The Secret Agent

by Joseph Conrad

  And she went on with her methodical proceedings. She laid two plates, got the bread, the butter, going to and fro quietly between the table and the cupboard in the peace and silence of her home. On the point of taking out the jam, she reflected practically: “He will be feeling hungry, having been away all day,” and she returned to the cupboard once more to get the cold beef. She set it under the purring gas-jet, and with a passing glance at her motionless husband hugging the fire, she went (down two steps) into the kitchen. It was only when coming back, carving knife and fork in hand, that she spoke again.

  “If I hadn’t trusted you I wouldn’t have married you.”

  Bowed under the overmantel, Mr. Verloc, holding his head in both hands, seemed to have gone to sleep. Winnie made the tea, and called out in an undertone:

  “Adolf.”

  Mr. Verloc got up at once, and staggered a little before he sat down at the table. His wife, examining the sharp edge of the carving knife, placed it on the dish, and called his attention to the cold beef. He remained insensible to the suggestion, with his chin on his breast.

  “You should feed your cold,” Mrs. Verloc said, dogmatically.

  He looked up, and shook his head. His eyes were bloodshot and his face red. His fingers had ruffled his hair into a dissipated untidiness. Altogether he had a disreputable aspect, expressive of the discomfort, the irritation, and the gloom following a heavy debauch. But Mr. Verloc was not a debauched man. In his conduct he was respectable. His appearance might have been the effect of a feverish cold. He drank three cups of tea, but abstained from food entirely. He recoiled from it with sombre aversion when urged by Mrs. Verloc, who said at last:

  “Aren’t your feet wet? You had better put on your slippers. You aren’t going out any more this evening.”

  Mr. Verloc intimated by morose grunts and signs that his feet were not wet, and that anyhow he did not care. The proposal as to slippers was disregarded as beneath his notice. But the question of going out in the evening received an unexpected development. It was not of going out in the evening that Mr. Verloc was thinking. His thoughts embraced a vaster scheme. From moody and incomplete phrases it became apparent that Mr. Verloc had been considering the expediency of emigrating. It was not very clear whether he had in his mind France or California.

  The utter unexpectedness, improbability, and inconceivableness of such an event robbed this vague declaration of all its effect. Mrs. Verloc, as placidly as if her husband had been threatening her with the end of the world, said:

  “The idea!”

  Mr. Verloc declared himself sick and tired of everything, and besides—— She interrupted him.

  “You’ve a bad cold.”

  It was indeed obvious that Mr. Verloc was not in his usual state, physically and even mentally. A sombre irresolution held him silent for a while. Then he murmured a few ominous generalities on the theme of necessity.

  “Will have to,” repeated Winnie, sitting calmly back, with folded arms, opposite her husband. “I should like to know who’s to make you. You ain’t a slave. No one need be a slave in this country—and don’t you make yourself one.” She paused, and with invincible and steady candour: “The business isn’t so bad,” she went on. “You’ve a comfortable home.”

  She glanced all round the parlour, from the corner cupboard to the good fire in the grate. Ensconced cosily behind the shop of doubtful wares, with the mysteriously dim window, and its door suspiciously ajar in the obscure and narrow street, it was in all essentials of domestic propriety and domestic comfort a respectable home. Her devoted affection missed out of it her brother Stevie, now enjoying a damp villeggiatura in the Kentish lanes under the care of Mr. Michaelis. She missed him poignantly, with all the force of her protecting passion. This was the boy’s home, too—the roof, the cupboard, the stoked grate. On this thought Mrs. Verloc rose, and walking to the other end of the table, said in the fulness of her heart:

  “And you are not tired of me.”

  Mr. Verloc made no sound. Winnie leaned on his shoulder from behind, and pressed her lips to his forehead. Thus she lingered. Not a whisper reached them from the outside world. The sound of footsteps on the pavement died out in the discreet dimness of the shop. Only the gas-jet above the table went on purring equably in the brooding silence of the parlour.

  During the contact of that unexpected and lingering kiss Mr. Verloc, gripping with both hands the edges of his chair, preserved a hieratic immobility. When the pressure was removed he let go the chair, rose, and went to stand before the fireplace. He turned no longer his back to the room. With his features swollen and an air of being drugged, he followed his wife’s movements with his eyes.

  Mrs. Verloc went about serenely, clearing up the table. Her tranquil voice commented on the idea thrown out in a reasonable and domestic tone. It wouldn’t stand examination. She condemned it from every point of view. But her only real concern was Stevie’s welfare. He appeared to her thought in that connection as sufficiently “peculiar” not to be taken rashly abroad. And that was all. But talking round that vital point, she approached absolute vehemence in her delivery. Meanwhile, with brusque movements, she arrayed herself in an apron for the washing up of cups. And as if excited by the sound of her uncontradicted voice, she went so far as to say in a tone almost tart:

  “If you go abroad you’ll have to go without me.”

