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 to return his gaze, Mrs Verloc murmured: “Going on! What _is_ going on?” “Why, the affair I came to talk about a little with your husband.” That day Mrs Verloc had glanced at a morning paper as usual. But she had not stirred out of doors. The newsboys never invaded Brett Street. It was not a street for their business. And the echo of their cries drifting along the populous thoroughfares, expired between the dirty brick walls without reaching the threshold of the shop. Her husband had not brought an evening paper home. At any rate she had not seen it. Mrs Verloc knew nothing whatever of any affair. And she said so, with a genuine note of wonder in her quiet voice. Chief Inspector Heat did not believe for a moment in so much ignorance. Curtly, without amiability, he stated the bare fact. Mrs Verloc turned away her eyes. “I call it silly,” she pronounced slowly. She paused. “We ain’t downtrodden slaves here.” The Chief Inspector waited watchfully. Nothing more came. “And your husband didn’t mention anything to you when he came home?” Mrs Verloc simply turned her face from right to left in sign of negation. A languid, baffling silence reigned in the shop. Chief Inspector Heat felt provoked beyond endurance. “There was another small matter,” he began in a detached tone, “which I wanted to speak to your husband about. There came into our hands a—a—what we believe is—a stolen overcoat.” Mrs Verloc, with her mind specially aware of thieves that evening, touched lightly the bosom of her dress. “We have lost no overcoat,” she said calmly. “That’s funny,” continued Private Citizen Heat. “I see you keep a lot of marking ink here—” He took up a small bottle, and looked at it against the gas-jet in the middle of the shop.