The Secret Agent
A quiet shopkeeper's double life as a spy, and the tragic price his family pays.
Page 1
Mr. Adolf Verloc kept a small, dark shop in a busy London street. It sold all sorts of odd things: cheap stationery, rubber stamps, and questionable photographs. Few customers ever came in. Most days, Mr. Verloc sat on a chair behind the counter, looking heavy and bored. He lived in the rooms behind the shop with his wife, Winnie, and her younger brother, Stevie. To the outside world, Mr. Verloc was a respectable, if lazy, shopkeeper. "Is there anything I can help you with?" Winnie would ask the rare person who wandered in, but her real attention was always on Stevie, who sat at a small table, drawing endless circles on scraps of paper. "Don't trouble the boy, Winnie," Mr. Verloc would say without looking up. "He does no harm. Let him be."
Page 2
One morning, Mr. Verloc was summoned to the embassy office of Mr. Vladimir, the new First Secretary. Vladimir was a sharp, fashionable man who thought Verloc was useless. “You have done nothing for years,” he said, leaning across his polished desk. “The time for spying is over. We need action.” He wanted an outrage so senseless it would force the English police to crack down on all foreign radicals. “What do you want me to do?” Verloc asked, sweating. Vladimir smiled thinly. “Go for the first meridian. Go and blow up the Greenwich Observatory. It must be done within the month. Do you understand me?” Mr. Verloc left the embassy terrified, his comfortable life suddenly in danger.
Page 3
Mr. Verloc needed help, but the anarchists he spied on were mostly men who liked to talk, not act. He met them in the back of a pub: Michaelis, Ossipon, and Karl Yundt. But there was another man there, known only as “The Professor,” a small, shabby man who made perfect explosives. While the others argued, he sat apart. Verloc drew him aside. "I need something," Verloc said quietly. "Something effective." The Professor looked at him through his thick glasses. "I am the only one who is serious," he whispered. "The others are fools. What I make works perfectly. But be careful. It is a delicate mechanism." He promised to have the device ready for Verloc.
Page 4
Winnie’s mother was moving into a charity home. As they rode in a rattling cab, Stevie became agitated by the driver’s whipping of the horse. “Stop!” Stevie cried out. “It’s cruel! It’s wrong!” Winnie tried to calm him, but her mother’s greatest fear was for her son. She knew Winnie loved him, but what would happen to him? She turned to Mr. Verloc, her voice trembling. “You’ve been good to Stevie,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “Promise me you’ll always be good to him. That you'll look after him always.” Mr. Verloc, a little surprised by her intensity, grunted, “Of course. Don’t you worry about a thing.” He patted her hand, and Winnie watched them both with her still, unreadable expression.
Page 5
A thick fog covered London. In Greenwich Park, a dull blast echoed through the trees. When Chief Inspector Heat arrived, he found the ground scorched. There was no crater, only signs that a man had stumbled. “Search the area carefully,” Heat instructed his men. “Every fragment could be important. Check the roots of the trees.” The man himself was gone, destroyed by the bomb he had been carrying. As his men worked, Inspector Heat made a discovery. Caught on a tree root was a shred of a dark blue overcoat. He picked it up carefully. Sewn into the collar was a linen tag with an address. “Well now,” Heat murmured to himself, recognizing it instantly. “I know that address very well.”
Page 6
Back at his office, Chief Inspector Heat laid the evidence before his superior, the Assistant Commissioner. “The address is 32 Brett Street, Soho,” Heat said, placing the shred of coat on the desk. “It’s the shop run by a man named Verloc. He’s an agent.” Heat wanted to proceed carefully, to use his knowledge of Verloc to trap the whole network. But the Assistant Commissioner, a man of society, had other ideas. “An agent, you say? This is politically delicate, Heat,” he mused, tapping his fingers on the desk. “I believe I will handle this myself. Do not proceed until you hear from me.” Heat was dismissed, his careful police work taken out of his hands. “Yes, sir,” he said, but his face was grim.
Page 7
That evening, Mr. Verloc confessed everything to Winnie. After the Assistant Commissioner’s visit, he could no longer hide the truth. “It was Vladimir,” he mumbled, slumping onto the sofa. “He pushed me. I had to do it.” He explained how he had gotten the bomb from the Professor. And then he told her how he had used Stevie. “The boy was always talking about how awful things were,” Verloc said, not looking at her. “I sent him to the Observatory. He must have tripped.” He finally looked at his wife, expecting sympathy. “They found a piece of his coat,” he complained. “I’m the one who will suffer for this.” Winnie just stared at him from across the room, her face a mask.
Page 8
Winnie felt as if the world had gone silent and cold. Stevie, her gentle brother whom she had protected her whole life, was gone. And her husband was sitting on the sofa complaining about his own problems. “You need to pull yourself together,” Verloc said, starting to eat some leftover meat with his fingers. “We have to think of the future. I'm not a murderer.” The remains of their dinner were still on the table. Her eyes fell on the carving knife, its long blade gleaming in the gaslight. Her hand found the handle. In a swift, silent motion, she moved towards the sofa. “Winnie!” Verloc cried out, surprised. She struck. He collapsed onto the sofa and did not move again.
Page 9
Panicked, Winnie fled into the night with all of Verloc’s savings. She ran right into his old comrade, Ossipon. Seeing her distress and the money, Ossipon promised to help her escape. But on the train, Winnie’s story tumbled out. “I killed him,” she whispered. “He killed my Stevie.” Ossipon was terrified. This wasn’t politics; it was madness. On the dark, windy ferry, he watched her staring out at the black water. “Wait here for me,” he told her, his voice shaking. “I will get us some drinks.” He slipped away, taking her bag of money with him. Winnie waited, but he never came back. She was left utterly alone on the crowded boat, her last hope gone. She vanished from the night ferry, lost to the dark water.
Page 10
The city of London carried on, vast and indifferent. The Verlocs were gone, and the plot had failed. But deep in the maze of streets, the Professor walked on alone. He was a small, unremarkable man, easily lost in the crowds. But in his pocket, his fingers rested on the rubber bulb of a detonator. “My device is my protection,” he often thought. “It makes me master of the street. Fear is the only true force.” He was the perfect anarchist, a ghost in the city, carrying destruction with him wherever he went. He felt a dark power in his isolation, ready at any moment to unleash chaos. “There is no morality in this,” he would mutter to himself. “Only necessity.” He walked on, unnoticed and invulnerable, through the heart of the sleeping city.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
Read Wonder Novels on your phone
Wonder Novels is available on Android. Get Wonder Novels on Google Play.