Free The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays by Tom Stoppard

take you so long to answer the door?
THELMA : The furniture was piled up against it.
FOOT : (
sneeringly
) Really? Expecting visitors, Mrs. Harris?
THELMA : On the contrary.
FOOT : In my experience your conduct usually indicates that visitors are expected.
THELMA : I am prepared to defend myself against any logician you care to produce.
FOOT : (
snaps
) Do you often stack the furniture up against the door?
THELMA : Yes. Is that a crime?
FOOT : (
furiously
) Will you stop trying to exploit my professional knowledge for your private ends!—I didn’t do twenty years of hard grind to have my brains picked by every ignorant layman who finds out I’m a copper!
( HARRIS
has relapsed into a private brood, from which this outburst rouses him. He has decided to capitulate. He stands up
.)
HARRIS : All right! Can we call off this game of cat and mouse?! I haven’t
got
a television licence—I kept meaning to get one but somehow …
( FOOT
turns to him
.)
FOOT : Then perhaps you have a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons.
HARRIS : (
taken aback
) I’m afraid not. I didn’t realize they were compulsory.
FOOT : (
without punctuation
) I have reason to believe that within the last hour in this room you performed without anaesthetic an illegal operation on a bald nigger minstrel about five-foot-two or Pakistani and that is only the beginning!
HARRIS : I deny it!
FOOT : Furthermore, that this is a disorderly house!
HARRIS :
That
I admit—Thelma, I’ve said if before and I’ll say it again——
THELMA : (
shouting angrily
) Don’t you come that with me!—what with the dancing, the travelling, ironing your shirts, massaging your mother and starting all over every morning, I haven’t got time to wipe my nose!
HARRIS : (
equally roused
)
That’s
what I want to talk to you about—sniff-sniff—it’s a disgusting habit in a woman——
THELMA : (
shouting
) All right—so I’ve got a cold!—(
Turning to the world, which happens to be in the direction of
FOOT )—Is that a crime?
FOOT : (
hysterically
) I will not warn you again! (
He patrols furiously
.) The disorderliness I was referring to consists of immoral conduct—tarted-up harpies staggering about drunk to the wide, naked men in rubber garments hanging from the lampshade—Have you got a music licence? (
As he passes the gramophone
.)
HARRIS : There is obviously a perfectly logical reason for everything.
FOOT : There is, and I mean to make it stick! What was the nature of this operation? ( FOOT
finds himself staring at a line of single greasy footprints leading across the room. He hops along the trail, fascinated, until he reaches the door to
MOTHER’S
bath. He turns. Quietly
.) The D.P.P. is going to take a very poor view if you have been offering cut-price amputations to immigrants. ( HOLMES
enters excitedly with the ironing board
.)
HOLMES : Sir!
FOOT : That’s an ironing board.
HOLMES : (
instantaneously demoralized
) Yes, sir.
FOOT : What we’re looking for is a darkie short of a leg or two.
HOLMES : (
retiring
) Right, sir.
MOTHER : Is it all right for me to practise?
FOOT : No, it is not all right! Ministry standards may be lax but we draw the line at Home Surgery to being in the little luxuries of life.
MOTHER : I only practise on the tuba.
FOOT : Tuba, femur, fibula—it takes more than a penchant forrubber gloves to get a licence nowadays.
MOTHER : The man’s quite mad.
FOOT : That’s what they said at the station when I sent young Holmes to take a turn down Mafeking Villas, but everything I have heard about events here today convinces me that you are up to your neck in the Crippled Minstrel Caper!
THELMA : Is that a dance?
HARRIS : My wife and I are always on the look-out for novelty numbers. We’re prepared to go out on a limb if it’s not in a bad taste.
FOOT : (
shouting him down
) Will you kindly stop interrupting while I am about to embark on my exegesis!! (
Pauses, he collects himself
.) The story begins about lunchtime today. The facts