or at least downstairs. Miles wouldn’t hear of it; apparently he was annoyed. He said something like ‘What the devil do you think I am, a helpless invalid? I keep telling everybody I’m quite all right. Go back to your own place.’ Which surprised her, because he was usually punctiliously polite to a point of the comic. She said: ‘Well, anyway, I’ll come back again at eleven o’clock and see how you are.’
“Now, she was coming back at eleven o’clock, in any case, and there hangs the story.
“For a good year, ever since it’s been on the air, there’s a certain radio-program which she’s listened to every Wednesday evening at eleven o’clock precisely. It’s called, I believe,” said Mark, with sardonic and full-blown hatred rather than amusement, “ ‘the Ingelford Soothing Hour of Sweet Music,’ being in fact half an hour, being anything but soothing, and advertising some sort of soothing syrup——”
Henderson blinked, looking genuinely shocked. “It’s nice music,” he said, with warmth. “It’s mighty nice music, and don’t you forget it. Sort of restful.” He appealed to the others. “What he means is, I’ve got a radio down here, and it’s a good one. But it’s been on the blink for a couple of weeks, and the Mrs. asked whether she could listen in to the Ingelford Soothing Hour on the radio up at the house.”
“That’s it,” said Mark. “And I think we’d better emphasize the Ingelford Soothing Hour, just to show there was no idea of—well, of the dark world, of anything wrong. Do you see? Suppose the powers of hell really could lay hold, suppose they could run on our smooth rails and get into our steam-heated lives past such a shower of banalities as Ingelford’s Soothing Hour… then I tell you the powers of hell must be strong and terrible. We huddle together in cities, we make bonfires of a million lights, we can get a voice from across the ocean to sing to us so that we needn’t feel lonely; it’s a sort of charmed circle, with no heaths to walk at night in the wind. But suppose you, Ted, in your apartment in New York; or you, Part, in your flat in London; or John Smith in his house anywhere in the world—suppose you went home at night, and opened the ordinary door, and heard another kind of voice. Suppose you didn’t want to look behind the umbrella-stand, or go down to attend to the furnace at night, because you might see something climbing up?”
“That,” said Partington, very distinctly, “is what I meant by brooding.”
“Ye-es, I imagine it is,” agreed Mark, nodding and grinning. He drew a deep breath. “All right. I’ll go back to the story. Here’s Mrs. H. hurrying up to the house, to be in time for her radio-program at eleven o’clock. I ought to explain that the radio is in a sun porch on the second floor. I won’t go into much detail, because I’m going to take you over the ground. I’ll just say that at one end of the sun porch there’s a French door opening on Miles’s room. We always asked him why he didn’t use it as a private sun porch of his own—we never used it a great deal, ourselves—but he never liked it, for some reason. As a rule he kept a thick curtain across the glass door. It’s an ordinary sort of porch, a whole lot more modern and modern-furnished than the rest of the house—wicker furniture, bright covers, plants, and the rest of it.
“So she went upstairs. She was afraid she was going to be late for the beginning of the program, so she didn’t loiter outside Miles’s door in the outer hall; she just knocked, and said, ‘All right?’ and when he answered, ‘Yes, yes, everything’s fine,’ she went on round the turn of the passage into the sun porch. Miles, I should mention, never objected to the radio being used; very often, again for some reason peculiar to himself, he said he liked it; so she had no scruples about that. She turned on the bridge lamp by the radio—which is at the end farthest away
“Now, she was coming back at eleven o’clock, in any case, and there hangs the story.
“For a good year, ever since it’s been on the air, there’s a certain radio-program which she’s listened to every Wednesday evening at eleven o’clock precisely. It’s called, I believe,” said Mark, with sardonic and full-blown hatred rather than amusement, “ ‘the Ingelford Soothing Hour of Sweet Music,’ being in fact half an hour, being anything but soothing, and advertising some sort of soothing syrup——”
Henderson blinked, looking genuinely shocked. “It’s nice music,” he said, with warmth. “It’s mighty nice music, and don’t you forget it. Sort of restful.” He appealed to the others. “What he means is, I’ve got a radio down here, and it’s a good one. But it’s been on the blink for a couple of weeks, and the Mrs. asked whether she could listen in to the Ingelford Soothing Hour on the radio up at the house.”
“That’s it,” said Mark. “And I think we’d better emphasize the Ingelford Soothing Hour, just to show there was no idea of—well, of the dark world, of anything wrong. Do you see? Suppose the powers of hell really could lay hold, suppose they could run on our smooth rails and get into our steam-heated lives past such a shower of banalities as Ingelford’s Soothing Hour… then I tell you the powers of hell must be strong and terrible. We huddle together in cities, we make bonfires of a million lights, we can get a voice from across the ocean to sing to us so that we needn’t feel lonely; it’s a sort of charmed circle, with no heaths to walk at night in the wind. But suppose you, Ted, in your apartment in New York; or you, Part, in your flat in London; or John Smith in his house anywhere in the world—suppose you went home at night, and opened the ordinary door, and heard another kind of voice. Suppose you didn’t want to look behind the umbrella-stand, or go down to attend to the furnace at night, because you might see something climbing up?”
“That,” said Partington, very distinctly, “is what I meant by brooding.”
“Ye-es, I imagine it is,” agreed Mark, nodding and grinning. He drew a deep breath. “All right. I’ll go back to the story. Here’s Mrs. H. hurrying up to the house, to be in time for her radio-program at eleven o’clock. I ought to explain that the radio is in a sun porch on the second floor. I won’t go into much detail, because I’m going to take you over the ground. I’ll just say that at one end of the sun porch there’s a French door opening on Miles’s room. We always asked him why he didn’t use it as a private sun porch of his own—we never used it a great deal, ourselves—but he never liked it, for some reason. As a rule he kept a thick curtain across the glass door. It’s an ordinary sort of porch, a whole lot more modern and modern-furnished than the rest of the house—wicker furniture, bright covers, plants, and the rest of it.
“So she went upstairs. She was afraid she was going to be late for the beginning of the program, so she didn’t loiter outside Miles’s door in the outer hall; she just knocked, and said, ‘All right?’ and when he answered, ‘Yes, yes, everything’s fine,’ she went on round the turn of the passage into the sun porch. Miles, I should mention, never objected to the radio being used; very often, again for some reason peculiar to himself, he said he liked it; so she had no scruples about that. She turned on the bridge lamp by the radio—which is at the end farthest away
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