He stepped back one pace, and blew his nose loudly.
He was, in truth, startled and alarmed. The rusty London sunshine
struggling clear of the London mist shed a lukewarm brightness into
the First Secretary’s private room; and in the silence Mr Verloc
heard against a window-pane the faint buzzing of a fly – his first
fly of the year – heralding better than any number of swallows the
approach of spring. The useless fussing of that tiny energetic
organism affected unpleasantly this big man threatened in his
indolence.
In the pause Mr Vladimir formulated in his mind a series of
disparaging remarks concerning Mr Verloc’s face and figure. The
fellow was unexpectedly vulgar, heavy, and impudently
unintelligent. He looked uncommonly like a master plumber come to
present his bill. The First Secretary of the Embassy, from his
occasional excursions into the field of American humour, had formed
a special notion of that class of mechanic as the embodiment of
fraudulent laziness and incompetency.
This was then the famous and trusty secret agent, so secret that he
was never designated otherwise but by the symbol [delta] in the
late Baron Stott-Wartenheim’s official, semi-official, and
confidential correspondence; the celebrated agent [delta], whose
warnings had the power to change the schemes and the dates of
royal, imperial, grand ducal journeys, and sometimes caused them to
be put off altogether! This fellow! And Mr Vladimir indulged
mentally in an enormous and derisive fit of merriment, partly at
his own astonishment, which he judged naive, but mostly at the
expense of the universally regretted Baron Stott-Wartenheim. His
late Excellency, whom the august favour of his Imperial master had
imposed as Ambassador upon several reluctant Ministers of Foreign
Affairs, had enjoyed in his lifetime a fame for an owlish,
pessimistic gullibility. His Excellency had the social revolution
on the brain. He imagined himself to be a diplomatist set apart by
a special dispensation to watch the end of diplomacy, and pretty
nearly the end of the world, in a horrid democratic upheaval. His
prophetic and doleful despatches had been for years the joke of
Foreign Offices. He was said to have exclaimed on his deathbed
(visited by his Imperial friend and master): “Unhappy Europe! Thou
shalt perish by the moral insanity of thy children!” He was fated
to be the victim of the first humbugging rascal that came along,
thought Mr Vladimir, smiling vaguely at Mr Verloc.
“You ought to venerate the memory of Baron Stott-Wartenheim,” he
exclaimed suddenly.
The lowered physiognomy of Mr Verloc expressed a sombre and weary
annoyance.
“Permit me to observe to you,” he said, “that I came here because I
was summoned by a peremptory letter. I have been here only twice
before in the last eleven years, and certainly never at eleven in
the morning. It isn’t very wise to call me up like this. There is
just a chance of being seen. And that would be no joke for me.”
Mr Vladimir shrugged his shoulders.
“It would destroy my usefulness,” continued the other hotly.
“That’s your affair,” murmured Mr Vladimir, with soft brutality.
“When you cease to be useful you shall cease to be employed. Yes.
Right off. Cut short. You shall – ” Mr Vladimir, frowning,
paused, at a loss for a sufficiently idiomatic expression, and
instantly brightened up, with a grin of beautifully white teeth.
“You shall be chucked,” he brought out ferociously.
Once more Mr Verloc had to react with all the force of his will
against that sensation of faintness running down one’s legs which
once upon a time had inspired some poor devil with the felicitous
expression: “My heart went down into my boots.” Mr Verloc, aware
of the sensation, raised his head bravely.
Mr Vladimir bore the look of heavy inquiry with perfect serenity.
“What we want is to administer a tonic to the Conference in Milan,”
he said airily. “Its deliberations upon international action for
the suppression of political crime don’t seem to get anywhere.
England lags. This country is absurd with its sentimental regard
for individual liberty. It’s intolerable to think that all your
friends have got only to come over to – ”
“In that way I have them all under my eye,” Mr Verloc interrupted