第12章

AFTER Chief Inspector Heat had left him Mr Verloc moved about the parlour.

From time to time he eyed his wife through the open door.`She knows all about it now,' he thought to himself with commiseration for her sorrow and with some satisfaction as regarded himself.Mr Verloc's soul, if lacking greatness perhaps, was capable of tender sentiments.The prospect of having to break the news to her had put him into a fever.Chief Inspector Heat had relieved him of the task.That was good as far as it went.It remained for him now to face her grief.

Mr Verloc had never expected to have to face it on account of death, whose catastrophic character cannot be argued away by sophisticated reasoning or persuasive eloquence.Mr Verloc never meant Stevie to perish with such abrupt violence.He did not mean him to perish at all.Stevie dead was a much greater nuisance than ever he had been when alive.Mr Verloc had augured a favourable issue to his enterprise, basing himself not on Stevie's intelligence, which sometimes plays queer tricks with a man, but on the blind docility and on the blind devotion of the boy.Though not much of a psychologist, Mr Verloc had gauged the depth of Stevie's fanaticism.

He dared cherish the hope of Stevie walking away from the walls of the Observatory as he had been instructed to do, taking the way shown to him several times previously, and rejoining his brother-in-law, the wise and good Mr Verloc, outside the precincts of the park.Fifteen minutes ought to have been enough for the veriest fool to deposit the engine and walk away.And the Professor had guaranteed more than fifteen minutes.But Stevie had stumbled within five minutes of being left to himself.And Mr Verloc was shaken morally to pieces.He had foreseen everything but that.He had foreseen Stevie distracted and lost - sought for - found in some police station or provincial workhouse in the end.He had foreseen Stevie arrested, and was not afraid, because Mr Verloc had a great opinion of Stevie's loyalty, which had been carefully indoctrinated with the necessity of silence in the course of many walks.Like a peripatetic philosopher, Mr Verloc, strolling along the streets of London, had modified Stevie's view of the police by conversations full of subtle reasonings.Never had a sage a more attentive and admiring disciple.The submission and worship were so apparent that Mr Verloc had come to feel something like a liking for the boy.In any case, he had not foreseen the swift bringing home of his connection.That his wife should hit upon the precaution of sewing the boy's address inside his overcoat was the last thing Mr Verloc would have thought of.One can't think if everything.That was what she meant when she said that he need not worry if he lost Stevie during their walks.She had assured him that the boy would turn up all right.Well, he had turned up with a vengeance!

`Well, well,' muttered Mr Verloc in his wonder.What did she mean by it? Spare him the trouble of keeping an anxious eye on Stevie? Most likely she had meant well.Only she ought to have told him of the precaution she had taken.

Mr Verloc walked behind the counter of the shop.His intention was not to overwhelm his wife with bitter reproaches.Mr Verloc felt no bitterness.

The unexpected march of events had converted him to the doctrine of fatalism.

Nothing could be helped now.He said:

`I didn't mean any harm to come to the boy.'

Mrs Verloc shuddered at the sound of her husband's voice.She did not uncover her face.The trusted secret agent of the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim looked at her for a time with a heavy, persistent, undiscerning glance.

The torn evening paper was lying at her feet.It could not have told her much.Mr Verloc felt the need of talking to his wife.

`It's that damned Heat - eh?' he said.`He upset you.He's a brute, blurting it out like this to a woman.I made myself ill thinking of how to break it to you.I sat for hours in the little parlour of the Cheshire Cheese thinking over the best way.You understand I never meant any harm to come to that boy.'

Mr Verloc, the secret agent, was speaking the truth.It was his marital affection that had received the greatest shock from the premature explosion.

He added:

`I didn't feel particularly gay sitting there and thinking of you.'

He observed another slight shudder of his wife, which affected his sensibility.

As she persisted in hiding her face in her hands, he thought he had better leave her alone for a while.On this delicate impulse Mr Verloc withdrew into the parlour again, where the gas-jet purred like a contented cat.

Mrs Verloc's wifely forethought had left the cold beef on the table with carving knife and fork and half a loaf of bread for Mr Verloc's supper.

He noticed all these things now for the first time, and cutting himself a piece of bread and meat, began to eat.

His appetite did not proceed from callousness.Mr Verloc had not eaten any breakfast that day.He had left his home fasting.Not being an energetic man, he found his resolution in nervous excitement, which seemed to hold him mainly by the throat.He could not have swallowed anything solid.Michaelis's cottage was as destitute of provisions as the cell of a prisoner.The ticket-of-leave apostle lived on a little milk and crusts of stale bread.Moreover, when Mr Verloc arrived he had already gone upstairs after his frugal meal.Absorbed in the toil and delight of literary composition, he had not even answered Mr Verloc's shout up the little staircase.

`I am taking this young fellow home for a day or two.

And, in truth, Mr Verloc did not wait for an answer, but had marched out of the cottage at once, followed by the obedient Stevie.