words:

"Policeman! He has seen me!"

He ceased to struggle; she never let him go. Her hands had locked
themselves with an inseparable twist of fingers on his robust back.
While the footsteps approached, they breathed quickly, breast to breast,
with hard, laboured breaths, as if theirs had been the attitude of a
deadly struggle, while, in fact, it was the attitude of deadly fear. And
the time was long.

The constable on the beat had in truth seen something of Mrs Verloc; only
coming from the lighted thoroughfare at the other end of Brett Street,
she had been no more to him than a flutter in the darkness. And he was
not even quite sure that there had been a flutter. He had no reason to
hurry up. On coming abreast of the shop he observed that it had been
closed early. There was nothing very unusual in that. The men on duty
had special instructions about that shop: what went on about there was
not to be meddled with unless absolutely disorderly, but any observations
made were to be reported. There were no observations to make; but from a
sense of duty and for the peace of his conscience, owing also to that
doubtful flutter of the darkness, the constable crossed the road, and
tried the door. The spring latch, whose key was reposing for ever off
duty in the late Mr Verloc's waistcoat pocket, held as well as usual.
While the conscientious officer was shaking the handle, Ossipon felt the
cold lips of the woman stirring again creepily against his very ear:

"If he comes in kill me--kill me, Tom."

The constable moved away, flashing as he passed the light of his dark
lantern, merely for form's sake, at the shop window. For a moment longer
the man and the woman inside stood motionless, panting, breast to breast;
then her fingers came unlocked, her arms fell by her side slowly.
Ossipon leaned against the counter. The robust anarchist wanted support
badly. This was awful. He was almost too disgusted for speech. Yet he
managed to utter a plaintive thought, showing at least that he realised
his position.

"Only a couple of minutes later and you'd have made me blunder against
the fellow poking about here with his damned dark lantern."

The widow of Mr Verloc, motionless in the middle of the shop, said
insistently:

"Go in and put that light out, Tom. It will drive me crazy."

She saw vaguely his vehement gesture of refusal. Nothing in the world
would have induced Ossipon to go into the parlour. He was not