dn't know. He showed me a piece of overcoat, and--just
like that. Do you know this? he says."

"Heat! Heat! And what did he do?"

Mrs Verloc's head dropped. "Nothing. He did nothing. He went away.
The police were on that man's side," she murmured tragically. "Another
one came too."

"Another--another inspector, do you mean?" asked Ossipon, in great
excitement, and very much in the tone of a scared child.

"I don't know. He came. He looked like a foreigner. He may have been
one of them Embassy people."

Comrade Ossipon nearly collapsed under this new shock.

"Embassy! Are you aware what you are saying? What Embassy? What on
earth do you mean by Embassy?"

"It's that place in Chesham Square. The people he cursed so. I don't
know. What does it matter!"

"And that fellow, what did he do or say to you?"

"I don't remember. . . . Nothing . . . . I don't care. Don't ask me,"
she pleaded in a weary voice.

"All right. I won't," assented Ossipon tenderly. And he meant it too,
not because he was touched by the pathos of the pleading voice, but
because he felt himself losing his footing in the depths of this
tenebrous affair. Police! Embassy! Phew! For fear of adventuring his
intelligence into ways where its natural lights might fail to guide it
safely he dismissed resolutely all suppositions, surmises, and theories
out of his mind. He had the woman there, absolutely flinging herself at
him, and that was the principal consideration. But after what he had
heard nothing could astonish him any more. And when Mrs Verloc, as if
startled suddenly out of a dream of safety, began to urge upon him wildly
the necessity of an immediate flight on the Continent, he did not exclaim
in the least. He simply said with unaffected regret that there was no
train till the morning, and stood looking thoughtfully at her face,
veiled in black net, in the light of a gas lamp veiled in a gauze of
mist.

Near him, her black form merged in the night, like a figure half
chiselled out of a block of black stone. It was impossible to say what
she knew, how deep she was involved with policemen and Embassies. But if
she wanted to get away, it was not for him to object. He was anxious to
be off himself. He felt that the business, the shop so strangely
familiar to chief inspectors and members of foreign Embassies, was not
the place for him. That must be dropped. But there was the rest. These
savings. The money!

"Y