‘We have one each,’ said Linley, pointing at me.
‘They’re not very much use,’ said Ulton. ‘He’ll be better armed than we are. We shan’t be able to force our way into the house with these things, and once we get in we shan’t need them.’
‘Why not?’ asked Linley.
And Inspector Ulton brought out of a pocket a glass ball like a tennis ball. He put it into his left hand and produced two pairs of glasses with rubber all round them, that fastened with a strap round the head, and gave us each one. ‘When this ball breaks in a room,’ he said, ‘we shall be able to see and he won’t.’
‘Tear-gas,’ said Linley.
‘That’s it,’ said the inspector.
And it occurred to me that two things in this world are getting pretty complicated, crime and Scotland Yard.
‘The difficulty will be,’ he said, ‘getting into the house.’
Well, they talked that up and down and made lots of plans; and the only thing about them seemed to be that they weren’t any good. Ulton had got a sketch of the house, three or four sketches, that he had had sent down by train from the Henby constable; and I often heard the phrase, ‘But that is commanded by this window.’ There were plenty of ways of breaking into the house, but the best that they seemed able to make of it was that we were quite likely to lose two men by the time a third got in.
‘Then what are you going to do?’ said Linley at last.
‘I shall have to go up to the door and ring the bell,’ said Ulton.
‘But will he open it?’ asked Linley.
‘Well,’ said Ulton, ‘I should say that that kind of man wouldn’t.’
They had got no further than that. So then I thought it was time for me to speak, though they hadn’t been noticing me for quite a while.
‘I can get into any house,’ I said.
‘You?’ said the inspector.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I travel in Numnumo, a relish for meats and savouries.’
‘But how do you get into houses?’ he asked.
‘Oh, different ways,’ I said. ‘But it would be no good my travelling in Numnumo if I couldn’t get in anywhere.’
‘But this fellow’s sure to be armed,’ said Linley, ‘and he won’t want you in his house.’
‘Nobody wants me in their house,’ I said, ‘a perfect stranger, with something to sell that they don’t want. But I get in.’
‘But how?’ said the inspector again.
‘Well, it’s my job,’ I said. ‘Might as well ask a policeman how he gets into his tunic. Just slips it on.’
‘Do you think you could get into this house?’ he asked.
‘Sure I could,’ I replied. ‘Nobody ever keeps me out.’
‘We might try it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Do you think you could drop one of these glass bombs when you get in?’
‘Easier than pushing Numnumo,’ I said.
‘You might try it,’ he told me. ‘Drop it on something hard. There’s no explosion: it only breaks. He won’t see you any more after you’ve dropped it. You must wear these glasses.’
‘Well, I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘But it makes it all rather difficult. I usually smarten myself up all I can, before getting into a house. With things like that on my face it would make it much harder. But I don’t mind.’
‘Do you think you can explain them away somehow?’ he asked.
‘Explain them!’ said Linley. ‘A man that can explain Numnumo can explain anything.’
Which is not the way I should have put it myself, as it’s a little hard on the proprietors; but it was the right idea, for all that.
‘Of course I can,’ I said.
So he gave me four glass bombs, and told me to drop them about wherever I had the chance.
‘I don’t know who else you’ll find in the house,’ he said. ‘Somebody very deep or very simple.’
In the end we found no one but him.
Well, we got into Arneth and hired a Ford, and drove out four miles to Henby. It was dark by now, and I got the idea in the car that Ulton and Linley were feeling anxious, although neither of them spoke. I was feeling contented enough, because the job before me was just the one thing I could do, getting into houses; and nothing puts a man more at his ease than to be doing his own job among men who are strange to it. It gives him a feeling of superiority over them. Henby went up into the night, all on a hill, and one street straggled away from it out into darkness; and, a hundred yards or so beyond the last house of that street, all by itself was the house that the telephone knew as Henby 15. We stopped the car long before we came to it, and walked the last few hundred yards. Ulton explained to the driver just why we wanted to get out and walk; and to me it sounded all very plausible, but somehow I became sure of two things, that the driver never believed a word of it, and that he never guessed what we were really after.
‘I should put on the mask now,’ said Ulton.
And they helped me to fasten it while we were still out of sight of the house. Ulton gave me a whistle to blow in case I wanted help. ‘We’ll be as close as we can get without being seen,’ he said. Even then, it seemed to me, they’d be a bit late, if I wanted help enough to whistle for it. Perhaps I looked a bit lonely, for Ulton said: ‘It’s no use our coming near enough to be seen, or he’d let nobody in. Very likely he won’t let you in in any case. But do what you can.’
‘I’ll get in all right,’ I said. And off I started.
The night seemed very dark, which was really all to the good, only somehow it didn’t seem so. It seemed lonely too, and all the small gusts of wind that came blowing past me seemed lost in it. I heard a step coming my way, and a man passed me, who I knew must be the village constable going to report to Ulton. That made three people that would come if I whistled, but it didn’t make anything less lonely then. And then I came to the house; a wicket gate and a path through a little garden, and I was at the front door. I rang till a window opened on the first floor, the window of a dark room, and no face showed.
‘What do you want?’ said the voice.
‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘if you don’t want anything.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said the voice in the dark room.
‘Only,’ I said, ‘that there’s one thing that nearly everyone wants.’
‘Well? What?’ he said.
‘Health,’ I answered. ‘And how are you to have that without food; and good food, with a relish to it?’
‘I don’t want to buy anything,’ he said, and was just going to shut down the window.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to sell anything. I’ve a wonderful relish for meats and savouries here; but I don’t sell it, I give it.’
It’s a good catch that. You see, they give away one bottle free to whoever buys a dozen. So I catch them by telling them that the bottle is free, and getting them to sign an order for a dozen afterwards; and of course they pay on the nail. That’s the difficult part of it, the order and getting the cash; all that comes later, but that free bottle gets me into the house. And it got me in here.
‘Then what do you make out of it?’ he asked me.
Interested enough to ask questions, you see.
‘Well,