“Yes,” she confirmed in the same listless tone. “He came just like this. He came. I didn’t know. He showed me a piece of overcoat, and—just like that. Do you know this? he says.” “Heat! Heat! And what did he do?” Mrs Verloc’s head dropped. “Nothing. He did nothing. He went away. The police were on that man’s side,” she murmured tragically. “Another one came too.” “Another—another inspector, do you mean?” asked Ossipon, in great excitement, and very much in the tone of a scared child. “I don’t know. He came. He looked like a foreigner. He may have been one of them Embassy people.” Comrade Ossipon nearly collapsed under this new shock. “Embassy! Are you aware what you are saying? What Embassy? What on earth do you mean by Embassy?” “It’s that place in Chesham Square. The people he cursed so. I don’t know. What does it matter!” “And that fellow, what did he do or say to you?” “I don’t remember. . . . Nothing . . . . I don’t care. Don’t ask me,” she pleaded in a weary voice. “All right. I won’t,” assented Ossipon tenderly. And he meant it too, not because he was touched by the pathos of the pleading voice, but because he felt himself losing his footing in the depths of this tenebrous affair. Police! Embassy! Phew! For fear of adventuring his intelligence into ways where its natural lights might fail to guide it safely he dismissed resolutely all suppositions, surmises, and theories out of his mind. He had the woman there, absolutely flinging herself at him, and that was the principal consideration. But after what he had heard nothing could astonish him any more. And when Mrs Verloc, as if startled suddenly out of a dream of safety, began to urge upon him wildly the necessity of an immediate flight on the Continent, he did not exclaim in the least. He simply said with unaffected regret that there was no train till the morning, and stood looking thoughtfully at her face, veiled in black net, in the light of a gas lamp veiled in a gauze of mist. Near him, her black form merged in the night, like a figure half chiselled out of a block of black stone. It was impossible to say what she knew, how deep she was involved with policemen and Embassies. But if she wanted to get away, it was not for him to object. He was anxious to be off himself. He felt that the business, the shop so strangely familiar to chief inspectors and members of foreign Embassies, was not the place for him. That must be dropped. But there was the rest. These savings. The money! “You must hide me till the morning somewhere,” she said in a dismayed voice. “Fact is, my dear, I can’t take you where I live. I share the room with a friend.” He was somewhat dismayed himself. In the morning the blessed ’tecs will be out in all the stations, no doubt. And if they once got hold of her, for one reason or another she would be lost to him indeed. “But you must. Don’t you care for me at all—at all? What are you thinking of?”