Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers Page B

the morning were beginning. The milkman came jingling out of the cul-de-sac; lights were twinkling in upper rooms; hands were withdrawing curtains; in front of Number 10, the house maid was already scrubbing the steps. Peter posted his policeman at the top of the street.
        ‘I don’t want to make my first appearance with official accompaniment,’ he said. ‘Come along when I beckon. What by the way is the name of the agreeable gentleman in Number 12? I think he may be of some assistance to us.’
        ‘Mr O’Halloran, sir.’
        The policeman looked at Peter expectantly. He seemed to have abandoned all initiative and to place implicit confidence in this hospitable and eccentric gentleman. Peter slouched down the street with his hands in his trousers pocket and his shabby hat pulled rakishly over his eyes. At Number 12 he paused and examined the windows. Those on the ground floor were open; the house was awake. He marched up the steps, took a brief glance through the flap of the letter-box, and rang the bell. A maid in a neat blue dress and white cap and apron opened the door.
        ‘Good morning,’ said Peter, slightly raising the shabby hat; ‘is Mr O’Halloran in?’ He gave the r a soft continental roll. ‘Not the old gentleman. I mean young Mr O’Halloran?’
        ‘He’s in,’ said the maid, doubtfully, ‘but he isn’t up yet.’
        ‘Oh!’ said Peter. ‘Well it is a little early for a visit. But I desire to see him urgently. I am – there is a little trouble where I live. Could you entreat him – would you be so kind? I have walked all the way,’ he added, pathetically, and with perfect truth.
        ‘Have you, sir?’ said the maid. She added kindly,
        ‘You do look tired, sir, and that’s a fact.’
        ‘It is nothing,’ said Peter. ‘It is only that I forgot to have any dinner. But if I can see Mr O’Halloran it will be all right.’
        ‘You’d better come in, sir,’ said the maid. ‘I’ll see if I can wake him.’ She conducted the exhausted stranger in and offered him a chair. ‘What name shall I say, sir?’
        ‘Petrovinsky,’ said his lordship, hardily. As he had rather expected, neither the unusual name nor the unusual clothes of this unusually early visitor seemed to cause very much surprise. The maid left him in the tidy little panelled hall and went upstairs without so much as a glance at the umbrella-stand.
        Left to himself, Peter sat still, noticing that the hall was remarkably bare of furniture, and was lit by a single electric pendant almost immediately inside the front door. The letter-box was the usual wire cage the bottom of which had been carefully lined with brown paper. From the back of the house came a smell of frying bacon.
        Presently there was the sound of somebody running downstairs. A young man appeared in a dressing-gown. He called out as he came: ‘Is that you, Stefan? Your name came up as Mr Whisky. Has Marfa run away again, or – What the hell? Who the devil are you, sir?’
        ‘Wimsey,’ said Peter, mildly, ‘not Whisky; Wimsey the policeman’s friend. I just looked in to congratulate you on a mastery of the art of false perspective which I thought had perished with van Hoogstraten, or at least with Grace and Lambelet.’
        ‘Oh!’ said the young man. He had a pleasant countenance, with humorous eyes and ears pointed like a faun’s. He laughed a little ruefully. ‘I suppose my beautiful murder is out. It was too good to last. Those bobbies! I hope to God they gave Number 14 a bad night. May I ask how you come to be involved in the matter?’
        ‘I,’ said Peter, ‘am the kind of person in whom distressed constables confide – I cannot imagine why. And when I had the picture of that sturdy blue-clad figure, led so persuasively by a Bohemian stranger and invited to peer through a hole, I was irresistibly transported in mind to the National Gallery. Many a time have I squinted