Chapter: 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 had 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 and
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
revolutionists 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.  Its 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.  Its 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.

 The chapter returns to Mr. Verloc, who is standing in his shop following the departure of Chief Inspector Heat. The narrator gives us access to Mr. Verloc's thoughts, which center on how he never intended for Stevie to die. He'd thought that the worst thing that could happen is that Stevie would be arrested. He hadn't anticipated the whole thing coming back to him so quickly, hadn't anticipated Stevie's address being sewn into his clothes. He realizes that "that was what she meant when she said that he need not worry if he lost Stevie during their walks" . He thinks that "she ought to have told him of the precaution she'd taken" , as if Winnie should've somehow known that he was going to hand her brother a bomb and send him off to blow up an observatory. But then again, he uses his generosity to resist scolding his wife for her mistake. "The unexpected march of events converted him to the doctrine of fatalism" . In other words, Verloc no longer believes that humans are in control of their lives. It's just randomness and bad luck. He tells Winnie that he didn't mean for any harm to come to Stevie. He then blames Heat for telling her everything and upsetting her. He talks about how hard it was for him to sit around all day, thinking of a way to tell her the news. His self-centeredness really shines through in these passages. At this point, he follows Winnie into the house and notices that the roast beef and bread from his dinner is still sitting on the dining room table. Starving, he cuts himself off a piece and bolts it down. This isn't because he's callous, but because he hasn't eaten a thing all day. He says that the situation can't be helped, and that Winnie needs to be rational if they're going to plan for the future. Winnie, however, simply heaves with sadness and doesn't answer him. Her silence bothers him. The narrator sarcastically adds that "Mr Verloc was a humane man; he had come home prepared to allow every latitude to his wife's affection for her brother" . But he really, really doesn't understand the depth of Winnie's emotional attachment to Stevie. He doesn't think of relationships as relative, but as being based on the actual worthiness of the person being loved. Because of this, he considers himself much more important than Winnie's "Half-witted" brother. But he doesn't understand the kind of love and devotion that has grown out of Winnie's life as a protector to Stevie. He becomes more severe with her, telling her that she "can't sit like this in the shop" . There are practical matters that they need to discuss, now that he's been found out. He tells her to stop crying and asks how much worse it would've been if she'd lost him instead of Stevie. Yeah, dude really doesn't get it. Verloc thinks about his situation again, and knows that he'll have to go to prison. But this is a good thing, since it'll protect him from all the people who'll want to kill him once he exposes himself as a spy and talks publicly about all the things that he have been involved in. He's already thinking about moving abroad as soon as he's released. He thinks about how Winnie will have to keep the shop running for a couple of years while he's in prison. "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" . It's hard to gauge the narrator's sympathy for Verloc here, but it seems to be insisting that Verloc really does love Winnie, and just doesn't see his situation for what it is, since he can't stop thinking about himself. Unlike Stevie, he does not have the imagination to relate his pain to the pain of others. He reminds himself that this is "no evening for business" , so he gets up to close the shop and put out the gaslight. Mr. Verloc walks into the parlor and glances down the two steps into the kitchen. Winnie is sitting in the place Stevie usually uses for drawing his circles. Mr. Verloc watches her from behind, trying to learn something, but all he gets is a crude outline of how she feels. He starts telling her about all the other bomb plots he's dealt with in his career, probably trying to make Stevie's death part of a larger picture. When he looks back up, he is startled by his wife's stare. She seems to be looking through him. He asks her if she understands him, and she answers, "No What are you talking about?" He tells her to go to bed, believing that what she wants is a good cry. At this, we get a long narration of what's going on in Winnie's head, and we're carried back into her childhood, when she would risk herself to protect Stevie from their abusive father: "She had the vision of the blows intercepted , of a door held desperately shut against a man's rage " . She then has a crushing memory of all the years she spent in her parent's boarding house, carrying trays and haggling with boarders. She thinks of "a young man wearing his Sunday best, with a straw hat on his dark head and a wooden pipe in his mouth" . This is the young butcher boy whom she truly loved, but had to give up marrying because he could not afford to take care of her mother and Stevie. She