affair. And she said so, with a genuine note of wonder in her
quiet voice.
Chief Inspector Heat did not believe for a moment in so much
ignorance. Curtly, without amiability, he stated the bare fact.
Mrs Verloc turned away her eyes.
“I call it silly,” she pronounced slowly. She paused. “We ain’t
downtrodden slaves here.”
The Chief Inspector waited watchfully. Nothing more came.
“And your husband didn’t mention anything to you when he came
home?”
Mrs Verloc simply turned her face from right to left in sign of
negation. A languid, baffling silence reigned in the shop. Chief
Inspector Heat felt provoked beyond endurance.
“There was another small matter,” he began in a detached tone,
“which I wanted to speak to your husband about. There came into
our hands a – a – what we believe is – a stolen overcoat.”
Mrs Verloc, with her mind specially aware of thieves that evening,
touched lightly the bosom of her dress.
“We have lost no overcoat,” she said calmly.
“That’s funny,” continued Private Citizen Heat. “I see you keep a
lot of marking ink here – ”
He took up a small bottle, and looked at it against the gas-jet in
the middle of the shop.
“Purple – isn’t it?” he remarked, setting it down again. “As I
said, it’s strange. Because the overcoat has got a label sewn on
the inside with your address written in marking ink.”
Mrs Verloc leaned over the counter with a low exclamation.
“That’s my brother’s, then.”
“Where’s your brother? Can I see him?” asked the Chief Inspector
briskly. Mrs Verloc leaned a little more over the counter.
“No. He isn’t here. I wrote that label myself.”
“Where’s your brother now?”
“He’s been away living with – a friend – in the country.”
“The overcoat comes from the country. And what’s the name of the
friend?”
“Michaelis,” confessed Mrs Verloc in an awed whisper.
The Chief Inspector let out a whistle. His eyes snapped.
“Just so. Capital. And your brother now, what’s he like – a
sturdy, darkish chap – eh?”
“Oh no,” exclaimed Mrs Verloc fervently. “That must be the thief.
Stevie’s slight and fair.”
“Good,” said the Chief Inspector in an approving tone. And while
Mrs Verloc, wavering between alarm and wonder, stared at him, he
sought for information. Why have the address sewn like this inside
the coat? And he heard that the mangled remains he had inspected
that morning with extreme repugnance were those of a youth,
nervous, absent-minded, peculiar, and also that the woman who was
speaking to him had had the charge of that boy since he was a baby.
“Easily excitable?” he suggested.
“Oh yes. He is. But how did he come to lose his coat – ”
Chief Inspector Heat suddenly pulled out a pink newspaper he had
bought less than half-an-hour ago. He was interested in horses.
Forced by his calling into an attitude of doubt and suspicion
towards his fellow-citizens, Chief Inspector Heat relieved the
instinct of credulity implanted in the human breast by putting
unbounded faith in the sporting prophets of that particular evening
publication. Dropping the extra special on to the counter, he
plunged his hand again into his pocket, and pulling out the piece
of cloth fate had presented him with out of a heap of things that
seemed to have been collected in shambles and rag shops, he offered
it to Mrs Verloc for inspection.
“I suppose you recognise this?”
She took it mechanically in both her hands. Her eyes seemed to
grow bigger as she looked.
“Yes,” she whispered, then raised her head, and staggered backward
a little.
“Whatever for is it torn out like this?”
The Chief Inspector snatched across the counter the cloth out of
her hands, and she sat heavily on the chair. He thought:
identification’s perfect. And in that moment he had a glimpse into
the whole amazing truth. Verloc was the “other man.”
“Mrs Verloc,” he said, “it strikes me that you know more of this
bomb affair than even you yourself are aware of.”
Mrs Verloc sat still, amazed, lost in boundless astonishment. What
was the connection? And she became so rigid all over that she was