Embassy people?”
“Yourself.”
“I! I! Talked of the Embassy to you!”
Mr Verloc seemed scared and bewildered beyond measure. His wife
explained:
“You’ve been talking a little in your sleep of late, Adolf.”
“What – what did I say? What do you know?”
“Nothing much. It seemed mostly nonsense. Enough to let me guess
that something worried you.”
Mr Verloc rammed his hat on his head. A crimson flood of anger ran
over his face.
“Nonsense – eh? The Embassy people! I would cut their hearts out
one after another. But let them look out. I’ve got a tongue in my
head.”
He fumed, pacing up and down between the table and the sofa, his
open overcoat catching against the angles. The red flood of anger
ebbed out, and left his face all white, with quivering nostrils.
Mrs Verloc, for the purposes of practical existence, put down these
appearances to the cold.
“Well,” she said, “get rid of the man, whoever he is, as soon as
you can, and come back home to me. You want looking after for a
day or two.”
Mr Verloc calmed down, and, with resolution imprinted on his pale
face, had already opened the door, when his wife called him back in
a whisper:
“Adolf! Adolf!” He came back startled. “What about that money
you drew out?” she asked. “You’ve got it in your pocket? Hadn’t
you better – ”
Mr Verloc gazed stupidly into the palm of his wife’s extended hand
for some time before he slapped his brow.
“Money! Yes! Yes! I didn’t know what you meant.”
He drew out of his breast pocket a new pigskin pocket-book. Mrs
Verloc received it without another word, and stood still till the
bell, clattering after Mr Verloc and Mr Verloc’s visitor, had
quieted down. Only then she peeped in at the amount, drawing the
notes out for the purpose. After this inspection she looked round
thoughtfully, with an air of mistrust in the silence and solitude
of the house. This abode of her married life appeared to her as
lonely and unsafe as though it had been situated in the midst of a
forest. No receptacle she could think of amongst the solid, heavy
furniture seemed other but flimsy and particularly tempting to her
conception of a house-breaker. It was an ideal conception, endowed
with sublime faculties and a miraculous insight. The till was not
to be thought of it was the first spot a thief would make for. Mrs
Verloc unfastening hastily a couple of hooks, slipped the pocket-
book under the bodice of her dress. Having thus disposed of her
husband’s capital, she was rather glad to hear the clatter of the
door bell, announcing an arrival. Assuming the fixed, unabashed
stare and the stony expression reserved for the casual customer,
she walked in behind the counter.
A man standing in the middle of the shop was inspecting it with a
swift, cool, all-round glance. His eyes ran over the walls, took
in the ceiling, noted the floor – all in a moment. The points of a
long fair moustache fell below the line of the jaw. He smiled the
smile of an old if distant acquaintance, and Mrs Verloc remembered
having seen him before. Not a customer. She softened her
“customer stare” to mere indifference, and faced him across the
counter.
He approached, on his side, confidentially, but not too markedly
so.
“Husband at home, Mrs Verloc?” he asked in an easy, full tone.
“No. He’s gone out.”
“I am sorry for that. I’ve called to get from him a little private
information.”
This was the exact truth. Chief Inspector Heat had been all the
way home, and had even gone so far as to think of getting into his
slippers, since practically he was, he told himself, chucked out of
that case. He indulged in some scornful and in a few angry
thoughts, and found the occupation so unsatisfactory that he
resolved to seek relief out of doors. Nothing prevented him paying
a friendly call to Mr Verloc, casually as it were. It was in the
character of a private citizen that walking out privately he made
use of his customary conveyances. Their general direction was