  “You know I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Verloc, huskily, and the unresonant voice of his private life trembled with an enigmatical emotion.

  Already Mrs. Verloc was regretting her words. They had sounded more unkind than she meant them to be. They had also the unwisdom of unnecessary things. In fact, she had not meant them at all. It was a sort of phrase that is suggested by the demon of perverse inspiration. But she knew a way to make it as if it had not been.

  She turned her head over her shoulder and gave that man planted heavily in front of the fireplace a glance, half arch, half cruel, out of her large eyes—a glance of which the Winnie of the Belgravian mansion days would have been incapable, because of her respectability and her ignorance. But the man was her husband now, and she was no longer ignorant. She kept it on him for a whole second, with her grave face motionless like a mask, while she said playfully:

  “You couldn’t. You would miss me too much.”

  Mr. Verloc started forward.

  “Exactly,” he said in a louder tone, throwing his arms out and making a step towards her. Something wild and doubtful in his expression made it appear uncertain whether he meant to strangle or to embrace his wife. But Mrs. Verloc’s attention was called away from that manifestation by the clatter of the shop-bell.

  “Shop, Adolf. You go.”

  He stopped, his arms came down slowly.

  “You go,” repeated Mrs. Verloc. “I’ve got my apron on.”

  Mr. Verloc obeyed woodenly, stony-eyed, and like an automaton whose face had been painted red. And this resemblance to a mechanical figure went so far that he had an automaton’s absurd air of being aware of the machinery inside of him.

  He closed the parlour door, and Mrs. Verloc, moving briskly, carried the tray into the kitchen. She washed the cups and some other things before she stopped in her work to listen. No sound reached her. The customer was a long time in the shop. It was a customer, because if he had not been Mr. Verloc would have taken him inside. Undoing the strings of her apron with a jerk, she threw it on a chair, and walked back to the parlour slowly.

  At that precise moment Mr. Verloc entered from the shop.

  He had gone in red. He came out a strange papery white. His face, losing its drugged, feverish stupor, had in that short time acquired a bewildered and harassed expression. He walked straight to the sofa, and stood looking down at his overcoat lying there, as though he were afraid to touch it.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Mrs. Verloc in a subdued voice. Through the door left ajar she could see that the customer was not gone yet.

  “I find I’ll have to go out this ev
ening,” said Mr. Verloc. He did not attempt to pick up his outer garment.

  Without a word Winnie made for the shop and, shutting the door after her, walked in behind the counter. She did not look overtly at the customer till she had established herself comfortably on the chair. But by that time she had noted that he was tall and thin, and wore his moustaches twisted up. In fact, he gave the sharp points a twist just then. His long, bony face rose out of a turned-up collar. He was a little splashed, a little wet. A dark man, with the ridge of the cheekbone well defined under the slightly hollow temple. A complete stranger. Not a customer, either.

  Mrs. Verloc looked at him placidly.

  “You came over from the Continent?” she said after a time.

  The long, thin stranger, without exactly looking at Mrs. Verloc, answered only by a faint and peculiar smile.

  Mrs. Verloc’s steady, incurious gaze rested on him.

  “You understand English, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. I understand English.”

  There was nothing foreign in his accent, except that he seemed in his slow enunciation to be taking pains with it. And Mrs. Verloc, in her varied experience, had come to the conclusion that some foreigners could speak better English than the natives. She said, looking at the door of the parlour fixedly:

  “You don’t think perhaps of staying in England for good?”

  The stranger gave her again a silent smile. He had a kindly mouth and probing eyes. And he shook his head a little sadly, it seemed.

  “My husband will see you through all right. Meantime, for a few days you couldn’t do better than take lodgings with Mr. Guigliani. Continental Hotel it’s called. Private. It’s quiet. My husband will take you there.”

  “A good idea,” said the thin, dark man, whose glance had hardened suddenly.

  “You knew Mr. Verloc before—didn’t you? Perhaps in France?”

  “I have heard of him,” admitted the visitor in his slow, painstaking tone, which yet had a certain curtness of intention.

  There was a pause. Then he spoke again, in a far less elaborate manner.

  “Your husband has not gone out to wait for me in the street by chance?”

  “In the street!” repeated Mrs. Verloc, surprised. “He couldn’t. There’s no other door to the house.”

  For a moment she sat impassive, then left her seat to go and peep through the glazed door. Suddenly she opened it, and disappeared into the parlour.

