general to let his experience guide his conduct in preference to
applying his sagacity to each special case. His sagacity in this
case was busy in other directions. Women’s words fell into water,
but the shortcomings of time-tables remained. The insular nature
of Great Britain obtruded itself upon his notice in an odious form.
“Might just as well be put under lock and key every night,” he
thought irritably, as nonplussed as though he had a wall to scale
with the woman on his back. Suddenly he slapped his forehead. He
had by dint of cudgelling his brains just thought of the
Southampton – St Malo service. The boat left about midnight.
There was a train at 10.30. He became cheery and ready to act.
“From Waterloo. Plenty of time. We are all right after all. . . .
What’s the matter now? This isn’t the way,” he protested.
Mrs Verloc, having hooked her arm into his, was trying to drag him
into Brett Street again.
“I’ve forgotten to shut the shop door as I went out,” she
whispered, terribly agitated.
The shop and all that was in it had ceased to interest Comrade
Ossipon. He knew how to limit his desires. He was on the point of
saying “What of that? Let it be,” but he refrained. He disliked
argument about trifles. He even mended his pace considerably on
the thought that she might have left the money in the drawer. But
his willingness lagged behind her feverish impatience.
The shop seemed to be quite dark at first. The door stood ajar.
Mrs Verloc, leaning against the front, gasped out:
“Nobody has been in. Look! The light – the light in the parlour.”
Ossipon, stretching his head forward, saw a faint gleam in the
darkness of the shop.
“There is,” he said.
“I forgot it.” Mrs Verloc’s voice came from behind her veil
faintly. And as he stood waiting for her to enter first, she said
louder: “Go in and put it out – or I’ll go mad.”
He made no immediate objection to this proposal, so strangely
motived. “Where’s all that money?” he asked.
“On me! Go, Tom. Quick! Put it out. . . . Go in!” she cried,
seizing him by both shoulders from behind.
Not prepared for a display of physical force, Comrade Ossipon
stumbled far into the shop before her push. He was astonished at
the strength of the woman and scandalised by her proceedings. But
he did not retrace his steps in order to remonstrate with her
severely in the street. He was beginning to be disagreeably
impressed by her fantastic behaviour. Moreover, this or never was
the time to humour the woman. Comrade Ossipon avoided easily the
end of the counter, and approached calmly the glazed door of the
parlour. The curtain over the panes being drawn back a little he,
by a very natural impulse, looked in, just as he made ready to turn
the handle. He looked in without a thought, without intention,
without curiosity of any sort. He looked in because he could not
help looking in. He looked in, and discovered Mr Verloc reposing
quietly on the sofa.
A yell coming from the innermost depths of his chest died out
unheard and transformed into a sort of greasy, sickly taste on his
lips. At the same time the mental personality of Comrade Ossipon
executed a frantic leap backward. But his body, left thus without
intellectual guidance, held on to the door handle with the
unthinking force of an instinct. The robust anarchist did not even
totter. And he stared, his face close to the glass, his eyes
protruding out of his head. He would have given anything to get
away, but his returning reason informed him that it would not do to
let go the door handle. What was it – madness, a nightmare, or a
trap into which he had been decoyed with fiendish artfulness? Why
– what for? He did not know. Without any sense of guilt in his
breast, in the full peace of his conscience as far as these people
were concerned, the idea that he would be murdered for mysterious
reasons by the couple Verloc passed not so much across his mind as