Section 3

"Eleven years," was the answer, after a moment of sulky hesitation. " I've been charged with several missions to London while His Excellency Baron Stott-Wartenheim was still Ambassador in Paris. Then by his Excel- lency's instructions I settled down in London. I am English."
11 You are I Are you ? Eh ? "
THE SECRET AGENT 29
" A natural-born British subject/' Mr Verloc
said stolidly. " But my father was French, and >
" Never mind explaining/ 1 interrupted the other. " I daresay you could have been legally a Marshal of France and a Member of Parlia- ment in England and then, indeed, you would have been of some use to our Embassy."
This flight of fancy provoked something like a faint smile on Mr Verloc's face. Mr Vladimir retained an imperturbable gravity.
" But, as I've said, you are a lazy fellow ; you don't use your opportunities. In the time of Baron Stott-Wartenheim we had a lot of soft- headed people running this Embassy. They caused fellows of your sort to form a false con- ception of the nature of a secret service fund. It is my business to correct this misapprehension by telling you what the secret service is not. It is not a philanthropic institution. I've had you called here on purpose to tell you this/'
Mr Vladimir observed the forced expression of bewilderment on Verloc's face, and smiled sarcastically.
11 1 see that you understand me perfectly. I daresay you are intelligent enough for your work. What we want now is activity activity."
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On repeating this last word Mr Vladimir laid a long white forefinger on the edge of the desk. Every trace of huskiness disappeared from Verloc's voice. The nape of his gross neck became crimson above the velvet collar of his overcoat. His lips quivered before they came widely open.
" If you'll only be good enough to look up my record/' he boomed out in his great, clear oratorical bass, "you'll see I gave a warning only three months ago, on the occasion of the Grand Duke Romuald's visit to Paris, which was telegraphed from here to the French police, and "
"Tut, tut!" broke out Mr Vladimir, with a frowning grimace. "The French police had no use for your warning. Don't roar like this. What the devil do you mean ? "
With a note of proud humility Mr Verloc apologised for forgetting himself. His voice, famous for years at open-air meetings and at workmen's assemblies in large halls, had contri- buted, he said, to his reputation of a good and trustworthy comrade. It was, therefore, a part of his usefulness. It had inspired confidence in his principles. " I was always put up to speak by the leaders at a critical moment," Mr Verloc declared, with obvious satisfaction. There was
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no uproar above which he could not make him- self heard, he added ; and suddenly he made a demonstration.
" Allow me," he said. With lowered fore- head, without looking up, swiftly and ponder- ously he crossed the room to one of the French windows. As if giving way to an uncontrol- lable impulse, he opened it a little. Mr Vladimir, jumping up amazed from the depths of the arm-chair, looked over his shoulder ; and below, across the courtyard of the Embassy, well beyond the open gate, could be seen the broad back of a policeman watching idly the gorgeous perambulator of a wealthy baby being wheeled in state across the Square.
" Constable ! " said Mr Verloc, with no more effort than if he were whispering; and Mr Vladimir burst into a laugh on seeing the police- man spin round as if prodded by a sharp in- strument. Mr Verloc shut the window quietly, and returned to the middle of the room.
" With a voice like that," he said, putting on the husky conversational pedal, " I was natur- ally trusted. And I knew what to say, too."
Mr Vladimir, arranging his cravat, observed him in the glass over the mantelpiece.
" I daresay you have the social revolution- ary jargon by heart well enough," he said
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contemptuously. "Vox et . . . You haven't ever studied Latin have you ? "
"No," growled Mr Verloc. "You did not expect me to know it. I belong to the million. Who knows Latin ? Only a few hundred im- beciles who aren't fit to take care of them- selves."
For some thirty seconds longer Mr Vladimir studied in the mirror the fleshy profile, the gross bulk, of the man behind him. And at the same time he had the advantage of seeing his own face, clean-shaved and round, rosy about the gills, and with the thin sensitive lips formed exactly for the utterance of those delicate witticisms which had made him such a favourite in the very highest society. Then he turned, and advanced into the room with such deter- mination that the very ends of his quaintly old- fashioned bow necktie seemed to bristle with unspeakable menaces. The movement was so swift and fierce that Mr Verloc, casting an oblique- glance, quailed inwardly.
" Aha ! You dare be impudent," Mr Vladimir began, with an amazingly guttural intonation not only utterly un-English, but absolutely un- European, and startling even to Mr Verloc's experience of cosmopolitan slums. " You dare ! Well, I am going to speak plain English to you.
THE SECRET AGENT 33
Voice won't do. We have no use for your voice. We don't want a voice. We want facts start- ling facts damn you," he added, with a sort of ferocious discretion, right into Mr Verloc's face.
" Don't you try to come over me with your Hyperborean manners," Mr Verloc defended himself huskily, looking at the carpet. At this his interlocutor, smiling mockingly above the bristling bow of his necktie, switched the con- versation into French.
