eyes protruding out of his head. He would have given anything
to get away, but his returning reason informed him that it would not do
to let go the door handle. What was it--madness, a nightmare, or a trap
into which he had been decoyed with fiendish artfulness? Why--what for?
He did not know. Without any sense of guilt in his breast, in the full
peace of his conscience as far as these people were concerned, the idea
that he would be murdered for mysterious reasons by the couple Verloc
passed not so much across his mind as across the pit of his stomach, and
went out, leaving behind a trail of sickly faintness--an indisposition.
Comrade Ossipon did not feel very well in a very special way for a
moment--a long moment. And he stared. Mr Verloc lay very still
meanwhile, simulating sleep for reasons of his own, while that savage
woman of his was guarding the door--invisible and silent in the dark and
deserted street. Was all this a some sort of terrifying arrangement
invented by the police for his especial benefit? His modesty shrank from
that explanation.

But the true sense of the scene he was beholding came to Ossipon through
the contemplation of the hat. It seemed an extraordinary thing, an
ominous object, a sign. Black, and rim upward, it lay on the floor
before the couch as if prepared to receive the contributions of pence
from people who would come presently to behold Mr Verloc in the fullness
of his domestic ease reposing on a sofa. From the hat the eyes of the
robust anarchist wandered to the displaced table, gazed at the broken
dish for a time, received a kind of optical shock from observing a white
gleam under the imperfectly closed eyelids of the man on the couch. Mr
Verloc did not seem so much asleep now as lying down with a bent head and
looking insistently at his left breast. And when Comrade Ossipon had
made out the handle of the knife he turned away from the glazed door, and
retched violently.

The crash of the street door flung to made his very soul leap in a panic.
This house with its harmless tenant could still be made a trap of--a trap
of a terrible kind. Comrade Ossipon had no settled conception now of
what was happening to him. Catching his thigh against the end of the
counter, he spun round, staggered with a cry of pain, felt in the
distracting clatter of the bell his arms pinned to his side by a
convulsive hug, while the cold lips of a woman moved creepily on his very
ear to form the