The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
country up to eight o’clock this morning. It is more than likely that
Michaelis knows nothing of it to this moment.”
“You are positive as to that?” asked the great man.
“Quite certain, Sir Ethelred. This fellow Verloc went there this
morning, and took away the lad on the pretence of going out for a walk in
the lanes. As it was not the first time that he did this, Michaelis
could not have the slightest suspicion of anything unusual. For the
rest, Sir Ethelred, the indignation of this man Verloc had left nothing
in doubt—nothing whatever. He had been driven out of his mind almost by
an extraordinary performance, which for you or me it would be difficult
to take as seriously meant, but which produced a great impression
obviously on him.”
The Assistant Commissioner then imparted briefly to the great man, who
sat still, resting his eyes under the screen of his hand, Mr Verloc’s
appreciation of Mr Vladimir’s proceedings and character. The Assistant
Commissioner did not seem to refuse it a certain amount of competency.
But the great personage remarked:
“All this seems very fantastic.”
“Doesn’t it? One would think a ferocious joke. But our man took it
seriously, it appears. He felt himself threatened. In the time, you
know, he was in direct communication with old Stott-Wartenheim himself,
and had come to regard his services as indispensable. It was an
extremely rude awakening. I imagine that he lost his head. He became
angry and frightened. Upon my word, my impression is that he thought
these Embassy people quite capable not only to throw him out but, to give
him away too in some manner or other—”
“How long were you with him,” interrupted the Presence from behind his
big hand.
“Some forty minutes, Sir Ethelred, in a house of bad repute called
Continental Hotel, closeted in a room which by-the-by I took for the
night. I found him under the influence of that reaction which follows
the effort of crime. The man cannot be defined as a hardened criminal.
It is obvious that he did not plan the death of that wretched lad—his
brother-in-law. That was a shock to him—I could see that. Perhaps he is
a man of strong sensibilities. Perhaps he was even fond of the lad—who
knows? He might have hoped that the fellow would get clear away; in
which case it would have been almost impossible to bring this thing home
to anyone. At any rate he risked consciously nothing more but arrest for
him.”
The Assistant Commissioner paused in his speculations to reflect for a
moment.
“Though how, in that last case, he could hope to have his own share in
the business concealed is more than I can tell,” he continued, in his
ignorance of poor Stevie’s devotion to Mr Verloc (who was _good_), and of
his truly peculiar dumbness, which in the old affair of fireworks on the
stairs had for many years resisted entreaties, coaxing, anger, and other
means of investigation used by his beloved sister. For Stevie was loyal.
. . . “No, I can’t imagine. It’s possible that he never thought of that
at all. It sounds an extravagant way of putting it, Sir Ethelred, but
his state of dismay suggested to me an impulsive man who, after
committing suicide with the notion that it would end all his troubles,
had discovered that it did nothing of the kind.”
The Assistant Commissioner gave this definition in an apologetic voice.
But in truth there is a sort of lucidity proper to extravagant language,
and the great man was not offended. A slight jerky movement of the big
body half lost in the gloom of the green silk shades, of the big head
leaning on the big hand, accompanied an intermittent stifled but powerful
sound. The great man had laughed.
“What have you done with him?”
The Assistant Commissioner answered very readily:
“As he seemed very anxious to get back to his wife in the shop I let him
go, Sir Ethelred.”
“You did? But the fellow will disappear.”
“Pardon me. I don’t think so. Where could he go to? Moreover, you must
remember that he has got to think of the danger from his comrades too.
He’s there at his post. How could he explain leaving it? But even if
there were no obstacles to his freedom of action he would do nothing. At
present he hasn’t enough moral energy to take a resolution of any sort.
Permit me also to point out that if I had detained him we would have been
committed to a course of action on which I wished to know your precise
intentions first.”
The great personage rose heavily, an imposing shadowy form in the
greenish gloom of the room.
“I’ll see the Attorney-General to-night, and will send for you to-morrow
morning. Is there anything more you’d wish to tell me now?”
The Assistant Commissioner had stood up also, slender and flexible.
“I think not, Sir Ethelred, unless I were to enter into details which—”
“No. No details, please.”
The great shadowy form seemed to shrink away as if in physical dread of
details; then came forward, expanded, enormous, and weighty, offering a
large hand. “And you say that this man has got a wife?”
“Yes, Sir Ethelred,” said the Assistant Commissioner, pressing
deferentially the extended hand. “A genuine wife and a genuinely,
respectably, marital relation. He told me that after his interview at
the Embassy he would have thrown everything up, would have tried to sell
his shop, and leave the country, only he felt certain that his wife would
not even hear of going abroad. Nothing could be more characteristic of
the respectable bond than that,” went on, with a touch of grimness, the
Assistant Commissioner, whose own wife too had refused to hear of going
abroad. “Yes, a genuine wife. And the victim was a genuine
brother-in-law. From a certain point of view we are here in the presence
of a domestic drama.”
The Assistant Commissioner laughed a little; but the great man’s thoughts
seemed to have wandered far away, perhaps to the questions of his
country’s domestic policy, the battle-ground of his crusading valour
against the paynim Cheeseman. The Assistant Commissioner withdrew
quietly, unnoticed, as if already forgotten.
