across the pit of his stomach, and went out, leaving behind a trail
of sickly faintness – an indisposition. Comrade Ossipon did not
feel very well in a very special way for a moment – a long moment.
And he stared. Mr Verloc lay very still meanwhile, simulating
sleep for reasons of his own, while that savage woman of his was
guarding the door – invisible and silent in the dark and deserted
street. Was all this a some sort of terrifying arrangement
invented by the police for his especial benefit? His modesty
shrank from that explanation.
But the true sense of the scene he was beholding came to Ossipon
through the contemplation of the hat. It seemed an extraordinary
thing, an ominous object, a sign. Black, and rim upward, it lay on
the floor before the couch as if prepared to receive the
contributions of pence from people who would come presently to
behold Mr Verloc in the fullness of his domestic ease reposing on a
sofa. From the hat the eyes of the robust anarchist wandered to
the displaced table, gazed at the broken dish for a time, received
a kind of optical shock from observing a white gleam under the
imperfectly closed eyelids of the man on the couch. Mr Verloc did
not seem so much asleep now as lying down with a bent head and
looking insistently at his left breast. And when Comrade Ossipon
had made out the handle of the knife he turned away from the glazed
door, and retched violently.
The crash of the street door flung to made his very soul leap in a
panic. This house with its harmless tenant could still be made a
trap of – a trap of a terrible kind. Comrade Ossipon had no
settled conception now of what was happening to him. Catching his
thigh against the end of the counter, he spun round, staggered with
a cry of pain, felt in the distracting clatter of the bell his arms
pinned to his side by a convulsive hug, while the cold lips of a
woman moved creepily on his very ear to form the words:
“Policeman! He has seen me!”
He ceased to struggle; she never let him go. Her hands had locked
themselves with an inseparable twist of fingers on his robust back.
While the footsteps approached, they breathed quickly, breast to
breast, with hard, laboured breaths, as if theirs had been the
attitude of a deadly struggle, while, in fact, it was the attitude
of deadly fear. And the time was long.
The constable on the beat had in truth seen something of Mrs
Verloc; only coming from the lighted thoroughfare at the other end
of Brett Street, she had been no more to him than a flutter in the
darkness. And he was not even quite sure that there had been a
flutter. He had no reason to hurry up. On coming abreast of the
shop he observed that it had been closed early. There was nothing
very unusual in that. The men on duty had special instructions
about that shop: what went on about there was not to be meddled
with unless absolutely disorderly, but any observations made were
to be reported. There were no observations to make; but from a
sense of duty and for the peace of his conscience, owing also to
that doubtful flutter of the darkness, the constable crossed the
road, and tried the door. The spring latch, whose key was reposing
for ever off duty in the late Mr Verloc’s waistcoat pocket, held as
well as usual. While the conscientious officer was shaking the
handle, Ossipon felt the cold lips of the woman stirring again
creepily against his very ear:
“If he comes in kill me – kill me, Tom.”
The constable moved away, flashing as he passed the light of his
dark lantern, merely for form’s sake, at the shop window. For a
moment longer the man and the woman inside stood motionless,
panting, breast to breast; then her fingers came unlocked, her arms
fell by her side slowly. Ossipon leaned against the counter. The
robust anarchist wanted support badly. This was awful. He was
almost too disgusted for speech. Yet he managed to utter a