“We believe he stumbled against the root of a tree?”
There was a husky, voluble murmur, which lasted for some time, and
then the Chief Inspector, as if answering some inquiry, spoke
emphatically.
“Of course. Blown to small bits: limbs, gravel, clothing, bones,
splinters – all mixed up together. I tell you they had to fetch a
shovel to gather him up with.”
Mrs Verloc sprang up suddenly from her crouching position, and
stopping her ears, reeled to and fro between the counter and the
shelves on the wall towards the chair. Her crazed eyes noted the
sporting sheet left by the Chief Inspector, and as she knocked
herself against the counter she snatched it up, fell into the
chair, tore the optimistic, rosy sheet right across in trying to
open it, then flung it on the floor. On the other side of the
door, Chief Inspector Heat was saying to Mr Verloc, the secret
agent:
“So your defence will be practically a full confession?”
“It will. I am going to tell the whole story.”
“You won’t be believed as much as you fancy you will.”
And the Chief Inspector remained thoughtful. The turn this affair
was taking meant the disclosure of many things – the laying waste
of fields of knowledge, which, cultivated by a capable man, had a
distinct value for the individual and for the society. It was
sorry, sorry meddling. It would leave Michaelis unscathed; it
would drag to light the Professor’s home industry; disorganise the
whole system of supervision; make no end of a row in the papers,
which, from that point of view, appeared to him by a sudden
illumination as invariably written by fools for the reading of
imbeciles. Mentally he agreed with the words Mr Verloc let fall at
last in answer to his last remark.
“Perhaps not. But it will upset many things. I have been a
straight man, and I shall keep straight in this – ”
“If they let you,” said the Chief Inspector cynically. “You will
be preached to, no doubt, before they put you into the dock. And
in the end you may yet get let in for a sentence that will surprise
you. I wouldn’t trust too much the gentleman who’s been talking to
you.”
Mr Verloc listened, frowning.
“My advice to you is to clear out while you may. I have no
instructions. There are some of them,” continued Chief Inspector
Heat, laying a peculiar stress on the word “them,” “who think you
are already out of the world.”
“Indeed!” Mr Verloc was moved to say. Though since his return from
Greenwich he had spent most of his time sitting in the tap-room of
an obscure little public-house, he could hardly have hoped for such
favourable news.
“That’s the impression about you.” The Chief Inspector nodded at
him. “Vanish. Clear out.”
“Where to?” snarled Mr Verloc. He raised his head, and gazing at
the closed door of the parlour, muttered feelingly: “I only wish
you would take me away to-night. I would go quietly.”
“I daresay,” assented sardonically the Chief Inspector, following
the direction of his glance.
The brow of Mr Verloc broke into slight moisture. He lowered his
husky voice confidentially before the unmoved Chief Inspector.
“The lad was half-witted, irresponsible. Any court would have seen
that at once. Only fit for the asylum. And that was the worst
that would’ve happened to him if – ”
The Chief Inspector, his hand on the door handle, whispered into Mr
Verloc’s face.
“He may’ve been half-witted, but you must have been crazy. What
drove you off your head like this?”
Mr Verloc, thinking of Mr Vladimir, did not hesitate in the choice
of words.
“A Hyperborean swine,” he hissed forcibly. “A what you might call
a – a gentleman.”
The Chief Inspector, steady-eyed, nodded briefly his comprehension,
and opened the door. Mrs Verloc, behind the counter, might have
heard but did not see his departure, pursued by the aggressive
clatter of the bell. She sat at her post of duty behind the
counter. She sat rigidly erect in the chair with two dirty pink
pieces of paper lying spread out at her feet. The palms of her