The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
stick held in one hand he glanced about, passing his other podgy hand
over his uncovered sleek head.
Another door opened noiselessly, and Mr Verloc immobilising his glance in
that direction saw at first only black clothes, the bald top of a head,
and a drooping dark grey whisker on each side of a pair of wrinkled
hands. The person who had entered was holding a batch of papers before
his eyes and walked up to the table with a rather mincing step, turning
the papers over the while. Privy Councillor Wurmt, Chancelier
d’Ambassade, was rather short-sighted. This meritorious official laying
the papers on the table, disclosed a face of pasty complexion and of
melancholy ugliness surrounded by a lot of fine, long dark grey hairs,
barred heavily by thick and bushy eyebrows. He put on a black-framed
pince-nez upon a blunt and shapeless nose, and seemed struck by Mr
Verloc’s appearance. Under the enormous eyebrows his weak eyes blinked
pathetically through the glasses.
He made no sign of greeting; neither did Mr Verloc, who certainly knew
his place; but a subtle change about the general outlines of his
shoulders and back suggested a slight bending of Mr Verloc’s spine under
the vast surface of his overcoat. The effect was of unobtrusive
deference.
“I have here some of your reports,” said the bureaucrat in an
unexpectedly soft and weary voice, and pressing the tip of his forefinger
on the papers with force. He paused; and Mr Verloc, who had recognised
his own handwriting very well, waited in an almost breathless silence.
“We are not very satisfied with the attitude of the police here,” the
other continued, with every appearance of mental fatigue.
The shoulders of Mr Verloc, without actually moving, suggested a shrug.
And for the first time since he left his home that morning his lips
opened.
“Every country has its police,” he said philosophically. But as the
official of the Embassy went on blinking at him steadily he felt
constrained to add: “Allow me to observe that I have no means of action
upon the police here.”
“What is desired,” said the man of papers, “is the occurrence of
something definite which should stimulate their vigilance. That is
within your province—is it not so?”
Mr Verloc made no answer except by a sigh, which escaped him
involuntarily, for instantly he tried to give his face a cheerful
expression. The official blinked doubtfully, as if affected by the dim
light of the room. He repeated vaguely.
“The vigilance of the police—and the severity of the magistrates. The
general leniency of the judicial procedure here, and the utter absence of
all repressive measures, are a scandal to Europe. What is wished for
just now is the accentuation of the unrest—of the fermentation which
undoubtedly exists—”
“Undoubtedly, undoubtedly,” broke in Mr Verloc in a deep deferential bass
of an oratorical quality, so utterly different from the tone in which he
had spoken before that his interlocutor remained profoundly surprised.
“It exists to a dangerous degree. My reports for the last twelve months
make it sufficiently clear.”
“Your reports for the last twelve months,” State Councillor Wurmt began
in his gentle and dispassionate tone, “have been read by me. I failed to
discover why you wrote them at all.”
A sad silence reigned for a time. Mr Verloc seemed to have swallowed his
tongue, and the other gazed at the papers on the table fixedly. At last
he gave them a slight push.
“The state of affairs you expose there is assumed to exist as the first
condition of your employment. What is required at present is not
writing, but the bringing to light of a distinct, significant fact—I
would almost say of an alarming fact.”
“I need not say that all my endeavours shall be directed to that end,” Mr
Verloc said, with convinced modulations in his conversational husky tone.
But the sense of being blinked at watchfully behind the blind glitter of
these eye-glasses on the other side of the table disconcerted him. He
stopped short with a gesture of absolute devotion. The useful,
hard-working, if obscure member of the Embassy had an air of being
impressed by some newly-born thought.
“You are very corpulent,” he said.
This observation, really of a psychological nature, and advanced with the
modest hesitation of an officeman more familiar with ink and paper than
with the requirements of active life, stung Mr Verloc in the manner of a
rude personal remark. He stepped back a pace.
“Eh? What were you pleased to say?” he exclaimed, with husky resentment.
The Chancelier d’Ambassade entrusted with the conduct of this interview
seemed to find it too much for him.
“I think,” he said, “that you had better see Mr Vladimir. Yes, decidedly
I think you ought to see Mr Vladimir. Be good enough to wait here,” he
added, and went out with mincing steps.
At once Mr Verloc passed his hand over his hair. A slight perspiration
had broken out on his forehead. He let the air escape from his pursed-up
lips like a man blowing at a spoonful of hot soup. But when the servant
in brown appeared at the door silently, Mr Verloc had not moved an inch
from the place he had occupied throughout the interview. He had remained
motionless, as if feeling himself surrounded by pitfalls.
He walked along a passage lighted by a lonely gas-jet, then up a flight
of winding stairs, and through a glazed and cheerful corridor on the
first floor. The footman threw open a door, and stood aside. The feet
of Mr Verloc felt a thick carpet. The room was large, with three
windows; and a young man with a shaven, big face, sitting in a roomy
arm-chair before a vast mahogany writing-table, said in French to the
Chancelier d’Ambassade, who was going out with the papers in his hand:
“You are quite right, mon cher. He’s fat—the animal.”
