Once through the window, Doctor Tony wriggled awkwardly to the floor of the closet. Then he was on his feet, brushing himself down, and so out of the closet and into the main part of the house. He was standing in the kitchen, his senses heightened to the degree that it was almost painful for him to hear and smell. He picked up the just audible ticks and creaks made by an occupied property at night. He thought of the married couple asleep upstairs. Innocent, oblivious. No, they were not innocent. The man and wife deserved what was about to happen to them. The Doctor dismissed them, the man and his wife, dismissed them with a metaphorical snap of the fingers.
Now he could smell the smells of this dwelling-place, so distinct yet so like the smells of tens of thousands of other households. Lingering scents of cooking, of furniture polish, of flowers that should have been thrown out a day or two before. And the faintest odour of gas.
Tony felt his way around the kitchen before going into the dining room, which was adjacent to it. The door was slightly ajar. With eyes well used to the dark, he moved towards the fireplace and examined the wallpaper and fittings on either side. Whatever he found evidently pleased him because he gave a small grunt of satisfaction. He repeated the process at various places in the parlour at the front of the house and then out in the hallway. After that he crept upstairs, keeping close to the wall where the treads were less likely to creak. Once on the landing he waited for several minutes, accustoming himself to the slightly different atmosphere of the first floor of the house. Different because there were human beings up here. He could hear a soft snoring from behind one of the three doors which opened off the landing. The door wasn’t quite closed. There was the creak of a bed as one of the sleepers shifted. It crossed Tony’s mind that he might actually enter the bedroom, but no, it would be enough if he just pushed the door a little wider… like so… and after he’d done that and one further thing he crept back downstairs.
Now he was standing near the front door. There was a gleam of light coming through the stained glass of the fanlight. It was enough for him to see the shape of what he was looking for, near the fanlight and just above head-height, out of a child’s grasp. He reached out, then stopped, his hand poised in the darkness. From outside there was the sound of feet going by, a steady, heavy plod. A constable on patrol? What George Forester would have termed a ‘peeler’ or ‘crusher’? Doctor Tony waited while the footsteps passed the house. He heard a humming sound, a few slurred words. The man was singing under his breath. No, it was not a police constable but a drunk stomping home to bed. The noises faded.
Tony realized he’d been holding his own breath all this while. His hand was where he’d left it, suspended near the fixture on the wall by the fanlight. He let out his breath in a long sigh. He lowered his arm and savoured the tension in his muscles. Then he reached up and pulled down the lever on the gas main until it was fully in the ‘open’ position.
He waited a few seconds. Already he thought he could smell and taste it, the acrid smell of household gas as it poured out of the unlit jets in every room of the house. Some Tony had found carelessly unclosed, others he had opened. Like so many people, the couple who were sleeping soundly upstairs did not turn off the gas lights one by one as they went to bed every night. Perhaps they were fearful of leaks and tried to guard against them by shutting off the supply at the main. Perhaps the husband could not be bothered to turn off the gas lights one by one. Doctor Tony did not know whether the gas jets in the sleepers’ bedroom had been left open but, in any case, the poisonous fumes from downstairs would soon rise to the first floor, seeping through floorboards and creeping around doors.
Clasping a handkerchief – lilac-coloured, with a woman’s scent – to his face, Doctor Tony swiftly paced to the back of the house. He did not make his exit via the water-closet but through the kitchen door which, he had already ascertained, was not locked but bolted. In fact he might have got into the house through the back door, he realized, although he had enjoyed the surreptitiousness of wriggling through a window, making use of George Forester’s simple equipment.
The odour of gas penetrated the handkerchief which he still held to his nostrils. He shut the door behind him, and gathered up the rope and rod together with the bars from the closet window. Then he was striding past the beanpoles and the cucumber-frame and almost vaulting over the palings at the bottom of the garden. He paused to fling the objects out into the dark where they landed with a distant clatter.
By the time he reached the street he was breathing hard. He went back up the street, past the house where he had been prowling only moments before. All was quiet, no light showed, no sound came from the occupants. No sound would ever come from those particular occupants again, thought the Doctor. There would be something appropriate about the way they died, deprived of breath, choking for good honest air. He might have gone about the business in a more straightforward way. He could have shot the sleeping couple, for instance. He carried a gun, which he had possessed for many years. But there was a crude aspect to a shooting. And, besides, the noise of gunshots might have alerted neighbours and made it harder for him to get away. Here he was, striding along the street, free as a bird flying by night.
It was only after he had walked several hundred yards that he realized that he had left his greatcoat behind. He had taken it off before he wriggled through the window and then left it on the floor of the privy. He stopped in the middle of the street. Should he go back to get the coat? He did not want to break into the house all over again, especially a house that was filling up with choking gas. Doctor Tony did not think he could be traced or identified by the coat. It was as old and shabby as the rest of his garments, and any tailor’s or manufacturer’s mark had long disappeared.
Tony decided to leave it. If it was discovered, let the police make of it what they would. Of course, they might never find the coat. The house, and the overcoat with it, might be blown to blazes if someone was careless enough to cause a spark in the vicinity.
Tony was almost indifferent to his fate. He had a mission to accomplish, and once that was finished then he too was finished. There were more individuals to dispose of. But, that done, his work was over.
Act Two
The Major comes forward to the footlights. He says to the audience, ‘In my time I have brought to many audiences a veritable extravaganza of extraordinary feats deriving from the lands of the east, lands whose denizens have access to secrets of life which we in the west have long forgotten or never knew. But none, in my humble opinion, is so truly remarkable as what I am about to show you. ’
He claps his hands and the curtains behind him are parted to reveal a wide plank of wood resting on the backs of two chairs. The backdrop is as highly patterned as suburban wallpaper. Dull but not restful. An Indian gentleman comes on, dressed in a dark suit, western style. He is elderly and stooped, with flowing white hair. He acknowledges the audience with a slight inclination of the head. He does not smile.
‘ Ladies and gentlemen,’ says the Major, ‘allow me to present to you the mystical Mahatma of Agra. He has made a lifelong study of the methods by which a privileged few may escape our earthly bounds, our mortal bonds. Even I do not know how the mystical Mahatma accomplishes the feat he is about to demonstrate. It quite contradicts all that we know of the laws of nature. Sit back, ladies and gentlemen – no, do not sit back but lean forward – perch with eagerness on the edge of your seats – and marvel! ’