home, he felt disappointed.

"I would wait for him a little if I were sure he wouldn't be long," he
said.

Mrs Verloc volunteered no assurance of any kind.

"The information I need is quite private," he repeated. "You understand
what I mean? I wonder if you could give me a notion where he's gone to?"

Mrs Verloc shook her head.

"Can't say."

She turned away to range some boxes on the shelves behind the counter.
Chief Inspector Heat looked at her thoughtfully for a time.

"I suppose you know who I am?" he said.

Mrs Verloc glanced over her shoulder. Chief Inspector Heat was amazed at
her coolness.

"Come! You know I am in the police," he said sharply.

"I don't trouble my head much about it," Mrs Verloc remarked, returning
to the ranging of her boxes.

"My name is Heat. Chief Inspector Heat of the Special Crimes section."

Mrs Verloc adjusted nicely in its place a small cardboard box, and
turning round, faced him again, heavy-eyed, with idle hands hanging down.
A silence reigned for a time.

"So your husband went out a quarter of an hour ago! And he didn't say
when he would be back?"

"He didn't go out alone," Mrs Verloc let fall negligently.

"A friend?"

Mrs Verloc touched the back of her hair. It was in perfect order.

"A stranger who called."

"I see. What sort of man was that stranger? Would you mind telling me?"

Mrs Verloc did not mind. And when Chief Inspector Heat heard of a man
dark, thin, with a long face and turned up moustaches, he gave signs of
perturbation, and exclaimed:

"Dash me if I didn't think so! He hasn't lost any time."

He was intensely disgusted in the secrecy of his heart at the unofficial
conduct of his immediate chief. But he was not quixotic. He lost all
desire to await Mr Verloc's return. What they had gone out for he did
not know, but he imagined it possible that they would return together.
The case is not followed properly, it's being tampered with, he thought
bitterly.

"I am afraid I haven't time to wait for your husband," he said.

Mrs Verloc received this declaration listlessly. Her detachment had
impressed Chief Inspector Heat all along. At this precise moment it
whetted his curiosity. Chief Inspector Heat hung in the wind, swayed by
his passions like the most private of citizens.

"I think," he said, looking at her steadily, "that you could give me a
pretty good notion of what's going on if you liked."

Forcing her fine, inert eyes