What did it matter if he locked some of the inside doors, those leading to special rooms like the laboratory, and also bedroom doors? To the naughty ones, any room could be hiding Ingrid Castlecove. The police would have a chance to see plenty of satisfying field work that day.
Percy called Inspector Higgins, and the plan of operations was agreed upon. To explain his own planned absence, Percy said that he would be away on another Sneaky Spy mission that day.
"Do you mean that you're not going to help with the protection of your own house?" protested Higgins.
"If you've no wish to return the favours I've done you in New York and Pymble, then I won't hold a grudge. I just need you to do the job for me. I can almost promise you a collection of criminals worthy of your staff's adept skills in the art of making arrests."
"Why should this lot pick on your place?"
"One: It looks appealing. Two: I took great steps to protect it last night. Three: I'm known to have greedy enemies. It's possible that some of them could have learned my address. Four: The old architecture suggests an apparent ease. It would be easy to break into a house devoid of modern protection devices."
"Blast you Sneaky Spy. Even when you need my help - "
"I don't give you the chance to crow," Percy cut in.
"Don't worry about it at all today then. Go and do what you will. We'll take as much care as we can to arrest them, or at least to drive them from the house, with a minimum of damage to your property. Is that worth the chance you would be taking? I mean, you could stay home and protect the more special rooms yourself."
"I will have locked those before I leave," said the Sneaky Spy, "Just think. That's fewer rooms for your man or men to have to search, Higgins. This case could put your name up in lights. Would you like that at all?"
"Just tell me when you think they'll be coming," said the inspector, sighing in a manner which advertised the fact that he was becoming awfully peeved.
"Probably as soon as they see me go," said the Sneaky Spy.
"Do you mean that they've had their eye on you all night?"
"Eyes plural, Inspector. They'd have taken it in turns from the street, each taking a peek at my front driveway while the other slept."
* * * *
Higgins arrived in the middle of the morning and was offered a key to the house.
"Who can a Sneaky Spy trust, if not the occasional policeman?" thought Percy, "Now I don't know when or even if I can expect to play involuntary and absent host to the naughty ones. What I can say for certain is that I plan to choose the time for my own visit to Colin's house. I've done well, to be able to arrange police protection for my house while simultaneously planning to pull off a stealthy visit to that Geoffries place. The only problem is that of getting in undetected. He would be expecting a visit from his front garden. What if I could approach the building itself from another direction? Why not?
"I could win at both games by employing the same deception in each. I've outsmarted the Geofflings here by using the house behind mine. That was never to be imagined by last night's unwanted stalker at the window. If I was half contemplating a direct entry through Colin's front yard, and summoning the effrontery to attempt it; then I should have no concerns at all about deceiving his neighbours, who are probably ordinairy people. Of course I believe that everyone is a unique individual, but the notion of ordinairy is used here to refer to an absence of thugs and gunmen patrolling the front gardens. So, while the neighbours of Colin are hopefully out, I shall do my best to take precautions that would safeguard against detection, even if they are home."
The Sneaky Spy left Inspector Higgins and his men to position themselves in various places, and went into his laboratory. There he concealed an assortment of gadgets and gimmicks on his person, and thought about prowling.
"It's not a pretty thought, but if somebody were to see me and call for the police, they might not expect too much help, with Higgins and some of his men actually tied up doing my other dirty work for me right here," he observed, "I'm taking all sorts of abnormally protective measures and contemplating a variety of dubiously unconventional schemes. It's just that a threat to a person - who might otherwise retain the opportunity to help me fulfil our common desire of being together for the rest of our lives - tends to activate a certain amount of powerfully active anxiety in a man such as myself."
He locked the laboratory door from the outside, and made his way out to the street. He took the long way around to Colin's, approaching his northern next-door neighbour's property from Cleveland Street. Houses in Wahroonga were often so shielded from view by the large number of beautiful tall wide trees in their surrounding gardens. This was true of the house beside Colin's.
The Sneaky Spy was about to trespass on a person's property. He would do so in order to access knowledge about that person's criminal neighbour Colin Geoffries. That knowledge and the use to which he put it, would probably protect that person from his own possible future dangerous encounters with Colin Geoffries. As he approached, Percy casually rotated his head in an arc, checking footpaths, windows, the road, and other front gardens. By the time he had reached the desired location, he was convinced that nobody would see him. Anyone who had been watching his own house in the night had left, either because of the arrival of a police car at Ordinairy Man Manor, or because they did not wish to continue their operations in the daytime, with the risk of several potential neighbourhood witnesses to anything that they might reveal, including their number plate.
Knowing all of this, the Sneaky Spy vaulted over the fence, landed on fallen flowers and stepped out onto some grass.
"Well whoever you are, dear owner of this grass beneath my shoes, think of this as your contribution to the safety of anybody who might have a run-in with your hideous neighbour Colin Geoffries."
Positioning was now a most dominating priority. As well as avoiding the eyes of anybody in the house, Percy had to be sure that nobody who might pass by should see him from the street. There was little chance of Colin Geoffries observing his movements, because even the borderline fence between the two properties was mostly obscured from view by the large number of trees on either side of it.
