Free Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers Page A

Burt after refreshing himself, ‘by this time Withers was looking at me in rather an old-fashioned manner. However, he said nothing, and we went back to Number 10, where there was two maiden ladies and a hall full of stuffed birds and wallpaper like a florists’ catalogue. The one who slept in the front was deaf as a post, and the one who slept at the back hadn’t heard nothing. But we got hold of their maids, and the cook said she’d heard the voice calling “Help!” and thought it was in Number 12, and she’d hid her head in the pillow and said her prayers. The housemaid was a sensible girl. She’d looked out when she heard me knocking. She couldn’t see anything at first, owing to us being in the porch, but she thought something must be going on, so, not wishing to catch cold, she went back to put on her bedroom slippers. When she got back to the window, she was just in time to see a man running up the road. He went very quick and very silent, as if he had goloshes on, and she could see the ends of his muffler flying out behind him. She saw him run out of the street and turn to the right, and then she heard me coming along after him. Unfortunately her eye being on the man, she didn’t notice which porch I came out of. Well, that showed I wasn’t inventing the whole story at any rate, because there was my bloke in the muffler. The girl didn’t recognise him at all, but that wasn’t surprising, because she’d only just entered the old ladies’ service. Besides, it wasn’t likely the man had anything to do with it, because he was outside with me when the yelling started. My belief is, he was the sort as doesn’t care to have his pockets examined too close, and the minute my back was turned he thought he’d be better and more comfortable elsewhere.
        ‘Now there ain’t no need’ (continued the policeman) ‘for me to trouble you, sir, with all them houses what we went into. We made inquiries at the whole lot, from Number 2 to Number 16, and there wasn’t one of them had a hall in any ways comformable to what that chap and I saw through the letter-box. Nor there wasn’t a soul in ’em could give us any help more than what we’d had already. You see, sir, though it took me a bit o’ time telling, it all went very quick. There was the yells; they didn’t last beyond a few seconds or so, and before they was finished, we was across the road and inside the porch. Then there was me shouting and knocking; but I hadn’t been long at that afore the chap with me looks through the box. Then I has my look inside, for fifteen seconds it might be, and while I’m doing that, my chap’s away up the street. Then I runs after him, and then I blows me whistle. The whole thing might take a minute or a minute and a half, maybe. Not more.
        ‘Well, sir; by the time we’d been into every house in Merriman’s End, I was feeling a bit queer again, I can tell you, and Withers, he was looking queerer. He says to me, “Burt,” he says, “is this your idea of a joke? Because if so, the ’Olborn Empire’s where you ought to be, not the police force.” So I tells him over again, most solemn, what I seen – “and,” I says, “if only we could lay hands on that chap in the muffler, he could tell you he seen it, too. And what’s more,” I says, “do you think I’d risk me job, playing a silly trick like that?” He says, “Well, it beats me,” he says, “If I didn’t know you was a sober kind of chap, I’d say you was seein’ things.” “Things?” I says to him, “I see that there corpse a-layin’ there with the knife in his neck, and that was enough for me. ’Orrible, he looked, and the blood all over the floor.” “Well,” he says, “ maybe he wasn’t dead after all, and they’ve cleared him out of the way.” “And cleared the house away, too, I suppose,” I said to him. So Withers says, in an odd sort o’voice, “You’re sure about the house? You wasn’t letting your imagination