He had his own crusading instincts. This affair, which, in one way or
another, disgusted Chief Inspector Heat, seemed to him a providentially
given starting-point for a crusade. He had it much at heart to begin.
He walked slowly home, meditating that enterprise on the way, and
thinking over Mr Verloc’s psychology in a composite mood of repugnance
and satisfaction. He walked all the way home. Finding the drawing-room
dark, he went upstairs, and spent some time between the bedroom and the
dressing-room, changing his clothes, going to and fro with the air of a
thoughtful somnambulist. But he shook it off before going out again to
join his wife at the house of the great lady patroness of Michaelis.
He knew he would be welcomed there. On entering the smaller of the two
drawing-rooms he saw his wife in a small group near the piano. A
youngish composer in pass of becoming famous was discoursing from a music
stool to two thick men whose backs looked old, and three slender women
whose backs looked young. Behind the screen the great lady had only two
persons with her: a man and a woman, who sat side by side on arm-chairs
at the foot of her couch. She extended her hand to the Assistant
Commissioner.
“I never hoped to see you here to-night. Annie told me—”
“Yes. I had no idea myself that my work would be over so soon.”
The Assistant Commissioner added in a low tone: “I am glad to tell you
that Michaelis is altogether clear of this—”
The patroness of the ex-convict received this assurance indignantly.
“Why? Were your people stupid enough to connect him with—”
“Not stupid,” interrupted the Assistant Commissioner, contradicting
deferentially. “Clever enough—quite clever enough for that.”
A silence fell. The man at the foot of the couch had stopped speaking to
the lady, and looked on with a faint smile.
“I don’t know whether you ever met before,” said the great lady.
Mr Vladimir and the Assistant Commissioner, introduced, acknowledged each
other’s existence with punctilious and guarded courtesy.
“He’s been frightening me,” declared suddenly the lady who sat by the
side of Mr Vladimir, with an inclination of the head towards that
gentleman. The Assistant Commissioner knew the lady.
“You do not look frightened,” he pronounced, after surveying her
conscientiously with his tired and equable gaze. He was thinking
meantime to himself that in this house one met everybody sooner or later.
Mr Vladimir’s rosy countenance was wreathed in smiles, because he was
witty, but his eyes remained serious, like the eyes of convinced man.
“Well, he tried to at least,” amended the lady.
“Force of habit perhaps,” said the Assistant Commissioner, moved by an
irresistible inspiration.
“He has been threatening society with all sorts of horrors,” continued
the lady, whose enunciation was caressing and slow, “apropos of this
explosion in Greenwich Park. It appears we all ought to quake in our
shoes at what’s coming if those people are not suppressed all over the
world. I had no idea this was such a grave affair.”
Mr Vladimir, affecting not to listen, leaned towards the couch, talking
amiably in subdued tones, but he heard the Assistant Commissioner say:
“I’ve no doubt that Mr Vladimir has a very precise notion of the true
importance of this affair.”
Mr Vladimir asked himself what that confounded and intrusive policeman
was driving at. Descended from generations victimised by the instruments
of an arbitrary power, he was racially, nationally, and individually
afraid of the police. It was an inherited weakness, altogether
independent of his judgment, of his reason, of his experience. He was
born to it. But that sentiment, which resembled the irrational horror
some people have of cats, did not stand in the way of his immense
contempt for the English police. He finished the sentence addressed to
the great lady, and turned slightly in his chair.
“You mean that we have a great experience of these people. Yes; indeed,
we suffer greatly from their activity, while you”—Mr Vladimir hesitated
for a moment, in smiling perplexity—“while you suffer their presence
gladly in your midst,” he finished, displaying a dimple on each
clean-shaven cheek. Then he added more gravely: “I may even say—because
you do.”
When Mr Vladimir ceased speaking the Assistant Commissioner lowered his
glance, and the conversation dropped. Almost immediately afterwards Mr
Vladimir took leave.
Directly his back was turned on the couch the Assistant Commissioner rose
too.
“I thought you were going to stay and take Annie home,” said the lady
patroness of Michaelis.
“I find that I’ve yet a little work to do to-night.”
“In connection—?”
“Well, yes—in a way.”
“Tell me, what is it really—this horror?”
“It’s difficult to say what it is, but it may yet be a _cause célèbre_,”
said the Assistant Commissioner.
He left the drawing-room hurriedly, and found Mr Vladimir still in the
hall, wrapping up his throat carefully in a large silk handkerchief.
Behind him a footman waited, holding his overcoat. Another stood ready
to open the door. The Assistant Commissioner was duly helped into his
coat, and let out at once. After descending the front steps he stopped,
as if to consider the way he should take. On seeing this through the
door held open, Mr Vladimir lingered in the hall to get out a cigar and
asked for a light. It was furnished to him by an elderly man out of
livery with an air of calm solicitude. But the match went out; the
footman then closed the door, and Mr Vladimir lighted his large Havana
with leisurely care.
When at last he got out of the house, he saw with disgust the “confounded