The Secret Agent: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Michaelis’s patroness has connections with the Assistant Commissioner’s wife. The patroness is a rich, influential old lady. She is an intelligent woman who attracts a vast and varied social circle; she “liked to watch what the world was coming to,” and guests can never quite guess who they’ll meet in her drawing-room. Some years ago, Michaelis received a life sentence for a plot to rescue some prisoners from a police van. During the incident, a policeman with a wife and family was shot and killed, arousing popular outrage. At the time, Michaelis was just a young locksmith whose role was little more than to open the van.

Michaelis was equally distraught by the death of the policeman and by the failure of the plot, and he received a life sentence for his seeming callousness. He had an innocent and trustful personality, with humanitarian sympathies that deepened while he was in solitude. After his release, Michaelis wound up in the old patroness’s circle—she was impressed with his optimism and lack of bitterness. Thanks to her, his first public appearance since jail was a success.

After Michaelis left that night, the patroness expressed disbelief that someone like him could be a “revolutionist.” She believes that Michaelis has a saintly temperament, and she pities him because his loved ones all died while he was in prison, and he’s lost the means of supporting himself. Someone, she decides, will need to look after him. The Assistant Commissioner, who was there at the time, hadn’t voiced an opinion, but he’d shared the patroness’s belief that Michaelis seemed harmless, if perhaps a bit mad. So, when the Greenwich bombing occurs, and Michaelis appears to be connected, the Assistant Commissioner immediately thinks of the elderly patroness and her steadfast defense of Michaelis. If Michaelis gets sent back to jail, his health won’t survive it, and the patroness won’t forgive the Assistant Commissioner.

With all this in mind, the Assistant Commissioner tells Heat that it will be important to gather sufficient evidence against Michaelis. Heat is confident that he can get enough to satisfy the public and send Michaelis back to jail. When Heat gives an arrogant little laugh and says, “Trust me,” the Assistant Commissioner whirls around, feeling suspicious. Sitting down at his desk, he demands to know what Heat has got up his sleeve. A born detective tied to his paperwork, the Assistant Commissioner can’t help unleashing his suspicion somewhere. He senses that Heat’s loyalty is primarily to himself, and he suddenly relishes a challenge.

The Assistant Commissioner questions Chief Inspector Heat about Michaelis’s doings, though he’s perfectly aware of them himself. Michaelis has retired to the countryside because he’s working on his autobiography, in a cramped cottage that’s comfortably reminiscent of prison. Inspector Heat, for his part, has always resented Michaelis’s status as a kind of celebrity prisoner. He is comfortable arresting someone on a bare suspicion; his previous superiors would have allowed it. Besides, Michaelis will be easier to arrest, and his arrest more palatable to public opinion, than certain others Inspector Heat has in mind. To do so would feel like a personal triumph. 

The Assistant Commissioner wants to know why, if Heat is so convinced about Michaelis, he didn’t seek Michaelis’s arrest before coming into this meeting; Heat shouldn’t toy with him like this. Chief Inspector Heat starts sweating with indignation. The conversation turns to Heat’s investigation that day, and Heat pulls out the scrap from the coat. The Assistant Commissioner finds an address, 32 Brett Street, inked onto the fabric. Heat tells him that’s Verloc’s shop. Heat further explains that the department has always been aware of Verloc’s role as an embassy spy, but that exposing him was never thought to be publicly useful.

Under the previous ambassador, Heat even met Verloc and acted on intelligence that Verloc passed along. Since then, Heat has occasionally crossed Verloc’s path and kept tabs on him. One evening, he went to Verloc’s shop, and Heat told Verloc that as long as he didn’t get involved in anything too outrageous, the police would leave his shop alone. In exchange, Verloc gives Heat occasional useful “hints.” He knows that Verloc often meets with new foreign arrivals and keeps track of them. He and Heat exchange unsigned communications from time to time. However, the latest bombing came as a total surprise.

Though Heat insists that he must do his work as he sees fit, the Assistant Commissioner is annoyed at having been kept in the dark, and at Heat’s persistent belief that Michaelis is more relevant to the case at hand. He tells Heat to report back tomorrow to discuss things further. Not long after the Chief Inspector leaves, the Assistant Commissioner, too, puts on his hat and leaves the building.