A little select connection of amateurs was forming around the shop in Brett Street, a secret connection eminently proper for any business undertaken by Mr Verloc, who, by a mystic accord of temperament and necessity, had been set apart to be a secret agent all his life.
He waited for a while, then added: "I'll be away a week or perhaps a fortnight.

Get Mrs Neale to come for the day." Mrs Neale was the charwoman of Brett Street.

Victim of her marriage with a debauched joiner, she was oppressed by the needs of many infant children.

Red-armed, and aproned in coarse sacking up to the arm-pits, she exhaled the anguish of the poor in a breath of soap-suds and rum, in the uproar of scrubbing, in the clatter of tin pails.
Mrs Verloc, full of deep purpose, spoke in the tone of the shallowest indifference.
"There is no need to have the woman here all day.

I shall do very well with Stevie." She let the lonely clock on the landing count off fifteen ticks into the abyss of eternity, and asked: "Shall I put the light out ?" Mr Verloc snapped at his wife huskily.
"Put it out.".