The Secret Agent
Secret Agent, The,a novel by Conrad , published 1907 .
A seedy shop in Soho provides cover for Verloc, the secret agent, who is working as a spy for a foreign embassy and as informer for Chief Inspector Heat of Scotland Yard. His wife Winnie has married him chiefly to provide security for her simple-minded younger brother Stevie , and is ignorant of Verloc's spying activities. The shop is a meeting place for a bunch of ill-assorted political fanatics united only in their effort to arouse some extremism in the over-moderate British. We are introduced to the Russian agent provocateur Vladimir; the terrorist ‘the Professor’; and Ossipon, Yundt, and Michaelis who easily accommodate their principles to their material needs. The foreign embassy is planning a series of outrages aimed at discrediting the revolutionary groups, which will be held responsible. The first target is the Greenwich Observatory and an unwilling Verloc...
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