"It's very peaceful down there," he said. "I only hope to God it remains so. This is a quiet corner of the world. I didn't want this business cropping up. I thought, when we'd caught Willoughby the other week, that we had the most in excitement Devon could provide." He nodded towards a window, which evidently gave on his study, and at a tall iron safe just inside. I did not understand what he meant by Willoughby or by the glance at that safe, I only wish I had asked. Charters had turned irritable again. "That was ordinary crime, but this cursed business-!’ Did you tell him, Merrivale?"
"I said Hogenauer was here, that's all," grunted H.M.
"And," I put in, "that he was working on a machine or something to make himself invisible and carry him through the air. Look here, sir, you haven't brought me several hundred miles just to talk nonsense. What's it all about?"
Charters dropped another cube of ice into the glass. "It's about this," he said. "I didn't know Hogenauer was in England, much less living within a dozen miles of here, until about three months ago. When you came up here did you notice another house — little brick house-just over the way? Yes. There's a Dr.-Antrim living there: youngish, quite a good fellow, with a very pleasant wife. My wife took quite a fancy to her. We've struck up an acquaintance, and we've more or less run in and out of each other's houses. One evening Antrim came up here bursting with news. It appeared he had just met an old acquaintance of his — Antrim had studied in Germany — about whose scientific talents he was enthusiastic. Yes: it was Hogenauer.
"Antrim was very anxious for me to meet Hogenauer. But we never did. I didn't let on to Antrim that I knew him, and Hogenauer has kept a very tight-closed mouth about knowing me. After he heard I was here, he only came up to see Antrim once or twice, though Antrim is his doctor and Hogenauer doesn't seem to have been well. I immediately looked him up at the police station. He's registered at the alien's bureau, and since last autumn he's been living in a neat little suburban villa at Moreton Abbot, not far from here. Well, I put a man to watch him. Of course, I had nothing to go on…. "
Charters handed round some admirable gin-fizzes. A little of his old sharpness, his old doggedness, had come back when he began to outline his facts. He sat down on the veranda-rail, his arms folded and hands cradled under bony elbows.
"He's been leading an ordinary life: except for one thing. On every alternate day, between eight and nine in the evening and often until much later, he shuts himself up in his back parlour. The windows are closed up with shutters of the old-fashioned wooden kind. The man I had watching him — Sergeant Davis — tried to get close and see what was going on. One night he climbed over the garden wall, crawled up under the window, and tried to look through chinks in the shutter. And this is what he says: he says that the room was dark, but that it seemed to be very full of small, moving darts of light flickering round a thing like a flower-pot turned upside down."
H.M., who had been getting out his pipe, opened his eyes, shut them, and opened them again. His turned-down Panama hat gave his face the look of a malevolent urchin's. "Oh, love-a-duck," he said. "Look here, old son. This Sergeant Davis, is he-'
"He's absolutely reliable. You can talk to him for yourself."
"What about Hogenauer's household?"