had
embraced indolence from an impulse as profound as inexplicable and as imperious
as the impulse which directs a man's preference for one particular woman in a
given thousand. He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator,
for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He required a more perfect form
of ease; or it might have been that he was the victim of a philosophical
unbelief in the effectiveness of every human effort. Such a form of indolence
requires, implies, a certain amount of intelligence. Mr. Verloc was not devoid
of intelligence - and at the notion of a menaced social order he would perhaps
have winked to himself if there had not been an effort to make in that sign of
scepticism. His big, prominent eyes were not well adapted to winking. They were
rather of the sort that closes solemnly in slumber with majestic effect.
    Undemonstrative and burly in a fat-pig style, Mr. Verloc, without either
rubbing his hands with satisfaction or winking sceptically at his thoughts,
proceeded on his way. He trod the pavement heavily with his shiny boots, and his
general get-up was that of a well-to-do mechanic in business for himself. He
might have been anything from a picture-frame maker to a locksmith; an employer
of labour in a small way. But there was also about him an indescribable air
which no mechanic could have acquired in the practice of his handicraft however
dishonestly exercised: the air common to men who live on the vices, the follies,
or the baser fears of mankind; the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of
gambling hells and disorderly houses; to private detectives and inquiry agents;
to drink sellers and, I should say, to the sellers of invigorating electric
belts and to the inventors of patent medicines. But of that last I am not sure,
not having carried my investigations so far into the depths. For all I know, the
expression of these last may be perfectly diabolic. I shouldn't be surprised.
What I want to affirm is that Mr. Verloc's expression was by no means diabolic.
    Before reaching Knightsbridge, Mr. Verloc took a turn to the left out of the
busy main thoroughfare, uproarious with the traffic of swaying omnibuses and
trotting vans, in the almost silent, swift flow of hansoms. Under his hat, worn
with a slight backward tilt, his hair had been carefully brushed into respectful
sleekness; for his business was with an Embassy. And Mr. Verloc, steady like a
rock - a soft kind of rock - marched