Mr Gosdyke conceded the point.
'Right,' continued Flint, 'so there's a houseful of armed terrorists who'll blow the heads off her four blasted daughters if anyone so much as goes near the place. That's all. Can't you get that into her thick skull?'
'No,' said Mr Gosdyke bluntly.
The Inspector sagged into a chair and looked balefully at Eva. 'Mrs Wilt,' he said, 'tell me something. You don't by any chance happen to belong to some suicidal religious cult, do you? No? I just wondered In that case let me explain the situation to you in simple four-letter words that even you will understand. Inside your house there are '
'I know all that,' said Eva. 'I've heard it over and over again and I don't care. I demand the right to enter my own home.'
'I see. And I suppose you intend walking up to the front door and ringing the bell?'
'I don't,' said Eva, 'I intend to be dropped in.'
'Dropped in? said Flint with a gleam of incredulous' hope in his eyes, 'did you really say 'dropped in'?'
'By helicopter,' explained Eva, 'the same way you dropped that telephone in to Henry last night.'
The Inspector held his head in his hands and tried to find words.
'And it's no use your saying you can't,' continued Eva, 'because I've seen it done on telly. I wear a harness and the helicopter...'
'Oh my God,' said Flint, closing his eyes to shut out this appalling vision. 'You can't be serious.'
'I can,' said Eva.
'Mrs Wilt, if, and I repeat if, you were to enter the house by the means you have described, will you be good enough to tell me how you think it would help your four daughters?'
'Never you mind.'
'But I do mind. I mind very much In fact I'll go so far as to say that I mind what happens to your children rather more than you appear to and...'
'Then why aren't you doing something about it? And don't say you are, because you aren't. You're sitting in here with all this transistor stuff listening to them being tortured and you like it.'
Like it? Like it?' yelled the Inspector
'Yes, like it,' Eva yelled back. 'It gives you a feeling of importance and what's more you've got a dirty mind. You enjoyed listening to Henry in bed with that woman and don't say you didn't.'
Inspector Flint couldn't. Words failed him. The only ones that sprang to mind were obscene and almost certain to lead to an action for slander. Trust this bloody woman to bring her solicitor and the sod from the Personal Liberties mob with her. He rose from his chair and stumbled through to the toy-room, slamming the door behind him. Professor Maerlis, Dr Felden and the Major were sitting watching Wilt pass the time by idly examining his glans penis for signs of incipient gangrene on the television screen. Flint switched the unnerving image off.
'You're not going to believe this,' he mouthed, 'but that bloody Mrs Wilt is demanding that we use the helicopter to swing her through the attic window on the end of a rope so she can join her fucking family.'
'I hope you're not going to allow it,' said Dr Felden. 'After what she threatened to do to her husband last night I hardly think it's advisable...'
'Don't tempt me,' said Flint. 'If I thought I could sit here and watch her tear the little shit limb from limb...' He broke off to savour the thought.
'Damned plucky little woman,' said the Major. 'Blowed if I'd choose to swing into that house on the end of a rope. Well, not without a lot of covering fire anyhow. Still, there's something
