The Throwback

'Can you come at once?' said Lockhart through a handkerchief, 'Mrs Artoux has had a stroke and is asking for you.'

He emerged from the phone box in time to see the Racemes' Saab shoot out of the drive, and consulted his stopwatch. Two minutes had elapsed since he had made the call and two minutes would not have given Mrs Raceme time to untie her husband. Lockhart sauntered down the street to their house, unlocked the door and went quietly inside. He turned out the light in the hall, climbed the stairs and stood in silence on the landing. Finally he peered into the bedroom. Naked, hooded, bound and gagged,

Mr Raceme was in the grip of those obscure masochistic emotions which gave him so much peculiar satisfaction. He squirmed ecstatically on the bed. A second later he was still squirming but the ecstasy had gone. Used to the exquisite pain of Mrs Raceme's light birch, the application of Lockhart's patent horsewhip at maximum velocity to his rump produced a reflex that threatened to lift both his body off the bed and the bed off the floor. Mr Raceme spat the gag out of his mouth and tried to express his feelings vocally. Lockhart suppressed his yell by pushing his head into the pillow and applied his horsewhip to full advantage. By the time he had finished Mr Raceme had passed from masochism to sadism.

'I'll murder you, you fucking bitch,' he screamed as Lockhart shut the bedroom door and went downstairs, 'so help me God, I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do.'

Lockhart let himself out of the front door and went round to the garden. From inside the house Mr Raceme's screams and threats had begun to alternate with whimpers. Lockhart, installed himself in the bushes and waited for Mrs Raceme to return. If half of the threats her husband was making were carried out he might well have to intervene once again to save her life. He debated the point but decided that whatever Mr Raceme might say the state of his backside would deter him from putting anything into practice. He was on the point of leaving when the Saab's headlights shone in the drive and Mrs Raceme let herself into the house.

The ensuing sounds surpassed even those that had enlivened Sandicott Crescent on the evening of the Grabbles' domestic tiff. Mrs Raceme's statement, even before she entered the bedroom and saw Mr Raceme's condition, that there was absolutely nothing the matter with Mrs Artoux and that she certainly hadn't had a stroke was greeted by a scream of rage that shook the curtains and was followed by a second scream of almost equal proportions from Mrs Raceme. Lacking Lockhart's clear understanding of what Mr Raceme had promised to do to her the moment he got free, she made the mistake of untying his legs. A second later, disproving Lockhart's supposition that he wasn't in any fit state to put theory into practice, Mr Raceme was on his feet and clearly raring to go. Unfortunately his hands were still lashed to the double bed and

Mrs Raceme, recognizing almost instantaneously her mistake in untying his feet, refused to undo his hands.

'What do you mean I did this to you?' she shrieked as the double bed wedded to Mr Raceme's feet blundered towards her. 'I got this phone call from someone saying Mrs Artoux had had a stroke.'

The word was too much for Mr Raceme. 'Stroke?' he yelled in a muffled sort of way through the pillow and the mattress that obstructed his view of things. 'What in the name of hell do you mean by stroke?'

In the garden Lockhart knew precisely. His patent horsewhip had needed no lead weights added to the leather thongs.

'Well all I'm telling you,' shrieked Mrs Raceme, 'is that if. you think I did that to you, you're out of your mind.'

Mr Raceme was. Impeded by the bed and driven insane by the pain he hurtled across the room in the general direction of her voice, smashed through the dressing-table behind which Mrs Raceme was sheltering and carrying all before him, dressing-table, bed, bedside lamp and teamaker, not to mention Mrs Raceme, shot through the curtains of the patio window, smashed the double glazing and cascaded down into the flowerbed below. There his screams were combined with those of Mrs Raceme herself, lacerated in much the same part of her anatomy by the double glazing and a rose bush.

Lockhart hesitated and crossed into the bird sanctuary, and as he moved silently towards Number 12 the sound of sirens could be heard above the shouts and yells of the Racemes. The Pettigrews had exercised their social conscience once again and phoned for the police.

'What on earth was all that noise?' Jessica inquired as he came in from the garage where he had deposited his horsewhip. "It sounded as if someone had fallen through a greenhouse roof.'

'Most peculiar tenants we've got,' said Lockhart, 'they seem to kick up such a rumpus.'

Certainly Mr and Mrs Raceme were kicking up a rumpus and the police found their predicament most peculiar. Mr Raceme's lacerated posterior and his hood made instant identification difficult but it was the fact that he was still tied to the bed that intrigued them.

'Tell me, sir,' said the sergeant who arrived and promptly phoned for an ambulance, 'do you make a habit of wearing hoods when you go to bed?'

'Mind your own bloody business,' said Mr Raceme inadvisedly. 'I don't ask you what you do in the privacy of your home and you've got no right to ask me.'

'Well, sir, if that's the line you're going to take, we'll take the line that you've used obscene language to a police officer in the execution of his duty and have issued menaces against the person of your wife.'

'And what about my person?' yelled Mr Raceme. 'You seem to have overlooked the fact that she thrashed me.'

'We haven't overlooked it, sir,' said the sergeant, 'the lady seems to have made a good job of it.'

The arrival of a constable who had been investigating the contents of the Racemes' bedroom and was now carrying a bundle of rods, whips, canes and cats-o'-nine tails merely confirmed the police in their suspicion that Mr Raceme had got what he asked for. Their sympathy was all for his wife and when Mr Raceme tried to renew his assault on her they dispensed with the need for handcuffs and carried him bed and all into the Black Maria. Mrs Raceme went away in an ambulance. The sergeant following in a police car was frankly puzzled.

'Something bloody odd going on down there,' he said to the driver. 'We'd better keep an eye on Sandicott Crescent from now on.'

From that night on a patrol car was stationed at the bottom of the Crescent and its presence there forced Lockhart to adopt new tactics. He had already given some thought to the use of the sewage system and the police lent him the incentive. Two days later he purchased a wet-suit for underwater diving and an oxygen mask and, making use of the late Mr Sandicott's detailed plans of the Crescent's amenities, lifted the cover of the main sewer opposite his house, descended the ladder and closed it behind him. In the darkness he switched on his torch and made his way along, noting the inlets from each house as he went. It was a large main sewer and afforded him fresh insight into the habits of his neighbours. Opposite Colonel Finch-Potter's subsidiary were deposited a number of white latex objects which didn't accord with his supposedly bachelor status, while Mr O'Brain's meanness was proven by his use of a telephone directory for toilet paper. Lockhart returned from his potholing determined to concentrate his attention on these two bachelors. There was the problem of the Colonel's bull-terrier to be considered. It was an amiable beast but of as ferocious an aspect as that of its owner. Lockhart knew the Colonel's habits already, though the discovery of so many contraceptives in the vicinity of his drain came as something of a surprise. There was more to the Colonel than met the eye. He would have to observe him more closely. Mr O'Brain presented less of a problem. Being Irish, he was a relatively easy target, and when Lockhart had divested himself of his wet-suit and had washed it, he resorted to the telephone yet again.