" You give yourself for an ' agent provo- cateur/ The proper business of an 'agent provocateur ' is to provoke. As far as I can judge from your record kept here, you have done nothing to earn your money for the last three years."
" Nothing!" exclaimed Verloc, stirring not a limb, and not raising his eyes, but with the note of sincere feeling in his tone. " I have several times prevented what might have been "
" There is a proverb in this country which says prevention is better than cure," interrupted Mr Vladimir, throwing himself into the arm- chair. " It is stupid in a general way. There is no end to prevention. But it is characteristic. They dislike finality in this country. Don't you be too English. And in this particular in-
34 THE SECRET AGENT
stance, don't be absurd. The evil is already here. We don't want prevention we want cure."
He paused, turned to the desk, and turning over some papers lying there, spoke in a changed business-like tone, without looking at Mr Verloc.
" You know, of course, of the International Conference assembled in Milan ? "
Mr Verloc intimated hoarsely that he was in the habit of reading the daily papers. To a further question his answer was that, of course, he understood what he read. At this Mr Vladimir, smiling faintly at the documents he was still scanning one after another, murmured " As long as it is not written in Latin, I suppose."
" Or Chinese," added Mr Verloc stolidly.
" H'm. Some of your revolutionary friends' effusions are written in a charabia every bit as incomprehensible as Chinese " Mr Vladi- mir let fall disdainfully a grey sheet of printed matter. "What are all these leaflets headed F. P., with a hammer, pen, and torch crossed ? What does it mean, this F. P. ? " Mr Verloc approached the imposing writing-table.
"The Future of the Proletariat. It's a society," he explained, standing ponderously by the side of the arm-chair, " not anarchist in principle, but open to all shades of revolutionary opinion/'
THE SECRET AGENT 35
" Are you in it ? "
"One of the Vice-Presidents," Mr Verloc breathed out heavily ; and the First Secretary of the Embassy raised his head to look at him.
" Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said incisively. " Isn't your society capable of anything else but printing this prophetic bosh in blunt type on this filthy paper eh ? Why don't you do something? Look here. I've this matter in hand now, and I tell you plainly that you will have to earn your money. The good old Stott-Wartenheim times are over. No work, no pay."
Mr Verloc felt a queer sensation of faintness in his stout legs. He stepped back one pace, and blew his nose loudly.
He was, in truth, startled and alarmed. The rusty London sunshine struggling clear of the London mist shed a lukewarm brightness into the First Secretary's private room ; and in the silence Mr Verloc heard against a window-pane the faint buzzing of a fly his first fly of the year heralding better than any number of swallows the approach of spring. The useless fussing of that tiny energetic organism affected unpleasantly this big man threatened in his indolence.
In the pause Mr Vladimir formulated in
36 THE SECRET AGENT
his mind a series of disparaging remarks concerning Mr Verloc's face and figure. The fellow was unexpectedly vulgar, heavy, and impudently unintelligent He looked un- commonly like a master plumber come to present his bill. The First Secretary of the Embassy, from his occasional excursions into the field of American humour, had formed a special notion of that class of mechanic as the embodiment of fraudulent laziness and in- competency.
This was then the famous and trusty secret agent, so secret that he was never designated otherwise but by the symbol A. in the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim's official, semi-official, and confidential correspondence ; the cele- brated agent A., whose warnings had the power to change the schemes and the dates of royal, imperial, grand ducal journeys, and sometimes caused them to be put off altogether ! This fellow! And Mr Vladimir indulged mentally in an enormous and derisive fit of merriment, partly at his own astonishment, which he judged naive, but mostly at the ex- pense of the universally regretted Baron Stott- Wartenheim. His late Excellency, whom the august favour of his Imperial master had im- posed as Ambassador upon several reluctant
THE SECRET AGENT 3?
Ministers of Foreign Affairs, had enjoyed in his lifetime a fame for an owlish, pessimistic gulli- bility. His Excellency had the social revolution on the brain. He imagined himself to be a diplomatist set apart by a special dispensation to watch the end of diplomacy, and pretty nearly the end of the world, in a horrid democratic up- heaval. His prophetic and doleful despatches had been for years the joke of Foreign Offices. He was said to have exclaimed on his death- bed (visited by his Imperial friend and master) : "Unhappy Europe! Thou shalt perish by the moral insanity of thy children ! " He was fated to be the victim of the first humbugging rascal that came along, thought Mr Vladimir, smiling vaguely at Mr Verloc.
" You ought to venerate the memory of Baron Stott-Wartenheim," he exclaimed suddenly.
The lowered physiognomy of Mr Verloc expressed a sombre and weary annoyance.
" Permit me to observe to you/' he said, " that I came here because I was summoned by a peremptory letter. I have been here only twice before in the last eleven years, and cer- tainly never at eleven in the morning. It isn't very wise to call me up like this. There is just a chance of being seen. And that would be no joke for me,"
38 THE SECRET AGENT
Mr Vladimir shrugged his shoulders.
