oc, 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."

Mr Verloc, still pale, had brought an air of resolution with him. Still
he didn't look at his wife. He said:

"Come in here, then." And he led the way into the parlour.

The door was hardly shut when Mrs Verloc, jumping up from the chair, ran
to it as if to fling it open, but instead of doing so fell on her knees,
with her ear to the keyhole. The two men must have stopped directly they
were through, because she heard plainly the Chief Inspector's voice,
though she could not see his finger pressed against her husband's breast
emphatically.

"You are the other man, Verloc. Two men were seen entering the park."

And the voice of Mr Verloc said:

"Well, take me now. What's to prevent you? You have the right."

"Oh no! I know too well who you have been giving yourself away to.
He'll have to manage this little affair all by himself. But don't you
make a mistake, it's I who found you out."

Then she heard only muttering. Inspector Heat must have been showing to
Mr Verloc the piece of Stevie's overcoat, because Stevie's sister,
guardian, and protector heard her husband a little louder.

"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."

And Mr Verloc's voice answered, with a sort of gloomy fury:

"I have been mad for a month or more, but I am not mad now. It's all
over. It shall all come out of my head, and hang the consequences."

There was a silence, and then Private Citizen Heat murmured:

"What's coming out?"

"Everything," exclaimed the voice of Mr Verloc, and then sank very low.

After a while it rose again.

"You have known me for several years now, and you've found me useful,
too. You know I was a straight man. Yes, straight."

This appeal to old acquaintance must have been extremely distasteful to
the Chief Inspector.

His voice took on a warning note.

"Don't you trust so much to what you have been promised. If I were you I
would clear out. I do