Verloc, cursorily, hurrying on
her way.
    Stevie's face lengthened considerably. He was thinking. The more intense his
thinking, the slacker was the droop of his lower jaw. And it was with an aspect
of hopeless vacancy that he gave up his intelectual enterprise.
    »Not for that?« he mumbled, resigned but surprised. »Not for that?« He had
formed for himself an ideal conception of the metropolitan police as a sort of
benevolent institution for the suppression of evil. The notion of benevolence
especially was very closely associated with his sense of the power of the men in
blue. He had liked all police constables tenderly, with a guileless
trustfulness. And he was pained. He was irritated, too, by a suspicion of
duplicity in the members of the force. For Stevie was frank and as open as the
day himself. What did they mean by pretending then? Unlike his sister, who put
her trust in face values, he wished to go to the bottom of the matter. He
carried on his inquiry by means of an angry challenge.
    »What are they for then, Winn? What are they for? Tell me.«
    Winnie disliked controversy. But fearing most a fit of black depression
consequent on Stevie missing his mother very much at first, she did not
altogether decline the discussion. Guiltless of all irony, she answered yet in a
form which was not perhaps unnatural in the wife of Mr. Verloc, Delegate of the
Central Red Committee, personal friend of certain anarchists, and a votary of
social revolution.
    »Don't you know what the police are for, Stevie? They are there so that them
as have nothing shouldn't take anything away from them who have.«
    She avoided using the verb to steal, because it always made her brother
uncomfortable. For Stevie was delicately honest. Certain simple principles had
been instilled into him so anxiously (on account of his queerness) that the mere
names of certain transgressions filled him with horror. He had been always
easily impressed by speeches. He was impressed and startled now, and his
intelligence was very alert.
    »What?« he asked at once, anxiously. »Not even if they were hungry? Mustn't
they?«
    The two had paused in their walk.
    »Not if they were ever so,« said Mrs. Verloc, with the equanimity of a
person untroubled by the problem of the distribution of wealth, and exploring
the perspective of the roadway for an omnibus of the right colour. »Certainly
not. But what's the use of talking