On Shelley repeating his request to find the escaped prisoner, however, the old man seemed to understand what they were getting at. At any rate he acquiesced, and promised to come down and let them in. Then he slammed down the window with a vicious bang, and they settled down, as patiently as possible, to another wait, which, truth to tell, seemed even longer than the previous one, for then they had the active interest of knocking and watching to see if the knock would draw forth any response.

Eventually, however, the old man opened the door to them, and, grumbling under his breath about people who came disturbing peace-loving citizens in the middle of the night, led the way indoors.

He was, as Shelley had surmised, dressed in a long nightshirt which might once have been cream-coloured with stripes of some darker colour, but which now, by dint of many washes at infrequent intervals, had turned into a kind of indeterminate grey.

“Now, what is it that you want, lads?” he asked as soon as they reached the sitting-room, which was crowded with the most incredible mixture of Victorian bric-à-brac. “Old junk,” was Shelley’s mental comment, but he was careful not to let his distaste become obvious.

He proceeded to explain: “There’s a dangerous criminal escaped, sir,” he said, “and we have reason to believe that he has sought refuge in your house. We want you to allow us to search the place, so that we can either catch him or else make sure that he isn’t here.”

“Eh, but that’s bad news,” was the old man’s comment. “But how do you know that he’s in this house?”

“We don’t know for certain,” Shelley explained patiently. “It’s only a suspicion. But, you see, suspicion is generally about all we have to go on in our job.”

The old man looked at them with an eye from which, in spite of his great age, all shrewdness had not yet departed, and then said: “But if there’s a criminal in this house, lads, how do you reckon he got in? Answer me that.”

“All sorts of ways,” said Shelley, feeling decidedly uncomfortable, and suspecting that the old man was getting rather the best of this argument, and might well be merely talking and making futile objections in order to gain time and let the criminal escape. Still, they had left the constable who had driven the car standing in front of the house, and had sent Cartwright around to guard the back. So there should not be much doubt about that.

“What sorts of ways?” pursued Mr. Ramsbottom. “Give me just one instance, and then I’ll try to tell you what I think about it all.”

“There’s the front door,” Shelley began, but the old man quickly picked him up on that score. He cackled with unearthly glee.