I will not--" She broke off.

Ossipon from the counter issued a warning: "Don't shout like this," then seemed to reflect profoundly.

"You did this thing quite by yourself ?" he inquired in a hollow voice, but with an appearance of masterful calmness which filled Mrs Verloc's heart with grateful confidence in his protecting strength.
"Yes," she whispered, invisible.
"I wouldn't have believed it possible," he muttered.

"Nobody would." She heard him move about and the snapping of a lock in the parlour door.
Comrade Ossipon had turned the key on Mr Verloc's repose; and this he did not from reverence for its eternal nature or any other obscurely sentimental consideration, but for the precise reason that he was not at all sure that there was not someone else hiding somewhere in the house.
He did not believe the woman, or rather he was incapable by now of judging what could be true, possible, or even probable in this astounding universe.

He was terrified out of all capacity for belief or disbelief in regard of this extraordinary affair, which began with police inspectors and Embassies and would end goodness knows where--on the scaffold for someone.