The Secret Agent: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Winnie does not step beyond the front door. After the initial exhilaration, she now feels afraid. For Verloc, she only feels contempt—but she realizes that she is the only living murderer in the room. Though stabbing Verloc had momentarily relieved her rage, Winnie is now compelled to look more deeply into the matter, and all she can see is the gallows. She pictures being hung in some obscure jailyard and feels afraid. Newspaper accounts of hangings always say something like, “The drop given was fourteen feet.” She starts feeling choked and panicky, and she resolves to jump off a bridge.

Only a few minutes have passed since the stabbing. Winnie drags herself outside, where the damp air feels suffocating, and the atmosphere of the dark, misty city envelops her. She feels friendless and tries to forget about her mother. Winnie keeps dragging herself one step at a time, her fear of death dogging her. She thinks for a moment about fleeing abroad, but she can’t do this without help and connections. London is “a black abyss from which no unaided woman” can escape.

Moments later, Winnie finds unexpected help: Comrade Ossipon is peering at her through her black veil, believing she looks drunk. To Ossipon’s surprise, Winnie leans against him, surprised that he recognizes her. He tells her he has been thinking of her lately, and indeed has always thought about her. Ossipon has been hovering near Brett Street for the past two hours, trying to decide if he dared approach the widow, though he doesn’t tell her that part. Winnie tucks her hand under his arm and begins directing him down the street.

Ossipon tells Winnie that he read about the bombing in the paper, and he decided to come and find Winnie, whom he’s always loved. Inwardly, he wonders about the shop’s business value, but he tries to focus on the romantic side of things. He is surprised that Winnie is being so receptive.

Winnie says she always ignored Ossipon because she was a respectable wife, “till he made me what I am.” But as far as she’s concerned, Verloc stole the last seven years of her life. When they married, Winnie was a tired young woman with others dependent on her; Verloc was willing to support her mother and Stevie, so what else could she do? But he turned out to be “a devil.”

Ossipon feels stunned by this ferocious statement; he doesn’t know what Verloc could have done, but he tries to comfort Winnie, assuring her that Verloc is dead now. Winnie, relieved and triumphant, grabs his arm and says, “You guessed what I had to do.” Ossipon, however, is confused by Winnie’s words and her frenzied state. He starts to wonder if the Verlocs’ marriage was so unhappy that Verloc bombed Greenwich Park as a way of committing suicide, making fools of the police, the press, The Professor, and the revolutionary world over a domestic dispute. He wonders if Winnie is the real “devil.”

Comrade Ossipon wonders how Winnie came to know about the bombing (he doesn’t believe that Verloc would have told her his plans). She explains that Chief Inspector Heat came, and that she overheard that they had to “gather him up with a shovel.” She adds that the police were on “that man’s side” and did nothing. After that, an Embassy foreigner came. Ossipon is shocked by this detail— the matter is becoming much deeper than he thought it was. He tries to stop speculating and focus on Winnie.

Winnie begs Ossipon to flee with her to the Continent (mainland Europe). Ossipon, who feels that the whole affair is becoming too murky for him, is happy to oblige. But what about Verloc’s money? He tells Winnie there won’t be a train until this, and he doesn’t have the money anyway. At that, Winnie remembers the cash tucked into her bodice. The pair embrace in mutual relief, but Ossipon is still baffled by Winnie’s evident fear. “Haven’t you guessed what I was driven to do!” she exclaims. In her terrified state, she thinks that she’s revealed more to Ossipon than she really has.

Ossipon is used to excitable women and asks no further questions. He suddenly remembers that a boat leaves Southampton for France at midnight; they can catch a train at 10:30. He starts making plans. Suddenly, Winnie remembers that she left the shop door open. When they approach the shop, she notices that she also left the parlor light on. She pushes Ossipon toward the shop, begging him to take care of it for her. Ossipon doesn’t want to argue with her over trifles, so he obliges. When he looks into the parlor, however, he stifles a yell when he sees Verloc resting on the sofa. It suddenly occurs to him that the Verlocs are plotting together to kill him, or perhaps to trap him for the police.

In the middle of his terror, Ossipon notices the hat upended on the floor. From there, his eyes gradually move toward Verloc’s partially closed eyes and then to his chest, from which a knife handle protrudes. Ossipon begins to retch. Just then Winnie rushes into the shop and clutches him, afraid that a passing constable has spotted her. The police have been instructed not to meddle with Verloc’s shop unless something is obviously wrong. Having spotted Winnie on the street, the constable tries the door and briefly shines his lantern at the window. Winnie tells Ossipon to kill her if the constable gets in, but the constable walks away, assuming that all is well.

Ossipon finally gets the parlor light shut off, trying to accept what’s happened. He doesn’t believe that Winnie is capable of committing a crime like this alone, and so he still isn’t convinced that there isn’t someone else lurking in the house to kill him—who knows where this might end? Winnie begs Ossipon not to let her be caught and hanged. She’ll do anything for him, love him or be a slave. From her ravings, Ossipon figures out that it was in fact Stevie, the “degenerate,” who was killed in the bombing. As Winnie clings to his legs snakelike, Ossipon feels terrified of her; she seems like “death itself.” She tells him he can’t get rid of her now, “not unless you crush my head under your heel.”

Ossipon imagines Winnie running into the street and sending the police after him as the murderer. He also imagines fleeing to an obscure part of Europe and living in fear of her for the rest of his life. Finally, he pulls himself together, and they leave the shop and catch a cab for the train. He gives Winnie instructions about buying the tickets and boarding the train separately, in case they are recognized. Winnie gives him Verloc’s money and tells him that Verloc banked under the name of Prozor.

At the station, they follow their plan and are soon concealed in a train compartment. Ossipon speaks to the guard to make sure they won’t be disturbed during the trip. Winnie softens, moved by Ossipon’s care for her. Ossipon, for his part, is “free from the trammels of conventional morality,” yet still beholden to “the rule of science.” He gazes back at Winnie and sees her as a degenerate in her own way—a murderer. He studies her features for confirmation and concludes that Lombroso would agree.

When Ossipon mentions the resemblance between Winnie and Stevie, Winnie finally breaks into helpless sobs. Ossipon encourages her to step farther away from the platform, then, at the last moment before the train pulls away from the platform, he opens the carriage door and leaps out. He gets up, bruised and shaken, at the very end of the platform and tells the crowd of concerned railway workers that he has just sent his wife off to her dying mother’s house and didn’t notice that the train was moving until the last second, leaping out on impulse. Ossipon then walks out of the station, the banknotes in his pocket. He walks all the way home through the misty, sleeping city until he reaches his flat, where he lies awake until dawn.