Mr Verloc answered with some surprise that he was not aware of having anything special to say. He had been summoned by a letter. And he plunged his hand busily into the side pocket of his overcoat, but before the mocking, cynical watchfulness of Mr Vladimir, concluded to leave it there.

`Bah!' said the latter. `What do you mean by getting out of condition like this? You haven't got even the physique of your profession. You - a member of a starving proletariat - never! You - a desperate socialist or anarchist - which is it?'

`Anarchist,' stated Mr Verloc in a deadened tone.

`Bosh!' went on Mr Vladimir, without raising his voice. `You startled old Wurmt himself. You wouldn't deceive an idiot. They all are that by-the-by, but you seem to me simply impossible. So you began your connection with us by stealing the French gun designs. And you got yourself caught. That must have been very disagreeable to our Government. You don't seem to be very smart.'

Mr Verloc tried to exculpate himself huskily.

`As I've had occasion to observe before, a fatal infatuation for an unworthy...'

Mr Vladimir raised a large, white, plump hand.

`Ah, yes. The unlucky attachment - of your youth. She got hold of the money, and then sold you to the police - eh?'

The doleful change in Mr Verloc's physiognomy, the momentary drooping of his whole person, confessed that such was the regrettable case. Mr Vladimir's hand clasped the ankle reposing on his knee. The sock was of dark blue silk.

`You see, that was not very clever of you. Perhaps you are too susceptible.'

Mr Verloc intimated in a throaty, veiled murmur that he was no longer young.

`Oh! That's a failing which age does not cure,' Mr Vladimir remarked, with sinister familiarity. `But no! You are too fat for that. You could not have come to look like this if you had been at all susceptible. I'll tell you what I think is the matter: you are a lazy fellow. How long have you been drawing pay from this Embassy?'

`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 Excellency's instructions I settled down in London. I am English.'

`You are! Are you? Eh?'

`A natural-born British subject,' Mr Verloc said, stolidly. `But my father was French, and so...'

`Never mind explaining,' interrupted the other. `I daresay you could have been legally a Marshal of France and a Member of Parliament 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 conception of the nature of a secret service fund. It is my business to correct this misapprehension