- Meet Mr. Verloc, who's leaving his brother-in-law in charge of his London shop as he steps out for a little walk. The brother-in-law doesn't sound all that capable of running the place, but truth is that Verloc doesn't really care all that much about his "ostensible" business. The shop is attached to his house, which is a grimy brick building in London.
- The windows of the shop contain pictures of naked dancing girls, as well as "packages in wrappers like patent medicines; closed yellow paper envelopes" (1.3). In other words, these are packages that are really discrete, and you might already be realizing that Mr. Verloc runs some sort of pornography shop. Nice first impression on the reader, right? Imagine what people would've thought in 1907.
- The book describes the characters that frequent Verloc's shop, and doesn't paint a flattering picture of them. They tend to be either anxious young men or older gents with muddy clothes and their collars turned up to hide their faces.
- A bell at the door usually brings Mr. Verloc from out of the house and into the shop. He isn't the warmest of clerks; but hey, it's the pornography business, and customers aren't likely to care one way or the other.
- Sometimes, it is actually Mrs. Verloc who answers the bell. She is described as an attractive woman "with a full bust, in a tight bodice, and with broad hips" (1.7). Sometimes she makes younger customers uncomfortable (just by being a woman), and they leave after buying only a ridiculously overpriced bottle of ink.
- You also learn that there are "evening visitors," who come into the shop and don't buy anything, but instead "lif[t] up the flap at the end of the counter in order to pass into the back parlour" (1.8). The reader isn't quite sure (yet) who these dudes are, or why they've going into the Verloc's home, but Winnie doesn't seem to mind.
- Winnie's mother is an old woman who can barely move because of her swollen legs. She's had a long life, and at one point ran a boarding house in another part of London. She's been a widow for a while now, and she's happy that Winnie married Mr. Verloc, who seems like a nice man who can take care of them all.
- Winnie's mother remembers how Mr. Verloc used to come to her boarding house every now and then, always arriving from somewhere outside England. When he used to come, he would eat his breakfast in bed and "remain wallowing there" until noon every day (1.9). He would leave in the early afternoon and come back in the early morning, maybe three or four a.m., sounding like he'd been talking all night.
- The old woman doesn't really like the new neighborhood, but she is happy that her daughter is secure, along with Stevie. So why, we might already wonder, is she so worried about Stevie? Well it turns out that Winnie's brother has what people today would call a mental disability.
- Stevie has tried to hold jobs in the past, but he seems unable to keep them because he gets too easily distracted. On one occasion, he actually set off fireworks in the stairwell of an office building and caused a huge commotion.
- Winnie only found out afterwards that "two other office-boys in the building had worked upon his feelings by tales of injustice and oppression till they had wrought his compassion to the pitch of that frenzy" (1.14). In other words, two smarter young men tricked Stevie into lighting off the fireworks out of protest for the terrible treatment they'd received.
- At this point, Conrad shows you that Stevie can be easily manipulated. Stevie doesn't seem to cause Mr. Verloc much hassle. For the most part, he stays in his room at the rear of the Verloc house and spends his days drawing circles with a pencil and mathematical compass. While he does this, Winnie "glance[s] at him from time to time with maternal vigilance" (1.15), which suggests that she's very protective of him.