Fear to Tread by Michael Gilbert

its socket a body thudded into the door from the other side.
    At the noise, Mr. Higgins, now the only other person in the room, sat up sharply and cried: “Wassat?”
    “Burglars,” said Mr. Wetherall breathlessly.
    “I’ll give them burglars.”
    “They’re after your bagpipes.”
    “Over my dead body.”
    The door shook again and a lump of plaster came out of the wall.
    There was another door in the far corner. Mr. Wetherall opened it and looked out. It led to a short, dimly-lit passage. There were further doors opening off it. The one on the left proved to be locked. The one on the right led to a coal cellar. As he tried the third, at the end of the passage, there was a crescendo of crashes behind him and above them the faint defiant squeal of bagpipes.
    The third room was a small, dirty lavatory. Mr. Wetherall went into it, and shot the bolt. It wasn’t much of a refuge. The door was flimsy and the bolt small. He climbed on to the seat and tried the window. It was a ramshackle casement, its panes covered with whitewash, and it looked as if it had not been opened in twenty years. Nevertheless it moved, reluctantly, a few inches.
    Mr. Wetherall was slim, and fear lent him the necessary agility. A few seconds later he was through the window and standing in a small area. It was really no more than a pit, acting as air shaft to three or four houses. Overhead he could see the bars of a grating against the night sky. From the noise behind him it sounded as if his pursuer was busy breaking down the cellar doors. It would not be long before he turned his attention to the lavatory.
    Mr. Wetherall stumbled forward across the area, which seemed to be knee-deep in bottles. Logic told him that there must be at least one corresponding window on the other side. There was, and it was tightly shut.
    It was not a moment for half-measures.
    He groped down and picked up a bottle. With it he knocked out the top pane of glass then thrust his hand through and undid the latch. He pressed the bottom casement up, only discovering as the blood ran down his palm, that he had by no means removed all the glass. In the excitement he felt nothing.
    A light sprang up in the lavatory behind him.
    He fairly dived through the window into warm, fluffy darkness.
    It was an inhabited room. There was some sort of carpet on the floor. It smelt like a bedroom. At that moment the light came on. It was a bedroom. There was a very old man in bed. He sat up, clasping the flex of the light switch to his thin, night-shirted body, and stared at Mr. Wetherall.
    “It’s all right,” muttered Mr. Wetherall. “Just reading the meters.”
    The man appeared to be deaf. He simply sat and stared, with his mouth wide open.
    With a feeling of unreality strong upon him Mr. Wetherall tiptoed to the door, opened it, and went through, shutting it quietly behind him. He had seen a flight of uncarpeted stairs ahead, and he went up them. Another passage not quite so dark. He guessed he was back on the ground floor level now. There was a door at the end of the passage, and it was obviously a street door. It was fastened.
    First he fumbled with the top bolt, then the bottom bolt. There was a chain in the middle, which he finally got off, at the cost of a clattering jangle.
    A woman’s voice said something from the room to the left of the door.
    Mr. Wetherall worked with clumsy speed in the dark. There was a Yale lock, which he fastened open on the catch, and finally a big handle which he turned.
    The door still refused to move.
    A shaft of light lit up the passage. The door on the left had opened. A dark woman, with her hair in curlers, looked out.
    “Henry. It’s a burglar.” Her voice sounded tiny and far off.
    “I’m not a burglar,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I’m trying to get out. Get out! Do you understand?”
    The woman gaped at him, with exactly the same air of disbelief he had already seen on the face of the man in the cellar. Then she said faintly: “The key’s