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Cadogan peered in at the gate. The neglected overgrown enclosure, which had seemed so sinister in the half-light, looked quite ordinary now.
    “You see that small window?” he said. To the right of the front door? That’s the sort of closet place I got out of.”
    “Is it, now?” Fen answered thoughtfully. “Let’s go and have a look at it.”
    The small window was still open, but it was higher from the ground than Cadogan had remembered, and even Fen, tall as he was, could not see inside. Somewhat disappointed, they went on to the back door.
    “This is open, anyway,” said Fen. Cadogan banged against a dustbin which stood beside it. “For goodness’ sake try to avoid making that terrible noise.”
    He moved inside with some caution, and Cadogan followed him. He was not very clear what they were supposed to be doing. There was a short corridor, with a kind of kitchen, untenanted, on the left, and the door of the closet, half open, on the right. From the shop in front came the murmur of voices and the bell of the cash register.
    But the closet contained cleaning things no longer. There were, instead, piles of groceries and provisions. And Cadogan was seized by a sudden doubt. Was the whole thing, after all, a delusion? Surely it was all too fantastic to be real? After all, it wasn’t impossible that he should have fallen on his way into Oxford, struck his head, and dreamed the entire business—its quality was nightmarish enough. He blinked about him. He listened. And then, in some alarm, he tugged Fen by the sleeve.
    There was no doubt about it. Footsteps were approaching the closet.
    Fen did not hesitate a moment. “Every man for himself,” he said, leaped on to a pile of boxes and projected himself feet first out of the window. Unfortunately in so doing he knocked over the boxes with a great clatter, and thus cut off Cadogan’s line of retreat. There was no time to pile them up again, and the back door was out of the question—the handle of the closet was already turning. Cadogan seized a tin of baked beans in his right hand, and one of kidney pudding in his left, and waited, adopting a forbidding aspect.
    Fatly expectant, the grocer entered his closet. His eyes bulged and his mouth gaped in stupefaction when he saw the intruder, but to Cadogan’s surprise he made no aggressive movements. Instead, he raised both hands above his head, like an Imam invoking Allah, called out “Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!” in a loud theatrical voice, and fled away as fast as his bulk would allow. Evidently he was much more afraid of Cadogan than Cadogan was of him.
    But Cadogan did not stop to think of these things. The back door, the neglected garden, the gate, and the alleyway marked the stages of his frantic retreat. Fen was sitting in Lily Christine III, reading The Times with elaborate concentration, and a small, vaguely interested crowd had gathered round the front of the shop to listen to the grocer’s continued cries. Cadogan scuttled across the pavement and into the back of the car, where he lay down on the floor. With a jerk they started.
    Once over Magdalen Bridge, he sat up and said “Well!” with some bitterness.
    “Sauve qui peut,” said Fen airily—or as airily as was possible above the outrageous din of the engine. “And remember, I have a reputation to keep up. Was it the grocer?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you cosh him one?”
    “No, he ran away in a fright… Well, I’m damned,” said Cadogan, staring. “I’ve brought a couple of tins away with me.”
    “Well, we’ll have them for lunch. That is, if you’re not arrested for petty larceny before then. Did he get a look at you?”
    “Yes… I say, Gervase.”
    “Well?”
    “I want to get to the bottom of this business. My blood’s up. Let’s go and see this Wheatley woman.”
    So they drove to New Inn Hall Street.

3. The Episode of the Candid Solicitor
    Two hundred and twenty-nine, New Inn Hall Street proved to be a modest and attractive