The Secret Agent (2)

Hello guys,

Here is the second part of our story by Joseph Conrad.

Enjoy!

Chapter two

 

Back to the shop

 

Verloc waited in the little room. After a short time, a servant appeared and took him upstairs to the first floor. There, Verloc entered a large room where a thin young man with a short beard sat at a big desk. The man spoke in French to Wurmt, who was leaving. ‘You are quite right, my dear Wurmt. But he’s not just overweight. He’s fat – the animal.’

Mr Vladimir, the First secretary, was always invited to parties. He was a good speaker and when he told his funny stories he had smiling eyes. But when he looked at Verlock his face was hard and cold.

‘You understand French, I suppose?’

Verloc said that he did and added in a low voice that he had lived for some years in France.

Vladimir continued:’How long were you in prison for stealing the plans for that new French gun?’

‘Five years,’ replied Verloc.

Vladimir laughed unpleasantly. ‘That wasn’t very good getting caught like that! What happened?’

‘I fell in love with a woman and she wasn’t honest with me. I was young,’ added Verloc, feeling stupid.

‘Ah, so she got the money and then sold you to the police.’

‘Yes,’ said Verloc, hating the conversation.

‘How long have you worked for the Embassy here?’

‘Eleven years. I began when Baron Stott-Wartenheim was Ambassador in Paris. He ordered me to come to London. I am English but my father was French –‘

Vladimir interrupted him. ‘Well, times have changed since then. The secret service gave people money for nothing in those days. Look at you! One of the hungry workers! What are you anyway – an anarchist?’

‘That’s right,’ said Verloc.

‘Ridiculous!’ you are too fat for an anarchist. And I’ll tell you why – you are lazy. What we want now is action, do you hear?’

Verloc was now both angry and worried. What did this man want from him?

‘A secret agent has to do something,’ went on Vladimir angrily.

‘The good times are finished. You must work for your money now!’

‘Don’t speak to me like that!’ Verloc felt hot and his clothes felt uncomfortable. Vladimir spoke again:

‘There is a meeting in Milan soon on international crime, and we must do something before that to wake up the people here. England is too soft. Your anarchist friends do just what they like! They should all be in prison. The middle classes here support the people who want to rob them! Don’t you agree?’

‘Yes,’ said Verloc who was beginning to lose his voice.

‘What they need is something to frighten them. It’s time your friends acted.’

Verloc was silent. In his opinion, Vladimir knew nothing about the real methods of the revolutionary world.

‘We want to change people’s opinion and make them support harder laws. We want an attack on something that the middle classes think is important. Science for example. Astronomy.’

‘Astronomy?’ Verloc could not hide his surprise.

‘Yes. I want you to put a bomb under Greenwich Observatory. You can use that old terrorist? Yundt. Or Michaelis, the man who was in prison. You’ll get no more money until something happens.

What is your job supposed to be anyway?’

‘I have a shop. My wife helps me.’

‘Your wife! Anarchists don’t have wives!’

That isn’t any of your business!’

‘Oh yes it is,’ Vladimir said coldly. ‘You have one month. If you don’t plant the bomb by then, your job with us is finished.’

Vladimir got up from his seat and turned his back on Verlock. He watched in the mirror as the secret agent left the room.

Verlock left the Embassy in an angry dream and walked back to the shop. Afterwards, he could not remember anything about his journey home.

Winnie heard the sound of the cracked bell and looked into the shop. She saw her husband sitting in the dark room and returned to making the lunch. Verloc sat without moving, his hat pushed back on his head. An hour later, when his wife went to tell him that lunch was ready, he had not moved from his chair.

At lunch, Verloc was silent. Stevie was quiet and good, but the two women watched him closely because they did not want him to worry Verloc.

 

                                                     $$$$$$$$$$$$

 

In the sitting room of Verloc’s house, a small group of men sat and talked in front of the fire.

One of them was Michaelis, a fat, white-skinned man. He had spent fifteen years in prison and was now out on bail. He had an open, honest-looking face and smiled a lot.

Karl Yundt, who called himself the ‘terrorist’ was still wearing his coat and hat inside the warm room. Yundt frightened people with his violent opinions and he enjoyed doing it. at the moment, he was arguing for ‘death used in the service of humanity’.