Mr Vladimir, First Secretary, had a drawing-room reputation as an
agreeable and entertaining man. He was something of a favourite in
society. His wit consisted in discovering droll connections between
incongruous ideas; and when talking in that strain he sat well forward of
his seat, with his left hand raised, as if exhibiting his funny
demonstrations between the thumb and forefinger, while his round and
clean-shaven face wore an expression of merry perplexity.
But there was no trace of merriment or perplexity in the way he looked at
Mr Verloc. Lying far back in the deep arm-chair, with squarely spread
elbows, and throwing one leg over a thick knee, he had with his smooth
and rosy countenance the air of a preternaturally thriving baby that will
not stand nonsense from anybody.
“You understand French, I suppose?” he said.
Mr Verloc stated huskily that he did. His whole vast bulk had a forward
inclination. He stood on the carpet in the middle of the room, clutching
his hat and stick in one hand; the other hung lifelessly by his side. He
muttered unobtrusively somewhere deep down in his throat something about
having done his military service in the French artillery. At once, with
contemptuous perversity, Mr Vladimir changed the language, and began to
speak idiomatic English without the slightest trace of a foreign accent.
“Ah! Yes. Of course. Let’s see. How much did you get for obtaining
the design of the improved breech-block of their new field-gun?”
“Five years’ rigorous confinement in a fortress,” Mr Verloc answered
unexpectedly, but without any sign of feeling.
“You got off easily,” was Mr Vladimir’s comment. “And, anyhow, it served
you right for letting yourself get caught. What made you go in for that
sort of thing—eh?”
Mr Verloc’s husky conversational voice was heard speaking of youth, of a
fatal infatuation for an unworthy—
“Aha! Cherchez la femme,” Mr Vladimir deigned to interrupt, unbending,
but without affability; there was, on the contrary, a touch of grimness
in his condescension. “How long have you been employed by the Embassy
here?” he asked.
“Ever since the time of the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim,” Mr Verloc
answered in subdued tones, and protruding his lips sadly, in sign of
sorrow for the deceased diplomat. The First Secretary observed this play
of physiognomy steadily.
“Ah! ever since. Well! What have you got to say for yourself?” he asked
sharply.
Mr Verloc answered with some surprise that he was not aware of having
anything special to say. He had been summoned by a letter—And he plunged
his hand busily into the side pocket of his overcoat, but before the
mocking, cynical watchfulness of Mr Vladimir, concluded to leave it
there.
“Bah!” said that latter. “What do you mean by getting out of condition
like this? You haven’t got even the physique of your profession. You—a
member of a starving proletariat—never! You—a desperate socialist or
anarchist—which is it?”
“Anarchist,” stated Mr Verloc in a deadened tone.
“Bosh!” went on Mr Vladimir, without raising his voice. “You startled
old Wurmt himself. You wouldn’t deceive an idiot. They all are that
by-the-by, but you seem to me simply impossible. So you began your
connection with us by stealing the French gun designs. And you got
yourself caught. That must have been very disagreeable to our
Government. You don’t seem to be very smart.”
Mr Verloc tried to exculpate himself huskily.
“As I’ve had occasion to observe before, a fatal infatuation for an
unworthy—”
Mr Vladimir raised a large white, plump hand. “Ah, yes. The unlucky
attachment—of your youth. She got hold of the money, and then sold you
to the police—eh?”
The doleful change in Mr Verloc’s physiognomy, the momentary drooping of
his whole person, confessed that such was the regrettable case. Mr
Vladimir’s hand clasped the ankle reposing on his knee. The sock was of
dark blue silk.
“You see, that was not very clever of you. Perhaps you are too
susceptible.”
Mr Verloc intimated in a throaty, veiled murmur that he was no longer
young.
“Oh! That’s a failing which age does not cure,” Mr Vladimir remarked,
with sinister familiarity. “But no! You are too fat for that. You
could not have come to look like this if you had been at all susceptible.
I’ll tell you what I think is the matter: you are a lazy fellow. How
long have you been drawing pay from this Embassy?”
“Eleven years,” was the answer, after a moment of sulky hesitation.
“I’ve been charged with several missions to London while His Excellency
Baron Stott-Wartenheim was still Ambassador in Paris. Then by his
Excellency’s instructions I settled down in London. I am English.”
“You are! Are you? Eh?”
“A natural-born British subject,” Mr Verloc said stolidly. “But my
father was French, and so—”
“Never mind explaining,” interrupted the other. “I daresay you could
have been legally a Marshal of France and a Member of Parliament in
England—and then, indeed, you would have been of some use to our
Embassy.”
This flight of fancy provoked something like a faint smile on Mr Verloc’s
face. Mr Vladimir retained an imperturbable gravity.
“But, as I’ve said, you are a lazy fellow; you don’t use your
opportunities. In the time of Baron Stott-Wartenheim we had a lot of
soft-headed people running this Embassy. They caused fellows of your
sort to form a false conception of the nature of a secret service fund.
It is my business to correct this misapprehension by telling you what the
secret service is not. It is not a philanthropic institution. I’ve had
you called here on purpose to tell you this.”
Mr Vladimir observed the forced expression of bewilderment on Verloc’s
face, and smiled sarcastically.
“I see that you understand me perfectly. I daresay you are intelligent
enough for your work. What we want now is activity—activity.”
On repeating this last word Mr Vladimir laid a long white forefinger on