I advanced about three steps. There was a red carpet on the floor, and red curtains at the windows. The room was a double L-shaped one. From where I was now, I could see that both doors led into it. I had opened one at the exact moment that some one else had opened the other, with the result that I had come into the room as she went out, and neither of us had seen the other. I took another step forward.
The old lady spoke without looking up.
“A dark knight of Arthur’s court-and the name ought to have nine letters and end with an ‘S’,” she said in a deep, strong voice.
I took one desperate look at the wardrobe, but it was hopeless to think of getting the door open without being seen or heard.
The old lady tapped her block with her pencil.
“Nine letters,” she said. “A dark knight-a dark knight.”
I was brought up on the Morte d’Arthur. I counted on my fingers to make sure. Then I said.
“Sir Palomides the Saracen.”
I wondered if she was going to scream. I tried to look as little like a criminal as possible. I hoped that she had a grateful heart and would remember that I had given timely aid with her cross-word puzzle.
She didn’t scream. I went on hoping. She wrote the word down quite calmly-at least she began to write it and then stopped and asked me how it was spelt, all without looking up. I wondered what on earth was happening in the house. I could hear footsteps on the stairs-formidable, earthshaking footsteps.
The old lady finished writing Palomides. Then she counted the letters on her fingers, just as I had done, and heaved a sort of satisfied sigh.
“Palomides it is,” she said. Then she put down her pencil and looked up.
She had brown eyes, rather bulging, queer thick gray eyebrows, and a large fleshy nose. She looked at me with a bit of a frown.
“There wasn’t the slightest occasion for you to come,” she said.
I was so taken back that I nearly burst out laughing. If I could have thought of something to say, I’d have said it; because of course my voice was one of the things I was rather relying on to show her that I wasn’t the low-class ruffian I probably looked after shinning up and down all those wet roofs.
“Not the slightest occasion,” she repeated.
I thought her voice had slowed down and lost some of its ring. It struck me that she had seen the state of my knees. But she went on speaking.
“I told my niece there wasn’t the slightest occasion to send for you. It was a momentary faintness, and I am feeling perfectly well again.” Here she paused, frowned, took up a pair of spectacles which lay on the bed beside her, and putting them on, took a good long look at me.
I felt a most awful fool. When she spoke again, which she did after one of the longest minutes I have ever known, she was quite brisk. She said,
“You’ve had a busy day taking over from your uncle. I hope he’ll enjoy his holiday. You are Dr. Wilmington’s nephew, aren’t you?”
“You know I’m not,” I said, and waited for her to scream; but she only nodded her head.
“Speak the truth and shame the devil, I’ve seen you going up and down this street for the last three years. What do you want?”
She might well ask me that. It must have been nearly eleven o’clock, and I was in her bedroom.
I said, “Shelter,” and heard a trample of feet go past the door at my back.
“What have you done?” she asked with a good deal of interest.
“Nothing.” I wondered if she was going to believe me.
“Not murder?”
I laughed-I couldn’t help it.
“H’m!” she said. Then, very quickly, “Get inside that wardrobe!”
I didn’t wait to be told twice. The door was ajar, and I was inside and closing it in about half a second. If I hadn’t been quick, I should have been caught, because the other door, round the bend of the L, had opened too.
The niece came fussing into the room. She fussed about half-way across it, and then stopped and said, in a voice that was bright on top and all shaky underneath,
“Well, dear Aunt, you must have wondered where I was.”
“No,” said the old lady. “No, not at all.”
“Ellen wanted me for a moment,” said the niece.
“Quite so,” said the old lady. “My dear Fanny, how flushed you are! Ellen’s conversation must have been very exciting-or was it the police?”
I could almost hear Fanny’s jaw drop. She made a sort of bleating sound.
“Dear Aunt-”
“Oh, I know a policeman when I hear one-thumping up and down the stairs. What’s the matter? Is any one murdered?”
“I don’t know,” said Fanny twittering. “They didn’t say. They’re looking for a man who got away over the roofs- from a house down the street-and they think he might be here, because our skylight wasn’t bolted. They’ve been searching the house.”
“I heard them,” said the old lady very dryly. “Did they find him?”
“No, they didn’t. And of course I wouldn’t let them come in here, because, as I told them, you never leave the room, and I’d been here all the evening, and no one could possibly have come in without our seeing them, so of course there wasn’t the slightest need to search this room. I kept telling them so.”
“Dear me, Fanny,” said the old lady, “you’re very flustered about it all. I should have been delighted to see them, I’m sure. Have they gone?”
“No,” said Fanny. “But I told them they couldn’t see you and they had no right to bother you.”
“Rubbish!” said the old lady. “Open the door!”
I hadn’t quite shut the wardrobe, because I’d been afraid that Fanny would hear the click. I was standing behind the mahogany panel with a piece of fur tickling the back of my neck, and a silk dress hanging down over my left shoulder and rustling when I breathed. There was a strong smell of old clothes and lavender. I was thankful it wasn’t napthalene, because napthalene always makes me sneeze. It would have rather torn it if I had sneezed just as the policeman was coming into the room. I should say by the sound of his voice that he was standing about a yard away from me, just inside the same door that I had come in by.
I wanted to laugh. He sounded so awfully stodgy and embarrassed and polite.
“Sorry to trouble you, ma’am.”
And then the old lady, as sweet as honey:
“It’s no trouble at all, constable.”
“I understand you’ve been in this room all the time, ma’am.”
“All the time,” she said.
“And no one could come in without your seeing them, I take it?”
“Quite impossible,” she said. “If you’ll come over here by the bed, you will see for yourself.”
I heard him cross the floor.
“And the other lady was here too?”
“Until she went down to see who was knocking us up so late.”
I heard him come back again.
“Well, ma’am, I’m very sorry you’ve been troubled, but we’ve got to do our duty.”
“It’s most agreeable to feel that we are so well looked after,” said the old lady. “Good-night, constable.”
He said “Good-night” and shut the door. I could hear him speaking to the other man on the landing. Then one of them went upstairs and the other down. After a minute the front door shut. I began to wonder what was going to happen next.
Miss Fanny came back all in a flurry. I suppose she’d been seeing them off-or one of them; for I suspected that the second man had gone out by way of the skylight.
“You’re not upset, dear Aunt? Now you are not to let it keep you awake. I’m sure I tried to prevent his coming in, but you mustn’t let it excite you.”