r till Mrs Verloc raised her head slowly and
looked at the clock with inquiring mistrust. She had become aware of a
ticking sound in the room. It grew upon her ear, while she remembered
clearly that the clock on the wall was silent, had no audible tick. What
did it mean by beginning to tick so loudly all of a sudden? Its face
indicated ten minutes to nine. Mrs Verloc cared nothing for time, and
the ticking went on. She concluded it could not be the clock, and her
sullen gaze moved along the walls, wavered, and became vague, while she
strained her hearing to locate the sound. Tic, tic, tic.

After listening for some time Mrs Verloc lowered her gaze deliberately on
her husband's body. It's attitude of repose was so home-like and
familiar that she could do so without feeling embarrassed by any
pronounced novelty in the phenomena of her home life. Mr Verloc was
taking his habitual ease. He looked comfortable.

By the position of the body the face of Mr Verloc was not visible to Mrs
Verloc, his widow. Her fine, sleepy eyes, travelling downward on the
track of the sound, became contemplative on meeting a flat object of bone
which protruded a little beyond the edge of the sofa. It was the handle
of the domestic carving knife with nothing strange about it but its
position at right angles to Mr Verloc's waistcoat and the fact that
something dripped from it. Dark drops fell on the floorcloth one after
another, with a sound of ticking growing fast and furious like the pulse
of an insane clock. At its highest speed this ticking changed into a
continuous sound of trickling. Mrs Verloc watched that transformation
with shadows of anxiety coming and going on her face. It was a trickle,
dark, swift, thin. . . . Blood!

At this unforeseen circumstance Mrs Verloc abandoned her pose of idleness
and irresponsibility.

With a sudden snatch at her skirts and a faint shriek she ran to the
door, as if the trickle had been the first sign of a destroying flood.
Finding the table in her way she gave it a push with both hands as though
it had been alive, with such force that it went for some distance on its
four legs, making a loud, scraping racket, whilst the big dish with the
joint crashed heavily on the floor.

Then all became still. Mrs Verloc on reaching the door had stopped. A
round hat disclosed in the middle of the floor by the moving of the table
rocked slightly on its crown in the wind of her flight.

CHAPTER