n't think we will run after you."

Mr Verloc was heard to laugh a little.

"Oh yes; you hope the others will get rid of me for you--don't you? No,
no; you don't shake me off now. I have been a straight man to those
people too long, and now everything must come out."

"Let it come out, then," the indifferent voice of Chief Inspector Heat
assented. "But tell me now how did you get away."

"I was making for Chesterfield Walk," Mrs Verloc heard her husband's
voice, "when I heard the bang. I started running then. Fog. I saw no
one till I was past the end of George Street. Don't think I met anyone
till then."

"So easy as that!" marvelled the voice of Chief Inspector Heat. "The
bang startled you, eh?"

"Yes; it came too soon," confessed the gloomy, husky voice of Mr Verloc.

Mrs Verloc pressed her ear to the keyhole; her lips were blue, her hands
cold as ice, and her pale face, in which the two eyes seemed like two
black holes, felt to her as if it were enveloped in flames.

On the other side of the door the voices sank very low. She caught words
now and then, sometimes in her husband's voice, sometimes in the smooth
tones of the Chief Inspector. She heard this last say:

"We believe he stumbled against the root of a tree?"

There was a husky, voluble murmur, which lasted for some time, and then
the Chief Inspector, as if answering some inquiry, spoke emphatically.

"Of course. Blown to small bits: limbs, gravel, clothing, bones,
splinters--all mixed up together. I tell you they had to fetch a shovel
to gather him up with."

Mrs Verloc sprang up suddenly from her crouching position, and stopping
her ears, reeled to and fro between the counter and the shelves on the
wall towards the chair. Her crazed eyes noted the sporting sheet left by
the Chief Inspector, and as she knocked herself against the counter she
snatched it up, fell into the chair, tore the optimistic, rosy sheet
right across in trying to open it, then flung it on the floor. On the
other side of the door, Chief Inspector Heat was saying to Mr Verloc, the
secret agent:

"So your defence will be practically a full confession?"

"It will. I am going to tell the whole story."

"You won't be believed as much as you fancy you will."

And the Chief Inspector remained thoughtful. The turn this affair was
taking meant the disclosure of many things--the laying waste of fields of
knowledge, which, cultivated by a capable man, had a distinct