plaintive thought, showing at least that he realised his position.
“Only a couple of minutes later and you’d have made me blunder
against the fellow poking about here with his damned dark lantern.”
The widow of Mr Verloc, motionless in the middle of the shop, said
insistently:
“Go in and put that light out, Tom. It will drive me crazy.”
She saw vaguely his vehement gesture of refusal. Nothing in the
world would have induced Ossipon to go into the parlour. He was
not superstitious, but there was too much blood on the floor; a
beastly pool of it all round the hat. He judged he had been
already far too near that corpse for his peace of mind – for the
safety of his neck, perhaps!
“At the meter then! There. Look. In that corner.”
The robust form of Comrade Ossipon, striding brusque and shadowy
across the shop, squatted in a corner obediently; but this
obedience was without grace. He fumbled nervously – and suddenly
in the sound of a muttered curse the light behind the glazed door
flicked out to a gasping, hysterical sigh of a woman. Night, the
inevitable reward of men’s faithful labours on this earth, night
had fallen on Mr Verloc, the tried revolutionist – “one of the old
lot” – the humble guardian of society; the invaluable Secret Agent
[delta] of Baron Stott-Wartenheim’s despatches; a servant of law
and order, faithful, trusted, accurate, admirable, with perhaps one
single amiable weakness: the idealistic belief in being loved for
himself.
Ossipon groped his way back through the stuffy atmosphere, as black
as ink now, to the counter. The voice of Mrs Verloc, standing in
the middle of the shop, vibrated after him in that blackness with a
desperate protest.
“I will not be hanged, Tom. I will not – ”
She broke off. Ossipon from the counter issued a warning: “Don’t
shout like this,” then seemed to reflect profoundly. “You did this
thing quite by yourself?” he inquired in a hollow voice, but with
an appearance of masterful calmness which filled Mrs Verloc’s heart
with grateful confidence in his protecting strength.
“Yes,” she whispered, invisible.
“I wouldn’t have believed it possible,” he muttered. “Nobody
would.” She heard him move about and the snapping of a lock in the
parlour door. Comrade Ossipon had turned the key on Mr Verloc’s
repose; and this he did not from reverence for its eternal nature
or any other obscurely sentimental consideration, but for the
precise reason that he was not at all sure that there was not
someone else hiding somewhere in the house. He did not believe the
woman, or rather he was incapable by now of judging what could be
true, possible, or even probable in this astounding universe. He
was terrified out of all capacity for belief or disbelief in regard
of this extraordinary affair, which began with police inspectors
and Embassies and would end goodness knows where – on the scaffold
for someone. He was terrified at the thought that he could not
prove the use he made of his time ever since seven o’clock, for he
had been skulking about Brett Street. He was terrified at this
savage woman who had brought him in there, and would probably
saddle him with complicity, at least if he were not careful. He
was terrified at the rapidity with which he had been involved in
such dangers – decoyed into it. It was some twenty minutes since
he had met her – not more.
The voice of Mrs Verloc rose subdued, pleading piteously: “Don’t
let them hang me, Tom! Take me out of the country. I’ll work for
you. I’ll slave for you. I’ll love you. I’ve no one in the
world. . . . Who would look at me if you don’t!” She ceased for a
moment; then in the depths of the loneliness made round her by an
insignificant thread of blood trickling off the handle of a knife,
she found a dreadful inspiration to her – who had been the
respectable girl of the Belgravian mansion, the loyal, respectable
wife of Mr Verloc. “I won’t ask you to marry me,” she breathed out
in shame-faced accents.