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lives? We only wish to keep to ourselves . . .” He went on to deny this zany rumor and that (some true, however), and finally took a breather after saying: “Trenowyth, I authorize you to sue those scandal sheets for me. For malice, and slander, and so on. Whatever else applies.”
    “Why, that's a capital idea,” I said, humoring him. “Capital. Why don't you and I discuss this indoors, whilst these men tend to their business, shall we?”
    “Now? Tonight? Oh, that won't do, I'm afraid. The house is in no shape for unexpected visitors. Perhaps later in the week, after I've had a chance to dust and straighten up a bit. Explain to your associates down there that my sister is an invalid and takes up a great deal of my time, so much, in fact, that I sometimes neglect the domestic chores.”
    Dust and straighten up a bit? Had he really said that? Along with I sometimes neglect the domestic chores? Why, the man would have to clean up round the clock and through to 1950 before he could whip his house into decent shape for visitors.
    “Open up now, Noah, or in the morning there will be fire ladders beneath your windows again and fire axes—”
    The beam of a flashlight caught me flush from behind, hurling my weeds-infested silhouette against the wall. Before I could turn around, I heard a single, cricket-like chirp a few feet behind me that proved to be the hammer of a .38 revolver ratcheting back.
    A man's voice—one I didn't recognize—barked at us. “Don't move and keep your yap shut. All of ya's.”
     
    Entering the Mansion
     
    The armed man was, to my relief, the patrolman named Cox whom Noah had recently mentioned. Out walking his beat, he'd overheard our half-shouted conversation and got the drop on us , as they say in the dime novels, in case our party were the same group of vandals or robbers who'd attempted that break-in the week before. Once we'd established our true identities to his satisfaction, the patrolman holstered his weapon and leant his authority to our cause. It was the final push Noah needed, I think, to acquiesce to what he termed a “sudden invasion.”
    Sleet began to pelt us as we made for the entry porch landing. There, we huddled and shivered waiting to be let inside. Patrolman Cox resolved to stay with our party until the visit concluded—a well-advised decision, I thought at the time, given Noah's unpredictable nature as well as the known and potential hazards of such a dark, begrimed, artifact-choked household.
    Twenty minutes passed, long enough to debate whether we'd ever be met, before we heard Noah straining and grunting from the opposite side of his crude but sturdy new front door. I explained to the others that he was clearing heavy barricades out of the way. Next came the release and unbolting of a ridiculous number of locks—six or seven, as I recall—before the door at last creaked open.
    But only an inch. The patrolman's flashlight caught a veiny eyeball peeping out at us through the crack, as if Noah were searching our persons for the slightest pretext to yet turn us away. When the eyeball roved upon Miss Buxton, its owner's voice struck like a barking poodle's. “Who is she ? And what is she doing here?”
    Patrolman Cox violently pushed in the door. “That's your very own angel of mercy, Noah, don't be so foolish as to shut her out.”
    In single file we burrowed into the dark entry hall, guided by the patrolman's flashlight beam. The air was repugnant, to describe it kindly, as stuffed with foul odors as a bale is stuffed with hay. We jammed our noses into handkerchiefs, or the crooks of our arms, and issued not a few stifled coughs. Noah fell into the rear position, turning up his kerosene lamp. Its sulfurous light divulged our location in a canyon of clutter.
    Walls of sundry items lined our narrow, snaking path and often towered overhead, walls of stacked newspaper bundles and empty burlap sacks, of beer barrels and wooden crates, of foot stools and kitsch pottery,