t 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 of 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