The Secret Agent

J >> Joseph Conrad >> The Secret Agent


"What is desired," said the man of papers, "is the occurrence of
something definite which should stimulate their vigilance. That is
within your province--is it not so?"

Mr Verloc made no answer except by a sigh, which escaped him
involuntarily, for instantly he tried to give his face a cheerful
expression. The official blinked doubtfully, as if affected by the dim
light of the room. He repeated vaguely.

"The vigilance of the police--and the severity of the magistrates. The
general leniency of the judicial procedure here, and the utter absence of
all repressive measures, are a scandal to Europe. What is wished for
just now is the accentuation of the unrest--of the fermentation which
undoubtedly exists--"

"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly," broke in Mr Verloc in a deep deferential bass
of an oratorical quality, so utterly different from the tone in which he
had spoken before that his interlocutor remained profoundly surprised.
"It exists to a dangerous degree. My reports for the last twelve months
make it sufficiently clear."

"Your reports for the last twelve months," State Councillor Wurmt began
in his gentle and dispassionate tone, "have been read by me. I failed to
discover why you wrote them at all."

A sad silence reigned for a time. Mr Verloc seemed to have swallowed his
tongue, and the other gazed at the papers on the table fixedly. At last
he gave them a slight push.

"The state of affairs you expose there is assumed to exist as the first
condition of your employment. What is required at present is not
writing, but the bringing to light of a distinct, significant fact--I
would almost say of an alarming fact."

"I need not say that all my endeavours shall be directed to that end," Mr
Verloc said, with convinced modulations in his conversational husky tone.
But the sense of being blinked at watchfully behind the blind glitter of
these eye-glasses on the other side of the table disconcerted him. He
stopped short with a gesture of absolute devotion. The useful,
hard-working, if obscure member of the Embassy had an air of being
impressed by some newly-born thought.

"You are very corpulent," he said.

This observation, really of a psychological nature, and advanced with the
modest hesitation of an officeman more familiar with ink and paper than
with the requirements of active life, stung Mr Verloc in the manner of a
rude personal remark. He stepped back a pace.

"Eh? What were you pleased to say?" he exclaimed, with husky resentment.

The Chancelier d'Ambassade entrusted with the conduct of this interview
seemed to find it too much for him.

"I think," he said, "that you had better see Mr Vladimir. Yes, decidedly
I think you ought to see Mr Vladimir. Be good enough to wait here," he
added, and went out with mincing steps.

At once Mr Verloc passed his hand over his hair. A slight perspiration
had broken out on his forehead. He let the air escape from his pursed-up
lips like a man blowing at a spoonful of hot soup. But when the servant
in brown appeared at the door silently, Mr Verloc had not moved an inch
from the place he had occupied throughout the interview. He had remained
motionless, as if feeling himself surrounded by pitfalls.

He walked along a passage lighted by a lonely gas-jet, then up a flight
of winding stairs, and through a glazed and cheerful corridor on the
first floor. The footman threw open a door, and stood aside. The feet
of Mr Verloc felt a thick carpet. The room was large, with three
windows; and a young man with a shaven, big face, sitting in a roomy arm-
chair before a vast mahogany writing-table, said in French to the
Chancelier d'Ambassade, who was going out with, the papers in his hand:

"You are quite right, mon cher. He's fat--the animal."

Mr Vladimir, First Secretary, had a drawing-room reputation as an
agreeable and entertaining man. He was something of a favourite in
society. His wit consisted in discovering droll connections between
incongruous ideas; and when talking in that strain he sat well forward of
his seat, with his left hand raised, as if exhibiting his funny
demonstrations between the thumb and forefinger, while his round and
clean-shaven face wore an expression of merry perplexity.

But there was no trace of merriment or perplexity in the way he looked at
Mr Verloc. Lying far back in the deep arm-chair, with squarely spread
elbows, and throwing one leg over a thick knee, he had with his smooth
and rosy countenance the air of a preternaturally thriving baby that will
not stand nonsense from anybody.

"You understand French, I suppose?" he said.

Mr Verloc stated huskily that he did. His whole vast bulk had a forward
inclination. He stood on the carpet in the middle of the room, clutching
his hat and stick in one hand; the other hung lifelessly by his side. He
muttered unobtrusively somewhere deep down in his throat something about
having done his military service in the French artillery. At once, with
contemptuous perversity, Mr Vladimir changed the language, and began to
speak idiomatic English without the slightest trace of a foreign accent.

"Ah! Yes. Of course. Let's see. How much did you get for obtaining
the design of the improved breech-block of their new field-gun?"

"Five years' rigorous confinement in a fortress," Mr Verloc answered
unexpectedly, but without any sign of feeling.

"You got off easily," was Mr Vladimir's comment. "And, anyhow, it served
you right for letting yourself get caught. What made you go in for that
sort of thing--eh?"

Mr Verloc's husky conversational voice was heard speaking of youth, of a
fatal infatuation for an unworthy--

"Aha! Cherchez la femme," Mr Vladimir deigned to interrupt, unbending,
but without affability; there was, on the contrary, a touch of grimness
in his condescension. "How long have you been employed by the Embassy
here?" he asked.

