superstitious, but there was too much blood on the floor; a beastly pool
of it all round the hat. He judged he had been already far too near that
corpse for his peace of mind--for the safety of his neck, perhaps!

"At the meter then! There. Look. In that corner."

The robust form of Comrade Ossipon, striding brusque and shadowy across
the shop, squatted in a corner obediently; but this obedience was without
grace. He fumbled nervously--and suddenly in the sound of a muttered
curse the light behind the glazed door flicked out to a gasping,
hysterical sigh of a woman. Night, the inevitable reward of men's
faithful labours on this earth, night had fallen on Mr Verloc, the tried
revolutionist--"one of the old lot"--the humble guardian of society; the
invaluable Secret Agent [delta] of Baron Stott-Wartenheim's despatches; a
servant of law and order, faithful, trusted, accurate, admirable, with
perhaps one single amiable weakness: the idealistic belief in being loved
for himself.

Ossipon groped his way back through the stuffy atmosphere, as black as
ink now, to the counter. The voice of Mrs Verloc, standing in the middle
of the shop, vibrated after him in that blackness with a desperate
protest.

"I will not be hanged, Tom. I will not--"

She broke off. Ossipon from the counter issued a warning: "Don't shout
like this," then seemed to reflect profoundly. "You did this thing quite
by yourself?" he inquired in a hollow voice, but with an appearance of
masterful calmness which filled Mrs Verloc's heart with grateful
confidence in his protecting strength.

"Yes," she whispered, invisible.

"I wouldn't have believed it possible," he muttered. "Nobody would."
She heard him move about and the snapping of a lock in the parlour door.
Comrade Ossipon had turned the key on Mr Verloc's repose; and this he did
not from reverence for its eternal nature or any other obscurely
sentimental consideration, but for the precise reason that he was not at
all sure that there was not someone else hiding somewhere in the house.
He did not believe the woman, or rather he was incapable by now of
judging what could be true, possible, or even probable in this astounding
universe. He was terrified out of all capacity for belief or disbelief
in regard of this extraordinary affair, which began with police
inspectors and Embassies and would end goodness knows where--on the
scaffold for someone. He was terrified at the thought that he co