" It would destroy my usefulness/' continued the other hotly.
" That's your affair," murmured Mr Vladimir, with soft brutality. "When you cease to be useful you shall cease to be employed. Yes.
Right off. Cut short You shall " Mr
Vladimir, frowning, paused, at a loss for a sufficiently idiomatic expression, and instantly brightened up, with a grin of beautifully white teeth. "You shall be chucked," he brought out ferociously.
Once more 'Mr Verloc had to react with all the force of his will against that sensation of faint- ness running down one's legs which once upon a time had inspired some poor devil with the felicitous expression : " My heart went down intcf my boots." Mr Verloc, aware of the sen- sation, raised his head bravely.
Mr Vladimir bore the look of heavy inquiry with perfect serenity.
"What we want is to administer a tonic to the Conference in Milan/' he said airily. " Its deliberations upon international action for the suppression of political crime don't seem to get anywhere. England lags. This country is absurd with its sentimental regard for indivi- dual liberty. It's intolerable to think that all
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your friends have got only to come over
" In that way I have them all under my eye," Mr Verloc interrupted huskily.
" It would be much more to the point to have them all under lock and key. England must be brought into line. The imbecile bour- geoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches. And they have the political power still, if they only had the sense to use it for their preservation. I suppose you agree that the middle classes are stupid ? "
Mr Verloc agreed hoarsely.
" They are."
"They have no imagination. They are blinded by an idiotic vanity. What they want just now is a jolly good scare. This is the psychological moment to set your friends to work. I have had you called here to develop to you my idea."
And Mr Vladimir developed his idea from on high, with scorn and condescension, display- ing at the same time an amount of ignorance as to the real aims, thoughts, and methods of the revolutionary world which filled the silent Mr Verloc with inward consternation. He
40 THE SECRET AGENT
confounded causes with effects more than was excusable ; the most distinguished propagandists with impulsive bomb throwers ; assumed organ- isation where in the nature of things it could not exist ; spoke of the social revolutionary party one moment as of a perfectly disciplined army, where the word of chiefs was supreme, and at another as if it had been the loosest association of desperate brigands that ever camped in a mountain gorge. Once Mr Verloc had opened his mouth for a protest, but the rais- ing of a shapely, large white hand arrested him. Very soon he became too appalled to even try to protest. He listened in a stillness of dread which resembled the immobility of profound attention.
"A series of outrages," Mr Vladimir con- tinued calmly, " executed here in this country ; not only planned here that would not do they would not mind. Your friends could set half the Continent on fire without influencing the public opinion here in favour of a universal repressive legislation. They will not look out- side their backyard here/'
Mr Verloc cleared his throat, but his heart failed him, and he said nothing.
"These outrages need not be especially sanguinary," Mr Vladimir went on, as if deliver-
THE SECRET AGENT 41
ing a scientific lecture, "but they must be sufficiently startling effective. Let them be directed against buildings, for instance. What is the fetish of the hour that all the bourgeoisie recognise eh, Mr Verloc ? "
Mr Verloc opened his hands and shrugged his shoulders slightly.
" You are too lazy to think," was Mr Vladimir's comment upon that gesture. " Pay attention to what I say. The fetish of to-day is neither royalty nor religion. Therefore the palace and the church should be left alone. You under- stand what I mean, Mr Verloc ? "
The dismay and the scorn of Mr Verloc found vent in an attempt at levity.
" Perfectly. But what of the Embassies ? A series of attacks on the various Embassies," he began ; but he could not withstand the cold, watchful stare of the First Secretary.
"You can be facetious, I see," the latter observed carelessly. " That's all right. It may enliven your oratory at socialistic con- gresses. But this room is no place for it. It would be infinitely safer for you to follow care- fully what I am saying. As you are being called upon to furnish facts instead of cock-and- bull stories, you had better try to make your profit off what I am taking the trouble to explain
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to you. The sacrosanct fetish of to-day is science. Why don't you get some of your friends to go for that wooden-faced panjandrum eh ? Is it not part of these institutions which must be swept away before the F. P. comes along?"
Mr Verloc said nothing. He was afraid to open his lips lest a groan should escape him.
"This is what you should try for. An attempt upon a crowned head or on a president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much as it used to be. It has entered into the general conception of the existence of all chiefs of state. It's almost conventional especially since so many presidents have been assassinated. Now let us take an outrage upon say a church. Horrible enough at first sight, no doubt, and yet not so effective as a person of an ordinary mind might think. No matter how revolu- tionary and anarchist in inception, there would be fools enough to give such an outrage the character of a religious manifestation. And that would detract from the especial alarming significance we wish to give to the act. A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would suffer in the same way from the sugges- tion of non-political passion : the exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social revenge. All this