The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
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.