Percy ducked under a wide low-branched pine tree and gathered his thoughts. From here he could be effectively invisible to everyone, while peeking out at anyone. He studied the garden for a moment and then decided that he had navigated a serpentine path around certain trees, which would have a net displacement effect of taking him diagonally across to the borderline fence.
Percy had chosen this side of the Geoffries property for an important reason. He had observed, during their departure the night before, that on this side, there was only a driveway's width in distance between the borderline and the side of the house, part of which was taken up by trees.
"I would have been as mad as some of my foes, to have tried going the other way," thought the Sneaky Spy, as he made his serpentine dash towards the desired position. He lifted himself over a wooden fence, which was only three inches higher than his own head's neatly styled hair. On the Geoffries side of the fence, he was adequately shielded from view by a wide trunk, which belonged to a palm tree.
"Not very helpful for the keen climber, unless he comes from an island where coconuts are popular, but it keeps me out of sight until I make my next move," thought the Sneaky Spy.
His thoughts were interrupted by a sound which would offend the ears of a person with a broken but necessary hearing aid. The Sneaky Spy peeked around the trunk, and satisfied himself that, if any of the neighbours did happen to be at home that morning, then the sound which would be disrupting their peace and harmony was now emanating from a room at the back corner of this near side of the house. It had a high window. Percy decided to run towards the wall and then edge his way up to a point where he could listen just below the window. He briefly relaxed his muscles, and then departed towards the wall like a panther stalking its prey.
"I'm not that worried if he does catch me at this point. His strongarm pistol people will be out the front, if active at all, and I don't think Geoffries fancies to tackle me on his own, not after the handshake I gave him last night. Even the thought of police need not be feared, since I know that Ordinairy Man Manor's unwanted sleuth for naughty ones was employed by Colin to peep at us last night," thought Percy.
The sound which had penetrated every portion of the garden was a violin. Its tune was so harsh and disjointed that it could only have been composed by Colin Geoffries himself.
"Well now I know where he is," thought the Sneaky Spy on tiptoes, "For only he could be playing this instrumental assault."
He was about to sit down right under the window, when his eyes noticed something significant. It was the finishing touch to his plans of stealth.
"I was so concerned with the location of that noise and the height of the window, that I never even noticed this door down here. No wonder the window is so high. The whole room is that high off the ground. That's why I can see this short doorway leading under the house. It's my ticket to whatever it suits me to overhear."
The noise might have been a masquerading blessing. Not only did it telegraph Colin's location to the Sneaky Spy, but it also reduced the chances of Percy's being heard to zero. The Sneaky Spy would have been able to slide back the bolt and open the door in the closest audible approximation to complete silence anyway, but he had no need to fear any chances of detection now. Seated under the window he was in full view of anyone who might walk around the house and it only afforded him a small chance of listening outside one room. Now he had the opportunity to move around under the house and hear conversations which were clearly audible through the floorboards of any room. Nobody would either see or hear him. He slipped through the opening and pushed the door shut. Looking up to the floorboards of the room from which the noise was erupting, Percy could see only darkness.
"Good. No light shining down here. That means the floor is carpeted like the one in the lounge room was last night. Fine. That means I can use this," thought Percy. He removed from his pocket a wide ball point pen, which had had all of the writing parts removed. Into its hollows he had inserted small thin batteries, a spring contact, wires, a light globe from an electronic kit, and a flexible metal strip, which when held in place by Percy's thumb would complete the circuit. He removed the cap of the pen and revealed the globe and strip to his searching fingers. He pressed the strip inwards and illuminated among other things, the thumb which was doing the pressing.
"All in the names of lasting love and worthwhile war," thought the Sneaky Spy.
Then to his surprise, Colin made his own contributions to love and war. To his continued torturous tune, he added the tenor sound of his own voice:
"Oh Ingrid, how I do love you.
There aren't any more above you.
Percy Dale shan't be the one
To make all my tears run.
As he just might guess,
I've learned of his address.
If he should wish to conceal
You, I'll have to definitely deal..."
"It's awful," thought Percy, "The lines don't even scan. He's actually repeated the same bar and crammed more syllables into it the second time."
"My sight has had an eclipse
When I stare at your lips.
The soft touch of your hand
Makes my blood vessels expand."
"Whatever else I saved Ingrid from last night, whatever awful horrors of bullets and burglaries I removed from my sweet damsel's fears, I am so very glad that I have also prevented any likelihood of her ever having to be here to listen to this musical embarrassment!" thought Percy.
Percy's private mental mockery of Colin's uncouth serenade was interrupted by the lyrics of a revealing rhyming couplet:
"If you'd let Percy thrill you,
I must take steps to kill you."
As Percy took this in, another was thrust down upon him, and yet another followed it immediately:
"If I can't make you mine,
You'll never make me pine.
My love has left you scoffin'.
So scoff right to your coffin!"
"I don't think that there is any real need for me to listen to any more of this," thought the Sneaky Spy, "So I shall retrace my steps and have a conversation with Ingrid, but not over the telephone. I will just have to smuggle myself into Larmont Orphanage in the boot of Brin Decembar's car tonight. He's unknown to the naughty ones, and I'll be sure that they don't see me going to his house this evening."