The Footsteps at the Lock quotes

no good to him, but much to expectant nephews and nieces, much to lifeboat funds and cats’ homes, much to the Exchequer, wilting for lack of death-duties. Of all this he is the arbiter.

Yet we have it on the authority of all the copybooks that money does far more harm in the world than good; why, then, do we leave the direction of that harm to the one man who, ex hypothesi, will be out of the way when it happens?

Why let the testator arrange for the unworthy squandering of his property, when he is to have no tenure in it henceforward except the inalienable grave?

But Oxford, though her critics have been unkindly of late, has too broad a back to need the shelter of anonymity; Both matriculated at the older University, both at Simon Magus College.

Election to colleges is a mystery, as election should be;

but the two years which Derek had misspent there might surely have warned the fellows against risking a second experiment with Nigel. On the other hand, Derek was a normal creature, though morose in disposition, idiotically extravagant, and with a strict periodicity of drunkenness.

But you can fool some of the people some of the time; and at Simon Magus men cared little what their neighbours did, short of the bagpipes. Nigel found disciples, or at least comrades-in-arms for his movement, in that home of impossible unbeliefs.

If you were the kind of person who liked that kind of thing, that was the kind of thing you liked.

A round dozen of half-literary, half-histrionic young men from various colleges frequented his rooms, debated on the cut of clothes, and read out their compositions to each other. They spoke of themselves, almost reverently, as “the men who had made bad”;

Burtell’s will to do so, or of his power, if he had the will, to break with his bad habits.

“With a chap like Derek,” commented Nigel, to whom the circumstances were reported, “the world wants to be insured against his life rather than his death.”

But there is a way out of every impasse, and usually it is the Indescribable.

In hot weather it was his principle to spend his time in towns, where the sight of your fellow-mortals hard at work, sweating on scaffoldings or huddled together on omnibuses, gave you an agreeable sense of coolness. The effects of summer were always inartistic;

Nature overcrowded the canvas, like a good artist who had struck on a bad period.

He had no eyes, then, for his surroundings; his own appearance, as he sat paddling in the stern, was sufficiently incongruous. As one who must always be acting a part, he had dressed up very carefully as a “river-man”; “the Jerome K.

those Alidensian garments lend them a kind of meretricious charm.” It was not, then, any appreciation of the scene in general that made him bring out his camera as the boat drew near the lock. (

Photography, he held, was the highest of all the arts, because the camera never tells the truth.

) What had riveted his attention was the figure of the lock-keeper himself—a back view of him unexpectedly halved by the fact that he was bending double over some gardening operation. “Design for an arch,” murmured Nigel to himself, as he pressed the spring.

His engagements seemed to admit a walk of an hour or so spent in a good cause. Together they crossed the bridge, and set out upon the swathe of trodden hay, called by compliment a towpath, which runs along the eastern bank of the river.

The Muse of detective fiction⁠—she must surely exist by now⁠—has one disadvantage as compared with her sisters; she cannot tell a plain unvarnished tale throughout.

If she did, there could be no mystery, no situation, no dénouement; the omniscience of the author and the omnipresence of the reader, walking hand in hand, would lay waste the trail; no clue would be left undiscovered, no detail lack its due emphasis.

He must make up his mind to go through with it. “It’ll be experience for you,” said one of the dons, vaguely enough; but this was poor consolation.

Nigel held that nothing distorts one’s vision in life like experience.

“Oh Lord, not that! I read about it in the paper as I came up. I was really delighted to notice how mysterious the circumstances were.

I assure you, there is nothing more refreshing to my mind than not solving mysteries.

Do you mean to tell me that the Company was involved?”

… other hand, descriptions of Derek were widely circulated, and it was understood to be the “official theory” that the unfortunate young gentleman, who was known to be in weak nervous health, must in all probability be wandering about somewhere, suffering from a loss of memory.

Nothing stimulates the public imagination so powerfully as the existence of an official theory;

its merits and demerits were hotly debated in clubs and railway-carriages; bets were freely exchanged, hairdressers became intolerable on the subject, and even dentists would gag you and then let you have the benefit of their opinions on it.

But they couldn’t bet on their being deserted. Now, if they were seen, it was essential that there should be only one human figure in the canoe. If there were only one, the casual passerby would be prepared to swear afterwards that it was Derek.

Casual passersby will always swear anything.

The accomplice, therefore, went on by himself; it didn’t matter how many people saw him, except at the precise moment when he was engaged in scuttling the boat.

But if you do as I do, keep taking a look at it and then going away and forgetting about it, you come to it fresh every time. And then, with luck, you see the arrangement of groups which makes the whole thing look natural.

It’s the eye does it, not the brain.

”

There are few more humiliating sensations than that of the man who comes into a room bursting with stale news.

When Leyland returned he was plainly full of important secrets. He did not even hesitate at seeing Mr. Quirk in the room. “Derek Burtell’s alive!” he announced. “I must have a pint of bitter.”

“Not exactly. There was something reminiscent about him, though. The staff of the Gudgeon ought by rights to have recognized him, but they didn’t, you see.

It’s quite easy to suspect a person of being in disguise; not nearly so easy to suspect him of being in undisguise.

”

Quirk had rolled up at four, I should have spotted the thing at once. As it was, he got the start of you; he was already established here before you came.

The human mind doesn’t solve problems until they have been set.

”

Of course, somebody coming out from Oxford might have recognized him, but it wasn’t likely; Oxford’s all down by now. And as for the staff of the hotel, they never notice that kind of thing.

Business, to them, is an endless succession of strange faces; consequently no one face calls for remark.

”

But an American we take for granted. We don’t want to hear what part of his country he comes from, because we know that we couldn’t place it on the map within a thousand miles. We are terrified of hearing all about his business.

He is so ready to impart information that we never ask him questions.

”

But they had forgotten one possibility. With a quick motion, still looking nervously around him, the man caught up the two paddles that lay idle in the canoe, deposited them in his own boat, and with one vigorous shove started out again downstream.

A canoe without paddles is almost as helpless as a dismasted ship.

You may improvise substitute instruments, but they will not carry you far or fast.

You’d better ask me whether I’d be shocked if I knew you’d done it. Because, after all, it makes a lot of difference if you can give a person the benefit of the doubt.

As it is, I’m only provisionally shocked, if you understand what I mean.

”

But Angela was adroit at refusing such openings; her common sense was admirably poised. “Yes,” she admitted, “I should think you’d make a ghastly mess of it. I can imagine you doing a frightful lot of harm.

But I haven’t put strychnine in your Bovril for all that, and I’m not going to.

By the way, it’s nearly time I gave you some—Bovril, I mean.”

“With which, as you say, you’d only make a beast of yourself. No, it’s all nonsense worrying about the consequences of actions.

The only thing is to stick to the rules of the game; and murder isn’t sticking to the rules; it’s an unfair solution, like cheating at patience.

”