  Mr. Verloc had done no more than put on his overcoat. But why he should remain afterwards leaning over the table propped up on his two arms as though he were feeling giddy or sick, she could not understand. “Adolf,” she called out half aloud; and when he had raised himself:

  “Do you know that man?” she asked, rapidly.

  “I’ve heard of him,” whispered uneasily Mr. Verloc, darting a wild glance at the door.

  Mrs. Verloc’s fine, incurious eyes lighted up with a flash of abhorrence.

  “One of Karl Yundt’s friends—beastly old man.”

  “No! No!” protested Mr. Verloc, busy fishing for his hat. But when he got it from under the sofa he held it as if he did not know the use of a hat.

  “Well—he’s waiting for you,” said Mrs. Verloc at last. “I say, Adolf, he ain’t one of them Embassy people you have been bothered with of late?”

  “Bothered with Embassy people,” repeated Mr. Verloc, with a heavy start of surprise and fear. “Who’s been talking to you of the Embassy people?”

  “Yourself.”

  “I! I! Talked of the Embassy to you!”

  Mr. Verloc seemed scared and bewildered beyond measure. His wife explained:

  “You’ve been talking a little in your sleep of late, Adolf.”

  “What—what did I say? What do you know?”

  “Nothing much. It seemed mostly nonsense. Enough to let me guess that something worried you.”

  Mr. Verloc rammed his hat on his head. A crimson flood of anger ran over his face.

  “Nonsense—eh? The Embassy people! I would cut their hearts out one after another. But let them look out. I’ve got a tongue in my head.”

  He fumed, pacing up and down between the table and the sofa, his open overcoat catching against the angles. The red flood of anger ebbed out, and left his face all white, with quivering nostrils. Mrs. Verloc, for the purposes of practical existence, put down these appearances to the cold.

  “Well,” she said, “get rid of the man whoever he is, as soon as you can, and come back home to me. You want looking after for a day or two.”

  Mr. Verloc calmed down, and, with resolution imprinted on his pale face, had already opened the door, when his wife called him back in a whisper:

  “Adolf! Adolf!” He came back, startled. “What about that money you drew out?” she asked. “You’ve got it in your pocket? Hadn’t you better——”

  Mr. Verloc gazed stupidly into the palm of his wife’s extended hand for some time before he slapped his brow.

  “Money! Yes! Yes! I didn’t know what you meant.”

  He drew out of his breast pocket a new pigskin pocket-book. Mrs. Verloc received it without another word, and stood still till the bell, clattering after Mr. Verloc and Mr. Verloc’s visitor, had quieted down. Only then she peeped in at the amount, drawing the notes out for the purpose. After this inspection she looked round thoughtfully, with an air of mistrust in the silence and solitude of the house. This abode of her married life appeared to her as lonely and unsafe as though it had been situated in the midst of a forest. No receptacle she could think of amongst the solid, heavy furniture seemed other but flimsy and particularly tempting to her conception of a house-breaker. It was an ideal conception, endowed with sublime faculties and a miraculous insight. The till was not to be thought of. It was the first spot a thief would make for. Mrs. Verloc, unfastening hastily a couple of hooks, slipped the pocket-book under the bodice of her dress. Having thus disposed of her husband’s capital, she was rather glad to hear the clatter of the door-bell, announcing an arrival. Assuming the fixed, unabashed stare and the stony expression reserved for the casual customer, she walked in behind the counter.

  A man standing in the middle of the shop was inspecting it with a swift, cool, all-round glance. His eyes ran over the walls, took in the ceiling, noted the floor—all in a moment. The points of a long fair moustache fell below the line of the jaw. He smiled the smile of an old if distant acquaintance, and Mrs. Verloc remembered having seen him before. Not a customer. She softened her “customer stare” to mere indifference, and faced him across the counter.

  He approached, on his side, confidentially, but not too markedly so.

  “Husband at home, Mrs. Verloc?” he asked in an easy, full tone.

  “No. He’s gone out.”

  “I am sorry for that. I’ve called to get from him a little private information.”

  This was the exact truth. Chief Inspector Heat had been all the way home and had even gone so far as to think of getting into his slippers, since practically he was, he told himself, chucked out of the case. He indulged in some scornful and in a few angry thoughts, and found the occupation so unsatisfactory that he resolved to seek relief out of doors. Nothing prevented him paying a friendly call on Mr. Verloc, casually as it were. It was in the character of a private citizen that walking out privately he made use of his customary conveyances. Their general direction was 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, maneuvering in a way which in a member of the criminal classes would have been stigmatized 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 wou
ld 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. Finding 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 his 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.