Twenty past four—and practically nothing done yet. He fell upon the miniature dresser upon which the pans and saucepans were arranged and lifted it towards the door. A pan and two saucepans fell noisily to the floor. As he deposited his burden in the passage, the bombardment in the Prossips’ coal-cellar ceased sharply and the whistle fell to silence. Footsteps had hurried from the top-flat’s sitting-room; the gramophone stopped. While Whalley stood, vaguely debating the reason of this sudden cessation of hostilities, the bell of his own hall-door rang.
After a brief hesitation—for he disliked being seen in his working-clothes by anyone but his wife—he descended to the door and, opening it, saw his landlord, Mr Penfold, standing in the rain beneath a streaming umbrella. The sudden lull upstairs was explained. By unfortunate chance, the enemy had observed Mr Penfold’s approach—no doubt had seen him—from their sitting-room windows, alight from a bus opposite the front garden’s gate.
There had been trouble with Penfold—a truculent individual, by avocation a commercial traveller, who had inherited Nos. 47 and 48 Downview Road from an aunt deceased some few years before. The Whalleys had moved into the flat rather hurriedly, accepting a merely verbal assurance that it would be ‘done up’ in the following spring. But when the following spring arrived, Penfold had refused to remember having given any assurance of any kind as to doing anything. There had been interviews and, subsequently, correspondence, in the course of which he had passed from evasion to incivility and from incivility to impertinence. Finally Whalley had had the kitchen, the dining-room, and the bedroom repainted and repapered at his own cost, and had consoled himself by the fact that he had never since seen his landlord’s face.
It was a large, heavy-jowled face, out of which a pair of cunning little eyes looked at him now with unconcealed hostility. Without moving any part of it visibly, Penfold said at once:
‘Afternoon. What’s this I hear about that dog of yours?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ replied Whalley. ‘Do come in, won’t you?’
Ignoring the invitation to enter, Penfold surveyed the old trousers and pull-over at his leisure and sniffed. Then, taking a fresh stand with his square-toed boots, he transferred his gaze to the cover of the rubbish-bin.
‘Oh! You’ve no idea. I see. Well, I’ll give you an idea, then. I have received complaints from the other tenants of these flats that your dog has been molesting them—attacking them and causing them annoyance and nuisance.’
‘Who has complained, Mr Penfold?’
‘Never you mind.’ Penfold’s hand swept the question aside. ‘That is what I am informed. And I’m satisfied that I’m correctly informed. So we won’t argue about the point.’
‘I haven’t the slightest intention of arguing about it,’ Whalley retorted sharply. ‘Or about anything else. If you have any complaint to make, put it in writing and I’ll pass it on to my solicitors—if I think it worth while doing so.’
Highly amused, Penfold threw back his head and guffawed. He turned then and feigned to depart, but stopped and delivered his ultimatum over a shoulder.
‘Now, listen here, Mister Whalley—as you’re talking about solicitors. According to your agreement, you are permitted to keep a dog in this flat only on the condition that it causes no annoyance to any of the other tenants. Your dog has caused such annoyance. It attacked one of the other tenants savagely. Jumped up on her and tried to bite her hands. It alarmed her so that she was obliged to remain in bed for two days with a heart attack. I give you notice now to get rid of it immediately. If you fail to do so before this day week, I will instruct my solicitors to take action to compel you to keep to the terms of your agreement.’
‘You can start taking them now, damn you,’ snapped Whalley.
Again Mr Penfold surveyed the old trousers and pullover exhaustively as if expecting to extract from them an explanation of his tenant’s childish ill-temper. He sniffed again, then, and turning away irrevocably went down the steps with threatening slowness and heaviness. As Whalley slammed the hall-door, a voice, humming with exaggerated blitheness above his head, informed him that the interview had had an audience. He made his way slowly back along the crowded passage towards the kitchen, revolving wrathfully this latest manœuvre of the Prossips.
The crude but effective ingenuity of it exasperated him—all the more because its malice was feminine and, he knew, had aimed itself more especially at Elsa. For Bogey-Bogey, though he tolerated a master, had but one god and was entirely the property of his mistress—her inseparable companion and, as the Prossips could not have failed to learn from the daily observation of the six months for which they had occupied the top flat, the light of her eyes. They had struck at her most vulnerable point—at his, because the blow was aimed at her.
Savage attack.
The facts were that one day about a week before, Bogey-Bogey, the gentlest and best-tempered of creatures, had escaped into the front garden and, encountering Mrs Prossip and her daughter there, had, after his inveterate habit of doing the wrong thing, rushed at her joyously and jumped up on her skirts. The Prossip girl had jabbed him savagely with her sunshade and he had fled back whimpering to Elsa, who had witnessed the incident from the kitchen and had hurried out to his rescue. She had met the female Prossips on the steps, but they had made no complaint at that time. It had obviously taken them some days to discover that Bogey-Bogey had placed a new weapon in their hands and to induce that brute Penfold to wield it for them. Not that he was likely to have required much inducement—swine. God! What a face—what eyes.
Victoriously, refreshed by its rest, the gramophone resumed its blaring. He walked slowly back along the passage until he stood almost directly beneath the sound, and stood looking up. Its position could be calculated almost exactly.
Out of the question, of course, to think of parting with Bogey-Bogey … unthinkable. Probably the threat was merely spiteful bluff on Penfold’s part. Though he was quite capable of trying to carry it out. Of course, he couldn’t carry it out. Still … suppose they had to turn out of the flat …
Yes. One could calculate the position of the gramophone almost exactly. The landings of the two flats, of course, corresponded precisely in size and position. The Prossips would have placed the gramophone where it could be most conveniently reached by anyone who had to go to it repeatedly, either from the kitchen or their sitting-room, close to the balusters, two steps down the little stairs from the passage to the hall door. For, of course, they had to lean over the balusters to get at it and would do so where their rail, following the fall of the stairs, first became sufficiently low to place the gramophone within comfortable reach.
He decided upon a knot in the under-surface of the Prossips’ match-boarding. Just there. A line through that knot—say, from the centre of his own landing—ought to pass through the near side of the gramophone. If a hand was restarting the needle, and if a face was bent over it as it did so, the line would just about catch them both—some part of both of them. It would have to be a little oblique, of course—yes, starting from the centre of his own landing—that would be just about right …
Wasn’t there something in the agreement about the landlord being able to take steps to recover possession of the premises if the tenant violated any of the terms of the agreement?
One would be able to time it exactly, too. The footsteps would come hurrying—stop—count one—and then the face would be bent over the record—the bullet would rush up at it out of the record, smash into it, stop its sniggering and grinning.
Perfectly simple. The