‘But will that really help us?’ asked Michaelis, standing up.

‘You’re so pessimistic,’ Yundt said angrily.

‘That’s not true,’ cried Michaelis. ‘I’m not pessimistic, I’m optimistic – I believe that things will change, but there is no need for a revolution.’

There was another man in the room, sitting by the window. this was Comrade Ossipon. He was younger than the others, not bad-looking, with fair hair and a red face. Ossipon was an ex-medical student who wrote for a political group called the Future of the Proletariat.now he sat listening to the others with an amused look on his face.

The room was getting hot. Verloc got up slowly and opened the door into the kitchen. Stevie was sitting quietly at the kitchen table drawing circles as usual.

Ossipon walked into the kitchen and looked over Stevie’s shoulder with scientific interest.

‘Those drawings show us that the boy has a criminal mind,’ he said.

‘Does he look like a criminal to you?’ said Verloc looking interested for the first time in hours.

‘Yes. Just look at his ears. Lombroso talks about ears like that in his book.’

‘Monbroso is stupid,’ said Karl Yundt, who was listening to the conversation. ‘You can’t recognize criminals by their teeth or ears. Criminals aren’t born that way. Why don’t you talk about the people who make them into criminals? What about the law that marks them, that burns their skin for life? Can’t you see the red burns and smell the burning? Forget Lombroso and his stupid ideas!’

Stevie was now standing at the door. He heard Yundt’s angry words and they frightened him. His mouth fell open.

Michaelis smiled. ‘We must watch and wait calmly. Better times are coming for the poor people, you’ll see.’ Stevie calmed down a little at these words.

The discussion continued. Verloc said little and stared into space. Stevie sat in the doorway, frightened by the men’s words. After a while, the men left the house and Verloc closed the door violently behind them. None of them could help him, that was sure. So who was going to plant Vladimir’s bomb? Verloc could not do it himself. If he was not careful, his future as a secret agent could be in danger. Those men were so lazy, he thought. Yundt was looked after a rich old woman and when she died, he thought. Yundt’s love of revolution would probably die too. Michaelis was supported by another rich lady who let him stay at her house in the country. And Ossipon also lives well thanks to the young women who paid for everything that he needed.

It was different for himself, thought Verloc. He had to look after Winnie.

Before he went to bed, Verloc looked at the few coins that they had taken that day in the shop. ‘How can we live without the money from the Embassy?’ he thought.

Stevie was still in the kitchen, walking round and round the table with a worried look on his face. Verloc did not know what to say to him. It was strange: he lived with this young man and paid for all his needs but he had no idea how to talk to him.

‘Why don’t you go to bed now?’ he said after some time. Stevie did not answer. He left the boy in the kitchen and went upstairs. He could hear the old woman talking in her sleep through the wall of her bedroom. ‘Another one to look after,’ he thought angrily.

Winnie was asleep but he woke her up and told her that Stevie was still downstairs. She said nothing but got up immediately and left the room.

Verloc got ready for bed. He felt alone and sorry for himself. He seemed to see Vladimir’s long, thin face laughing at him in the dark.

‘I don’t feel very well,’ he told Winnie when she came back.

‘That poor boy is very excited tonight,’ she replied.

Verloc was not interested in talking about Stevie. Why didn’t she talk about him and his feelings? Wasn’t he her husband?

‘I haven’t been feeling well for the last days,’ he said. He wanted to tell Winnie still wanted to talk about Stevie.

‘He hears too many things that he doesn’t understand,’ she said, thinking about the men who visited them in the evenings. She hated Karl Yundt with his talk of death and violence, but she did not mind Michaelis who was kinder. She said nothing about Ossipon because she did not want to think about him; he made her feel uncomfortable.

‘Stevie’s been reading those stupid Future of the Proletariat stories again,’ she continued. ‘He read about a soldier cutting off someone’s ear and wanted to kill the soldier. I had to take the carving knife off him. Why do they write things like that?

Verloc did not answer.

‘Are you comfortable, Adolf, dear? Shall I put out the light now?’

‘Yes. Put it out,’ said Verloc. But he knew that he was not going to sleep well that night.

 

                                                                  (To be continued)