"Anything up, old chap?"
"That was the Fanes' cook. There's a burglar in the house. I'm going over there now.'.'
The major's eyes gleamed.
"Is there, by Jove? Need any help?"
"No, thanks. I can manage."
The major was depressed. But he was sportsman enough to see that this was the other fellow's shot.
'Take a mack from the hatrack. Wait here. Back in half a second. Know just what you want."
He darted upstairs. He returned lovingly carrying a three-thirty express rifle which, at a conservative estimate, would have stopped a charging tiger at five hundred yards.
"Take it along," he said. "Always wondered what one of these things would do to a burglar. Nobody ever burgles this house, dammit. Take it with you. Might be useful. What?"
"But I can — "
"My dear chap, not another word. Bain won't hurt it. Fell in the river with it once myself. If you don't feel up to potting the blighter, you can use it to intimidate him with. Or I can get you a pair of knuckledusters, if you'd rather? Might be useful. What?"
He was already bustling Courtney into a mackintosh. The raincoat, several sizes too small, set Courtney's wrists some inches out of the sleeves and threatened to crack across the shoulders.
"What I mean is, I can't go about firing rifles at burglars in other people's houses! In the first place, it's illegal. In the second place, if I used this thing on him they'd have to scrape him off the walls. In the third place—"
"Here's your hat," said the major, jamming it down on his head. "Better hurry. Good hunting, my dear chap. If I hear any rumpus I'll come and lend a hand."
The door closed, and he was shut out in the rain.
He set out at a run. But the path was slippery, the gate greasy, the pavement of Fhzherbert Avenue like a water-chute. He had to slow down, or he would have gone head over ears.
It was a tropical rain which must have made many of the residents feel at home. There was no thunder or lightning; only a steady driving deluge which struck the pavement to rebound up again under your chin and in which you could not even have heard yourself shout.
Even the street-lamps were hardly visible. Courtney put his head down and butted along against the downpour. He could feel his hat and collar growing sodden, and the heavy squelch of his shoes. But the thought which crowded out all others in this roaring gloom was that Mrs. Propper's intruder was not a burglar of the sort she thought — and that Ann Browning, alone except for an equally terrified Vicky Fane, was shut up in a room which already held enough unpleasant memories.
His skin felt clammy. He was glad he had the rifle, now.
When he reached the gate, he was running again. Beyond the front lawn, "The Nest" showed dim and whitish through the sheen of rain. And there was no light in the house.
He ran up the path, feeling the breath rasp in his lungs. Whatever this "burglar" might be doing, he would hardly continue it if he heard somebody at the door. Courtney glanced up at the windows of Vicky's bedroom. They were dark, but they might only be curtained.
With a deep wave of thankfulness he pounded up the front steps.
He gave Mrs. Propper's signal, three short rings at the doorbell, and waited.
Nothing stirred in the house. He could hear only the rustling roar of the rain, the rush from a water-spout, the drumming on his own body. The minutes dragged by, and still nothing happened. In desperation, he again gave the signal of three sharp rings, before he realized where the trouble lay.
The doorbell did not work.
Eighteen
He stood back and studied the house.
No doubt about the bell being out of order. It had a distinctive ring which could be heard clearly in the hall and outside.
And a "burglar" who puts bells out of order-He tried the front door, but it was locked. The proper thing to attract attention, according to accepted canons, was to throw a handful of gravel against a window. But he saw no gravel. And since Mrs. Propper, he remembered, slept on the top floor of the house, the chances of scoring an audible bit with a handful of gravel in the rain were remote even if he had known which room she slept in.
At the foot of the front steps he found half a brick. Weighing this in his hand, he considered. People like H.M. or Major Adams might announce their arrival at somebody's house by chucking half a brick through a pane of glass, but its effect on frightened women might be worse than that of the burglar.
If he could attract the attention of Ann or Vicky, though—
And there was a gravel path through the rose-garden, at the back of the house.
He tried shouting at the window, but even the effects of powerful lungs were smothered and lost in the downpour. At least, there was no reply.
When he hurried round to get the gravel, his mind was divided between blind panic and a sense of the ridiculousness of the position. Here was he, a great gawk carrying an express rifle, outside a house and unable to get in. There might, even, be nothing wrong. Both Mrs. Propper and Daisy were in a state to see burglars where no burglars existed.
And, come to think of it, how had this burglar got in? Through a window, Mrs. Propper had said. But all the ground-floor windows were well up from the ground…
Human life seldom gives us the opportunity to be wholly unselfconscious or wholly heroic. Smashing windows with bricks, when a very ill woman lies upstairs, and the result may merely meet with a certain impatience on the part of those inside: no. They did these things in the films. They did them in the stories. But, when you faced such situation in real life, you only ran in circles.
Scooping up a handful of gravel from the path behind the house, Courtney saw, dimly looming, the outline of the garden shed. It gave him another idea. There was, he remembered from this afternoon, a ladder in the shed.
And if the burglar could get in through a window, supposing there to be a burglar, why couldn't he?
Despite the mackintosh, his clothes now felt like a weight of cold, wet pulp; his hat hung sodden over a streaming pair of eyes. He groped forward towards the shed. His wet fingers had some difficulty with the catch of the door. Inside, in a close mustiness with the rain hammering on the roof, he stepped on a rake and blundered into the lawn-mower (a whole welter of inanimate objects endowed with whirring, malicious noise) before he struck a match.
The ladder, as he remembered from this afternoon, was a short ladder. It would reach one of the ground-floor windows. He trundled it out, bringing down with a crash everything which had been stood upright.
Not difficult, though. Propping the ladder against the concrete drive behind the house, he lowered it until its upper edge rested on the sill of the nearer back drawing-room window.
And the window at the top was unlocked. He was just raising it when he remembered that he had left Major Adams's infernal rifle lying on the floor in the shed.
Why bother, anyway?
The rifle was no good to him.
Pushing up the window to the top, writhing round awkwardly like a squeezed concertina until he could sit on the window-sill, he pushed his legs through and dropped into a pitch-black room.
Many times, of course, he had heard described the agonizing cracks and creaks which could be drawn from the floor here. But when those creaks and cracks burst out, suddenly, under his own feet, he nearly jumped out of a crawling skin.
Disentangling himself from the curtains, he stood upright and listened. No noise, no life, no movement in a dark room. He took a step forward, waking the creaks again. He had never been in this room before. He had no notion of where the light-switch lay, except that it was probably by the door. And the door would be-yes. Ahead a good way, then to the left.