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.
`Purple - isn't it? he remarked, setting it down again. `As I said, it's strange. Because the overcoat has got a label sewn on the inside with your address written in marking ink.'
Mrs Verloc leaned over the counter with a low exclamation.
`That's my brother's, then.'
`Where's your brother? Can I see him?' asked the Chief Inspector, briskly. Mrs Verloc leaned a little more over the counter.
`No. He isn't here. I wrote that label myself.'
`Where's your brother now?'
`He's been away living with - a friend - in the country.'
`The overcoat comes from the country. And what's the name of the friend?'
`Michaelis,' confessed Mrs Verloc in an awed whisper.
The Chief Inspector let out a whistle. His eyes snapped.
`Just so. Capital. And your brother now, what's he like - a sturdy, darkish chap - eh?'
`Oh, no,' exclaimed Mrs Verloc, fervently. `That must be the thief. Stevie's slight and fair.'
`Good,' said the Chief Inspector in an approving tone. And while Mrs Verloc, wavering between alarm and wonder, stared at him, he sought for information. Why have the address sewn like this inside the coat? And he heard that the mangled remains he had inspected that morning with extreme repugnance were those of a youth, nervous, absent-minded, peculiar, and also that the woman who was speaking to him had had the charge of that boy since he was a baby.