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 lock-smith; 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.