第96章

`Come in here, then.' And he led the way into the parlour.

The door was hardly shut when Mrs Verloc, jumping up from the chair, ran to it as if to fling it open, but instead of doing so fell on her knees, with her ear to the keyhole.The two men must have stopped directly they were through, because she heard plainly the Chief Inspector's voice, though she could not see his finger pressed against her husband's breast emphatically.

`You are the other man, Verloc.Two men were seen entering the park.'

And the voice of Mr Verloc said:

`Well, take me now.What's to prevent you? You have the right.'

`Oh, no! I know too well who you have been giving yourself away to.

He'll have to manage this little affair all by himself.But don't you make a mistake, it's I who found you out.'

Then she heard only muttering.Inspector Heat must have been showing to Mr Verloc the piece of Stevie's overcoat, because Stevie's sister, guardian, and protector heard her husband a little louder.

`I never noticed that she had hit upon that dodge.'

Again for a time Mrs Verloc heard nothing but murmurs, whose mysteriousness was less nightmarish to her brain than the horrible suggestions of shaped words.Then Chief Inspector Heat, on the other side of the door, raised his voice:

`You must have been mad.'

And Mr Verloc's voice answered, with a sort of gloomy fury:

`I have been mad for a month or more, but I am not mad now.It's all over.It shall all come out of my head, and hang the consequences.'

There was a silence, and then Private Citizen Heat murmured:

`What's coming out?'

`Everything,' exclaimed the voice of Mr Verloc, and then sank very low.

After a while it rose again.

`You have known me for several years now, and you've found me useful, too.You know I was a straight man.Yes, straight.'

This appeal to old acquaintance must have been extremely distasteful to the Chief Inspector.

His voice took on a warning note.

`Don't you trust so much to what you have been promised.If I were you I would clear out.I don'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.

Mr 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 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?'