abject terror in some
obscure hamlet in Spain or Italy; till some fine morning they found him
dead too, with a knife in his breast--like Mr Verloc. He sighed deeply.
He dared not move. And Mrs Verloc waited in silence the good pleasure of
her saviour, deriving comfort from his reflective silence.

Suddenly he spoke up in an almost natural voice. His reflections had
come to an end.

"Let's get out, or we will lose the train."

"Where are we going to, Tom?" she asked timidly. Mrs Verloc was no
longer a free woman.

"Let's get to Paris first, the best way we can. . . . Go out first, and
see if the way's clear."

She obeyed. Her voice came subdued through the cautiously opened door.

"It's all right."

Ossipon came out. Notwithstanding his endeavours to be gentle, the
cracked bell clattered behind the closed door in the empty shop, as if
trying in vain to warn the reposing Mr Verloc of the final departure of
his wife--accompanied by his friend.

In the hansom, they presently picked up, the robust anarchist became
explanatory. He was still awfully pale, with eyes that seemed to have
sunk a whole half-inch into his tense face. But he seemed to have
thought of everything with extraordinary method.

"When we arrive," he discoursed in a queer, monotonous tone, "you must go
into the station ahead of me, as if we did not know each other. I will
take the tickets, and slip in yours into your hand as I pass you. Then
you will go into the first-class ladies' waiting-room, and sit there till
ten minutes before the train starts. Then you come out. I will be
outside. You go in first on the platform, as if you did not know me.
There may be eyes watching there that know what's what. Alone you are
only a woman going off by train. I am known. With me, you may be
guessed at as Mrs Verloc running away. Do you understand, my dear?" he
added, with an effort.

"Yes," said Mrs Verloc, sitting there against him in the hansom all rigid
with the dread of the gallows and the fear of death. "Yes, Tom." And
she added to herself, like an awful refrain: "The drop given was fourteen
feet."

Ossipon, not looking at her, and with a face like a fresh plaster cast of
himself after a wasting illness, said: "By-the-by, I ought to have the
money for the tickets now."

Mrs Verloc, undoing some hooks of her bodice, while she went on staring
ahead beyond the splashboard, handed over to him the new pigskin
pocket-book. He received