towards Mr Verloc’s home. Chief Inspector Heat respected his own
private character so consistently that he took especial pains to
avoid all the police constables on point and patrol duty in the
vicinity of Brett Street. This precaution was much more necessary
for a man of his standing than for an obscure Assistant
Commissioner. Private Citizen Heat entered the street, manoeuvring
in a way which in a member of the criminal classes would have been
stigmatised as slinking. The piece of cloth picked up in Greenwich
was in his pocket. Not that he had the slightest intention of
producing it in his private capacity. On the contrary, he wanted
to know just what Mr Verloc would be disposed to say voluntarily.
He hoped Mr Verloc’s talk would be of a nature to incriminate
Michaelis. It was a conscientiously professional hope in the main,
but not without its moral value. For Chief Inspector Heat was a
servant of justice. Find – Mr Verloc from home, he felt
disappointed.
“I would wait for him a little if I were sure he wouldn’t be long,”
he said.
Mrs Verloc volunteered no assurance of any kind.
“The information I need is quite private,” he repeated. “You
understand what I mean? I wonder if you could give me a notion
where he’s gone to?”
Mrs Verloc shook her head.
“Can’t say.”
She turned away to range some boxes on the shelves behind the
counter. Chief Inspector Heat looked at her thoughtfully for a
time.
“I suppose you know who I am?” he said.
Mrs Verloc glanced over her shoulder. Chief Inspector Heat was
amazed at her coolness.
“Come! You know I am in the police,” he said sharply.
“I don’t trouble my head much about it,” Mrs Verloc remarked,
returning to the ranging of her boxes.
“My name is Heat. Chief Inspector Heat of the Special Crimes
section.”
Mrs Verloc adjusted nicely in its place a small cardboard box, and
turning round, faced him again, heavy-eyed, with idle hands hanging
down. A silence reigned for a time.
“So your husband went out a quarter of an hour ago! And he didn’t
say when he would be back?”
“He didn’t go out alone,” Mrs Verloc let fall negligently.
“A friend?”
Mrs Verloc touched the back of her hair. It was in perfect order.
“A stranger who called.”
“I see. What sort of man was that stranger? Would you mind
telling me?”
Mrs Verloc did not mind. And when Chief Inspector Heat heard of a
man dark, thin, with a long face and turned up moustaches, he gave
signs of perturbation, and exclaimed:
“Dash me if I didn’t think so! He hasn’t lost any time.”
He was intensely disgusted in the secrecy of his heart at the
unofficial conduct of his immediate chief. But he was not
quixotic. He lost all desire to await Mr Verloc’s return. What
they had gone out for he did not know, but he imagined it possible
that they would return together. The case is not followed
properly, it’s being tampered with, he thought bitterly.
“I am afraid I haven’t time to wait for your husband,” he said.
Mrs Verloc received this declaration listlessly. Her detachment
had impressed Chief Inspector Heat all along. At this precise
moment it whetted his curiosity. Chief Inspector Heat hung in the
wind, swayed by his passions like the most private of citizens.
“I think,” he said, looking at her steadily, “that you could give
me a pretty good notion of what’s going on if you liked.”
Forcing her fine, inert eyes to return his gaze, Mrs Verloc
murmured:
“Going on! What IS going on?”
“Why, the affair I came to talk about a little with your husband.”
That day Mrs Verloc had glanced at a morning paper as usual. But
she had not stirred out of doors. The newsboys never invaded Brett
Street. It was not a street for their business. And the echo of
their cries drifting along the populous thoroughfares, expired
between the dirty brick walls without reaching the threshold of the
shop. Her husband had not brought an evening paper home. At any
rate she had not seen it. Mrs Verloc knew nothing whatever of any