"He generally arrived in London (like the influenza) from the Continent, only he arrived unheralded by the Press; and his visitations set in with great severity" (5) (simile)
Mr. Verloc, who comes from continental Europe and occasionally travels back and forth, is compared to a virulent disease; however, the irony is that he is a rather benign one too, and resembles influenza more so in the sense of being pesky and of almost microbial size.
"The piano at the foot of the staircase clanged through a mazurka with brazen impetuosity, as though a vulgar and impudent ghost were showing off" (50) (simile)
The piano at the Silenus beer hall, which is described as playing itself, is almost certainly a player piano, a mechanical device that took the place of the well-trained piano player. In this case, it is not so much a machine that plays itself as an inhuman spirit distilled from the fraught atmosphere of the anarchists' subterranean haunt.
"After uttering these words the Professor walked away from the table. Ossipon, whom that piece of insight had taken unawares, gave one ineffectual start, and remained still, with a helpless gaze, as though nailed fast to the seat of his chair" (59) (simile)
Despite his advantage in terms of physical bulk, Ossipon is no match for the Professor in terms of moral force and fanatical intensity. The extreme views of the latter shock him to the extent that he is physically stunned.
"At the sound of that name, falling unexpectedly into this annoying affair, the Assistant Commissioner dismissed brusquely the vague remembrance of his daily whist party at his club. It was the most comforting habit of his life, in a mainly successful display of his skill without the assistance of any subordinate. He entered his club to play from five to seven, before going home to dinner, forgetting for those two hours whatever was distasteful in his life, as though the game were a beneficent drug for allaying the pangs of moral discontent" (76) (simile)
After a long and frustrating day at work dealing with the fallout of the Greenwich Bomb Outrage and a pesky underling, the Assistant Commissioner retreats to the upper class club society where he can forget work entirely and abandon himself, for a time, to leisure.
"He felt light-hearted, as though he had been ambushed all alone in a jungle many thousands of miles away from departmental desks and official inkstands" (110) (simile)
The Assistant Commissioner sneaks like a criminal to Brett Street to inspect Mr. Verloc's shop and gets the feeling that he is stepping out of his usual sphere of propriety and lawfulness into a much grayer zone, where the distinction between policeman and criminal is not so clear.
