studied Latin – have you?”
“No,” growled Mr Verloc. “You did not expect me to know it. I
belong to the million. Who knows Latin? Only a few hundred
imbeciles who aren’t fit to take care of themselves.”
For some thirty seconds longer Mr Vladimir studied in the mirror
the fleshy profile, the gross bulk, of the man behind him. And at
the same time he had the advantage of seeing his own face, clean-
shaved and round, rosy about the gills, and with the thin sensitive
lips formed exactly for the utterance of those delicate witticisms
which had made him such a favourite in the very highest society.
Then he turned, and advanced into the room with such determination
that the very ends of his quaintly old-fashioned bow necktie seemed
to bristle with unspeakable menaces. The movement was so swift and
fierce that Mr Verloc, casting an oblique glance, quailed inwardly.
“Aha! You dare be impudent,” Mr Vladimir began, with an amazingly
guttural intonation not only utterly un-English, but absolutely un-
European, and startling even to Mr Verloc’s experience of
cosmopolitan slums. “You dare! Well, I am going to speak plain
English to you. Voice won’t do. We have no use for your voice.
We don’t want a voice. We want facts – startling facts – damn
you,” he added, with a sort of ferocious discretion, right into Mr
Verloc’s face.
“Don’t you try to come over me with your Hyperborean manners,” Mr
Verloc defended himself huskily, looking at the carpet. At this
his interlocutor, smiling mockingly above the bristling bow of his
necktie, switched the conversation into French.
“You give yourself for an `agent provocateur.’ The proper business
of an `agent provocateur’ is to provoke. As far as I can judge
from your record kept here, you have done nothing to earn your
money for the last three years.”
“Nothing!” exclaimed Verloc, stirring not a limb, and not raising
his eyes, but with the note of sincere feeling in his tone. “I
have several times prevented what might have been – ”
“There is a proverb in this country which says prevention is better
than cure,” interrupted Mr Vladimir, throwing himself into the arm-
chair. “It is stupid in a general way. There is no end to
prevention. But it is characteristic. They dislike finality in
this country. Don’t you be too English. And in this particular
instance, don’t be absurd. The evil is already here. We don’t
want prevention – we want cure.”
He paused, turned to the desk, and turning over some papers lying
there, spoke in a changed business-like tone, without looking at Mr
Verloc.
“You know, of course, of the International Conference assembled in
Milan?”
Mr Verloc intimated hoarsely that he was in the habit of reading
the daily papers. To a further question his answer was that, of
course, he understood what he read. At this Mr Vladimir, smiling
faintly at the documents he was still scanning one after another,
murmured “As long as it is not written in Latin, I suppose.”
“Or Chinese,” added Mr Verloc stolidly.
“H’m. Some of your revolutionary friends’ effusions are written in
a CHARABIA every bit as incomprehensible as Chinese – ” Mr
Vladimir let fall disdainfully a grey sheet of printed matter.
“What are all these leaflets headed F. P., with a hammer, pen, and
torch crossed? What does it mean, this F. P.?” Mr Verloc
approached the imposing writing-table.
“The Future of the Proletariat. It’s a society,” he explained,
standing ponderously by the side of the arm-chair, “not anarchist
in principle, but open to all shades of revolutionary opinion.”
“Are you in it?”
“One of the Vice-Presidents,” Mr Verloc breathed out heavily; and
the First Secretary of the Embassy raised his head to look at him.
“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he said incisively.
“Isn’t your society capable of anything else but printing this
prophetic bosh in blunt type on this filthy paper eh? Why don’t
you do something? Look here. I’ve this matter in hand now, and I
tell you plainly that you will have to earn your money. The good
old Stott-Wartenheim times are over. No work, no pay.”
Mr Verloc felt a queer sensation of faintness in his stout legs.