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Updated: June 10, 2025
“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.
In this mood Mr Verloc missed Stevie very much out of a difficult world. He thought mournfully of his end. If only that lad had not stupidly destroyed himself! The sensation of unappeasable hunger, not unknown after the strain of a hazardous enterprise to adventurers of tougher fibre than Mr Verloc, overcame him again.
Mrs Verloc, with all the placidity of an experienced wife, expressed a confident opinion as to the cause, and suggested the usual remedies; but her husband, rooted in the middle of the room, shook his lowered head sadly. “You’ll catch cold standing there,” she observed. Mr Verloc made an effort, finished undressing, and got into bed.
Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to Stevie as a man not particularly fond of animals may give to his wife’s beloved cat; and this recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially of the same quality. Both women admitted to themselves that not much more could be reasonably expected. It was enough to earn for Mr Verloc the old woman’s reverential gratitude.
“I never noticed that she had hit upon that dodge.” Again for a time Mrs Verloc heard nothing but murmurs, whose mysteriousness was less nightmarish to her brain than the horrible suggestions of shaped words. Then Chief Inspector Heat, on the other side of the door, raised his voice. “You must have been mad.”
Never mind, I won’t say anything more about it,” continued Mr Verloc magnanimously. “You couldn’t know.” “I couldn’t,” breathed out Mrs Verloc. It was as if a corpse had spoken. Mr Verloc took up the thread of his discourse. “I don’t blame you. I’ll make them sit up. Once under lock and key it will be safe enough for me to talk—you understand.
After that altruistic exploit Stevie was put to help wash the dishes in the basement kitchen, and to black the boots of the gentlemen patronising the Belgravian mansion. There was obviously no future in such work. The gentlemen tipped him a shilling now and then. Mr Verloc showed himself the most generous of lodgers.
Mr Verloc had shut the door, and for a moment the two men looked at each other. Mr Verloc, without looking at his wife, walked up to the Chief Inspector, who was relieved to see him return alone. “You here!” muttered Mr Verloc heavily. “Who are you after?” “No one,” said Chief Inspector Heat in a low tone. “Look here, I would like a word or two with you.”
But to give it to him would be like tampering with his position of complete dependence. It was a sort of claim which she feared to weaken. Moreover, the susceptibilities of Mr Verloc would perhaps not brook being beholden to his brother-in-law for the chairs he sat on.
Moved by the just indignation of a man well over forty, menaced in what is dearest to him—his repose and his security—he asked himself scornfully what else could have been expected from such a lot, this Karl Yundt, this Michaelis—this Ossipon. Pausing in his intention to turn off the gas burning in the middle of the shop, Mr Verloc descended into the abyss of moral reflections.
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