So absorbed was Ernest in the evocation of this pleasant bed-time scene that, with the gesture of someone retiring to rest, he half held out his hand. But no one took it; and he realized, with a sinking of the heart, that the new proprietor had let him down, was a craven like himself. He walked unsteadily to the door and turned the handle. Nothing happened. He turned it the other way. Still the door resisted him. Suddenly he remembered how once, returning home late at night from taking some letters to the post, the door of the stable, where he kept his bicycle, had been similarly recalcitrant. But when he pushed harder the door yielded a little, as though someone stronger than he was holding it against him and meant to let him in slowly before doing him an injury. He had exerted all his strength. Suddenly the door gave. It was only a tennis-ball that had got wedged between the door and the cobblestone: but he never forgot the episode. For a moment he sat down on the stone step before renewing his attack. He must have managed it clumsily. The door needed drawing towards him or else pushing away from him. He recalled his failure to negotiate the catch of Hubert’s car. But his second attempt was as vain as the first. The door wouldn’t open, couldn’t: it must have been locked on the inside.

Ernest knew, as well as he knew anything, that he had left it unfastened. The lock was of an old-fashioned pattern; it had no tricks of its own. You could be quite certain it was locked, the key turned so stiffly: it had never given Ernest a moment’s uneasiness nor demanded nocturnal forfeits from his nervous apprehension. It was locked all right; but who had locked it?

Supposing there was a man who disliked his house, thought Ernest, hated it, dreaded it, with what emotions of relief would he discover, when he returned from a dull play at the witching hour, that the house was locked against him? Supposing this man, from a child, had been so ill at ease in his own home that the most familiar objects, a linen-press or a waste-paper basket, had been full of menace for him: wouldn’t he rejoice to be relieved, by Fate, of the horrible necessity of spending the night alone in such a house? And wouldn’t he rather welcome than otherwise the burglar or whoever it might be who had so providentially taken possession—the New Proprietor? The man was an abject funk; could scarcely bear to sit in a room alone; spent the greater part of the night prowling about the house torn between two fears—the fear of staying in bed and brooding over neglected windows and gas jets, and the fear of getting up and meeting those windows and gas jets in the dark. Lucky chap to lose, through no fault of his own, all his fears and all his responsibilities. What a weight off his mind! The streets were open to him, the nice noisy streets, even at night-time half full of policemen and strayed revellers, in whose company he could gaily pass what few hours remained till dawn.

But somehow the Old Expropriated had less success, as an imaginative lure, than the New Proprietor. ‘I must get in,’ thought Ernest. ‘It’s perfectly simple. There are one, two, three windows I can get in by if I try: four counting the window of the box-room. But first I’ll ring the bell.’ He rang and a wild peal followed which might have come from the hall instead of the kitchen, it seemed so near. He waited, while at ever-increasing intervals of time the clangour renewed itself, like an expiring hiccough. ‘I’ll give him another minute,’ thought Ernest, taking out his watch. The minute passed but no one came.

When a policeman has tried the handle of the door and found it shut, he often, if he is a true guardian of the law, proceeds to examine the windows. ‘Hullo, there, hullo! hullo!’ And a handful of gravel, maybe, rattles against the window-panes. Leaping or creeping out of bed, according to his temperament, the startled householder goes to the window. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘Nothing’s the matter, only your window’s unfastened. There are queer people about tonight—gypsies. You had better come down and fasten it unless you want your silver stolen.’ ‘Thank you very much, officer; good-night.’ And down patters paterfamilias in his warm slippers and his dressing-gown, while the constable patrols the garden with comfortable tread. No one dare molest him, not even if he is ever so wicked. And whoever heard of a wicked policeman? thought Ernest, reconnoitring, at some distance, the dining-room window. He tramps through the shrubberies, cats fly before him, his bull’s-eye lantern turns night into day, he could walk through the spinney where the mound is and never turn a hair. And this is how he would open the dining-room window.

It was a sash-window, hanging loose in its grooves. Ernest inserted his pocket-knife in the crevice and started to prize it open. To his delight and dismay the sash began to move. Half an inch higher and he would be able to get his fingers under it. He was using the haft of the knife now, not the blade. The sash began to move more easily. He curled his fingers under and round it. His face, twisted with exertion, stared blankly upon the cream-coloured blind inside. The blind stirred. He must have let in a current of air. He redoubled his exertions. The sash slid up six inches, and then stuck fast. And he could see why. A hand, pressed flat along the bottom of the sash, was holding it down.

Ernest let go with a cry, and the window was slowly and smoothly closed. He had an impulse to run but he resisted it, and forced himself to walk back to the window. The hand was gone.

Imagine you were a window-cleaner and wanted to open a window and some playful member of the family—a great over-grown lout of a boy, for instance—took it into his head to play a prank like that on you. You know what boys are; they have no mercy; there is a bully embedded in all of them, and pretty near the surface in most. That being so, what would you make of the young gentleman’s interference? What line would you take? Clearly he won’t hurt you, and he can’t, besides, be everywhere at once. Perhaps somebody calls him, or he finds the cat and pulls its tail or blows tobacco-smoke into the spaniel’s eyes. For such a lad as that there are a hundred distractions; and while you are quietly going on with your job at the drawing-room window he will be making an apple-pie bed for his small sister in the nursery: too engrossed, my dear Ernest, to remember your existence, certainly too much occupied to follow you about.

And it did seem that Ernest the window cleaner was likely to be more successful than Ernest the policeman. Crouching like an animal, his hands hanging down in front of him, keeping close to the wall, brushing himself against creepers, scratched by thorns and blackened by soot, at last he reached the drawing-room window and flung himself on his face beneath the sill. The sill was a low one. Half kneeling, half supporting himself on his elbows, he raised himself till his eyes were level with the glass. The fitful moonlight played on this side of the house; a treacherous light, but it served to show him that the Puck of Stithies was occupied elsewhere. With extreme caution, holding his breath, he negotiated the difficult preliminaries; then he stood up straight, and heaved with all his might. The window rushed up a foot and then stuck. Involuntarily he glanced down: yes, there was the hand, flattened on the frame: there was another hand, holding back the blind, and there was a face, not very distinct, but certainly a face.

It was the hand that Ernest, cowering under the thick umbrage of the drooping-ash, remembered best. The face was anybody’s face, not really unlike Hubert’s: a ruddy, capable face: not exactly angry, but stern, official-looking. But the odd thing about the hand was that it didn’t seem like the hand of another person. It was larger than Ernest’s, yet he had felt, for the moment that it was presented before his eyes, that it would respond to his volition, move as he wanted it to move. He had been too frightened, at the moment, to act upon this fantastic notion; but couldn’t he act upon it next time? Next time. But why not? Imagine a man of average capabilities, physically none too robust, but with a good headpiece on him. He can afford to spare himself; even when he takes on a job that is strange to him he will find out the easiest way, will know just the right moment to bring to bear what little strength he has. Many a slenderly built chap, at the bidding of necessity, has transformed himself into a passable coal-heaver. But to carry a sack of coal or a sack of anything one needs a knack: it’s no good taking the load into your arms, you must hoist it on to your back. And when you’ve carried a sack or two like that, who knows that your luck mayn’t change? Many a man who carried a sack in his time, in later life has supped with princes.