"Ever since the time of the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim," Mr Verloc
answered in subdued tones, and protruding his lips sadly, in sign of
sorrow for the deceased diplomat. The First Secretary observed this play
of physiognomy steadily.

"Ah! ever since. Well! What have you got to say for yourself?" he asked
sharply.

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 that 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 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.

"I see that you understand me perfectly. I daresay you are intelligent
enough for your work. What we want now is activity--activity."

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 contributed, 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 no uproar above which he
could not make himself heard, he added; and suddenly he made a
demonstration.

"Allow me," he said. With lowered forehead, without looking up, swiftly
and ponderously he crossed the room to one of the French windows. As if
giving way to an uncontrollable 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 policeman
spin round as if prodded by a sharp instrument. 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 naturally 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 revolutionary jargon by heart well
enough," he said 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 imbeciles who aren't
fit to take care of themselves."

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 determination 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. Voice
won't do. We have no use for your voice. We don't want a voice. We
want facts--startling 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 conversation into French.

"You give yourself for an 'agent provocateur.' 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 instance, 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 Vladimir 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."

"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 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
uncommonly 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 incompetency.

This was then the famous and trusty secret agent, so secret that he was
never designated otherwise but by the symbol [delta] in the late Baron
Stott-Wartenheim's official, semi-official, and confidential
correspondence; the celebrated agent [delta], 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 expense of the universally regretted Baron
Stott-Wartenheim. His late Excellency, whom the august favour of his
Imperial master had imposed as Ambassador upon several reluctant
Ministers of Foreign Affairs, had enjoyed in his lifetime a fame for an
owlish, pessimistic gullibility. 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 upheaval. His
prophetic and doleful despatches had been for years the joke of Foreign
Offices. He was said to have exclaimed on his deathbed (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 certainly 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."

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 faintness running down one's legs which once upon a
time had inspired some poor devil with the felicitous expression: "My
heart went down into my boots." Mr Verloc, aware of the sensation,
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 individual
liberty. It's intolerable to think that all your friends have got only
to come over to--"

"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 bourgeoisie 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, displaying 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 confounded
causes with effects more than was excusable; the most distinguished
propagandists with impulsive bomb throwers; assumed organisation 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
raising 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 continued 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 outside 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 delivering 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 understand 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 congresses. But
this room is no place for it. It would be infinitely safer for you to
follow carefully 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 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
revolutionary 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 suggestion of non-political passion: the
exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social revenge. All this is used
up; it is no longer instructive as an object lesson in revolutionary
anarchism. Every newspaper has ready-made phrases to explain such
manifestations away. I am about to give you the philosophy of bomb
throwing from my point of view; from the point of view you pretend to
have been serving for the last eleven years. I will try not to talk
above your head. The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are
soon blunted. Property seems to them an indestructible thing. You can't
count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb
outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the
intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive. It
must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any other
object. You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly
determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation. But how
to get that appallingly absurd notion into the heads of the middle
classes so that there should be no mistake? That's the question. By
directing your blows at something outside the ordinary passions of
humanity is the answer. Of course, there is art. A bomb in the National
Gallery would make some noise. But it would not be serious enough. Art
has never been their fetish. It's like breaking a few back windows in a
man's house; whereas, if you want to make him really sit up, you must try
at least to raise the roof. There would be some screaming of course, but
from whom? Artists--art critics and such like--people of no account.
Nobody minds what they say. But there is learning--science. Any
imbecile that has got an income believes in that. He does not know why,
but he believes it matters somehow. It is the sacrosanct fetish. All
the damned professors are radicals at heart. Let them know that their
great panjandrum has got to go too, to make room for the Future of the
Proletariat. A howl from all these intellectual idiots is bound to help
forward the labours of the Milan Conference. They will be writing to the
papers. Their indignation would be above suspicion, no material
interests being openly at stake, and it will alarm every selfishness of
the class which should be impressed. They believe that in some
mysterious way science is at the source of their material prosperity.
They do. And the absurd ferocity of such a demonstration will affect
them more profoundly than the mangling of a whole street--or theatre--full
of their own kind. To that last they can always say: 'Oh! it's mere
class hate.' But what is one to say to an act of destructive ferocity so
absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in
fact, mad? Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot
placate it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes. Moreover, I am a
civilised man. I would never dream of directing you to organise a mere
butchery, even if I expected the best results from it. But I wouldn't
expect from a butchery the result I want. Murder is always with us. It
is almost an institution. The demonstration must be against
learning--science. But not every science will do. The attack must have
all the shocking senselessness of gratuitous blasphemy. Since bombs are
your means of expression, it would be really telling if one could throw a
bomb into pure mathematics. But that is impossible. I have been trying
to educate you; I have expounded to you the higher philosophy of your
usefulness, and suggested to you some serviceable arguments. The
practical application of my teaching interests _you_ mostly. But from
the moment I have undertaken to interview you I have also given some
attention to the practical aspect of the question. What do you think of
having a go at astronomy?"