspect of the whole case is that it will be the starting point for his crusade to banish all foreign agents and their bosses from England. "the clearing of this country of all the foreign political spies, police, and that sort of-- of-- dogs" . Vladimir asks if the A.C. truly means to take everything public, and the A.C. says he has no choice, since Verloc wants to reveal everything in court. Vladimir raises his hand for a cab. The A.C. tells him he can't get in, but Vladimir gets in anyway and drives away. The A.C. looks across the street to the face of the Explorers' Club, where he knows he won't be seeing Mr. Vladimir in the future. As far as England goes, Mr. Vladimir and all of his cronies are done.