“You will understand,” said the policeman deprecatingly, “that this is extremely unpleasant for me. …”
He was perfectly right. Unpleasant, he realised a moment later, was the exact adjective which the most punctilious stylist would have chosen. For suddenly the universe seemed to dissolve in one great cloudburst of pepper. Pepper tickled his mouth: pepper filled his nose: pepper strayed into his eyes and caressed his Adam’s apple. For an instant he writhed blindly: then, clutching at the table for support, he began to sneeze.
With the sound of those titanic sneezes ringing in her ears, Mrs. Waddington bumped her way through the darkness till she came to the open window: then, galloping across the roof, hurled herself down the fire-escape.
V
The only thing in the nature of a policy or plan of action which Mrs. Waddington had had when making for the fire-escape had been a general desire to be as far away as possible from the representative of the Law when he stopped sneezing and opened his eyes and began to look around him for his assailant. But, as her feet touched the first rungs, more definite schemes began to shape themselves. Fire-escapes, she knew, led, if followed long enough, to the ground: and she decided to climb to safety down this one. It was only when she had descended as far as the ninth floor that, glancing below her, she discovered that this particular fire-escape terminated not, as she had supposed, in some back-alley, but in the gaily-lighted outdoor premises of a restaurant, half the tables of which were already filled.
This sight gave her pause. In fact, to be accurate, it froze her stiff. Nor was her agitation without reason. Those of the readers of this chronicle who have ever thrown pepper in a policeman’s face, and skimmed away down a fire-escape are aware that fire-escapes, considered as a refuge, have the defect of being uncomfortably exposed to view. At any moment, felt Mrs. Waddington, the policeman might come to the edge of the roof and look down: and to deceive him into supposing that she was merely an ashcan or a milk-bottle was, she knew, beyond her histrionic powers.
The instinct for self-preservation not only sharpens the wits, but at the same time dulls the moral sensibility. It was so with Mrs. Waddington now. Her quickened intelligence perceived in a flash that if she climbed in through the window outside which she was now standing she would be safe from scrutiny: and her blunted moral sense refused to consider the fact that such an action—amounting, as it did, to what her policeman playmate had called breaking and entering—would be most reprehensible. Besides, she had broken and entered one apartment already that night, and the appetite grows by what it feeds on. Some ten seconds later, therefore, Mrs. Waddington was once more groping through the darkness of somebody else’s dwelling-place.
A well-defined scent of grease, damp towels and old cabbages told her that the room through which she was creeping was a kitchen: but the blackness was so uniform that she could see nothing of her surroundings. The only thing she was able to say definitely of this kitchen at the moment was that it contained a broom. This she knew because she had just stepped on the end of it and the handle had shot up and struck her very painfully on the forehead.
“Ouch!” cried Mrs. Waddington.
She had not intended to express any verbal comment on the incident, for those who creep at night through other people’s kitchens must be silent and wary: but the sudden agony was so keen that she could not refrain from comment. And to her horror she found that her cry had been heard. There came through the darkness a curious noise like the drawing of a cork, and then somebody spoke.
“Who are you?” said an unpleasant, guttural voice.
Mrs. Waddington stopped, paralysed. She would not, in the circumstances, have heard with any real pleasure the most musical of speech: but a soft, sympathetic utterance would undoubtedly have afflicted her with a shade less of anguish and alarm. This voice was the voice of one without human pity; a grating, malevolent voice; a voice that set Mrs. Waddington thinking quiveringly in headlines:
“Society Leader Found Slain in Kitchen.”
“Who are you?”
“Body Dismembered Beneath Sink.”
“Who are you?”
“Severed Head Leads Trackers to Death-Spot.”
“Who are you?”
Mrs. Waddington gulped.
“I am Mrs. Sigsbee H. Waddington,” she faltered. And it would have amazed Sigsbee H., had he heard her, to discover that it was possible for her to speak with such a winning meekness.
“Who are you?”
“Mrs. Sigsbee H. Waddington, of East Seventy-Ninth Street and Hempstead, Long Island. I must apologise for the apparent strangeness of my conduct in. …”
“Who are you?”
Annoyance began to compete with Mrs. Waddington’s terror. Deaf persons had always irritated her, for like so many women of an impatient and masterful turn of mind she was of opinion that they could hear perfectly well if they took the trouble. She raised her voice and answered with a certain stiffness.
“I have already informed you that I am Mrs. Sigsbee H. Waddington. …”
“Have a nut,” said the voice, changing the subject.
Mrs. Waddington’s teeth came together with a sharp click. All the other emotions which had been afflicting her passed abruptly away, to be succeeded by a cold fury. Few things are more mortifying to a proud woman than the discovery that she had been wasting her time being respectful to a parrot: and only her inability to locate the bird in the surrounding blackness prevented a rather unpleasant brawl. Had she been able to come to grips with it, Mrs. Waddington at that moment would undoubtedly have done the parrot no good whatever.
“Brrh!” she exclaimed, expressing her indignation as effectively as was possible by mere speech: and, ignoring the other’s request—in the circumstances, ill-timed and tasteless—that she should stop and scratch its head,