thinks of how the years with Mr. Verloc had increased her confidence in Stevie's safety. She thinks of how she's happily lived with Verloc, despite the "occasional passage of Comrade Ossipon, the robust anarchist with shamelessly inviting eyes" , who has apparently always watched her with a vibe of sexual aggression. Suddenly, her mind returns to the last moment she ever saw Stevie, when he was walking away with Verloc and she thought that they looked like father and son. At that moment, she had congratulated herself with the thought that shed truly guaranteed Stevie's safety. This memory now tortures her. Verloc, meanwhile, keeps raving about the Embassy people and how he's going to take them all down with his testimony. He also says that oh-so-fateful phrase, "Nothing on earth can stop me now" . At this point, Winnie says through her teeth that she thought Mr. Verloc had caught a cold, meaning that she hadn't realized why he was so rattled when he came home that evening. Verloc tells her not to worry, says that he won't let the revolutionists "do away with him" because he's too fond of Winnie to let that happen. He gives a nervous laugh at this, but gets no response from Winnie. The narrator informs us that Winnie has been overcome by a "fixed idea," and that nothing Verloc says can overcome this idea. She tries to remember where Stevie actually died, but the name of the place escapes her for the moment. Finally, Winnie gets up from her seat and goes upstairs. Verloc encourages her, saying that she needs sleep and that he'll be up in a bit. The thought of him touching her makes her sick. She disappears upstairs, and Mr. Verloc is overtaken by "unappeasable hunger" . He goes back to the table and starts going to town on the roast beef. He is startled by the fact that he can't hear Winnie moving upstairs, but feels better once he hears her moving. He gets startled again, though, when he hears her put on her walking shoes. She comes back down the stairs, dressed to go out into the night. He tells her that he won't allow her to leave the house. This statement makes Winnie realize that Mr. Verloc will never let her go now. She says nothing back to him, though, and his patience reaches its end. He repeats his earlier speech about how much risk he has taken to give her a good life, and that he never intended for Stevie to die. He says that he hunted high and low for dozens of other men to do the job, but couldn't find anyone. It was just an accident, he says, as though Stevie was hit by a bus while crossing the street. He even goes on to say that Stevie's death is as much Winnie's fault as his own, since Winnie was always pushing Stevie into Verloc's life, wanting him to take the boy on walks. The idea would never have come into Verloc's head if it hadn't been for Winnie. He then tells her she's lucky that he's such a wonderful guy. When she says nothing still, he feels tired and moves over to lie on the sofa in his coat, the back of which is facing Winnie. He thinks aloud that he wishes he'd never seen Greenwich Park. The mention of the place where Stevie blew himself up jogs Winnie's memory. "Greenwich Park. A park! That's where the boy was killed" . She also remembers that the police had had to scoop up Stevie's remains with a shovel. This image seems to make her snap completely. Anyone looking at her would know something was different. But Mr. Verloc is facing the other side of the room now, and the back of the couch is separating him from her. At this point, Verloc thinks he's won Winnie over again. He say's "Come here in a peculiar tone, which might have been the tone of brutality, but was intimately known to Mrs. Verloc as the note of wooing" . That's right, folks. Verloc thinks that this is a good time to flirt with his wife and invite her to have sex with him. Verloc hears her coming toward him, and is happy. As Winnie passes the dining table, and "the carving knife without the slightest sound from the side of the dish" . Again, Verloc doesn't see this because of his positioning. The narrator also tells us that right down to the drooping lip, Winnie takes on the appearance of Stevie as she approaches the couch. This shifting of appearance seems to hint that in some way, Stevie is about to avenge himself through his sister. Winnie reaches over the edge of the couch and plunges the knife into Verloc's chest. Verloc has enough time to see what's about to happen, even enough time to formulate a plan for escape, but not enough time to actually act. The knife is in him, and the only word that can escape his mouth is "Don't" . With the deed done, Winnie leans against the sofa and rests her arms on it. As she rests, though, she hears a loud ticking sound, and glances at the clock across the room. She remembers that the tick of this clock is completely silent, and then looks around for the source of the noise. Her eyes eventually lead her back to the body of her husband, where she sees drops of blood running to the edge of the knife handle and falling to the wooden floor, making a tic tic tic sound. This sound eventually turns into a steady flow as the blood comes out more and more, falling in a constant stream from the knife. For the first time since hearing about Stevie's death, Winnie's wits seem to come back to her. She totally freaks out about what she's done and smashes into the kitchen table as she runs from Verloc's body.

