There was no answer.
Mr. Porter banged ferociously at the door.
"Open the door, you young villain!" he shouted.
There was no answer.
Mr. Porter kicked the door, and shook the door, and rattled the door, and cursed the door. The door remained immovable, and only the silence answered him. Having recourse once more to his electric torch, he discovered a small window high up at the back of the shed and beneath it a pile of coal. Mr. Porter determined to reach the window over the coal. He climbed the coal, and slipped in the coal, and waded in the coal, and rolled in the coal, and wallowed in the coal, and lost his collar in the coal.
Finally he let fly a torrent of language whose eloquence, and variety, and emphasis, and richness surprised even himself. Mr. Porter, an hour ago, would have believed himself incapable of such language. Then, panting, covered with coal-dust, his collar gone, his coat torn, he surveyed the scene of his imprisonment, and there came to him a vision of a warm fire, comfortable bedroom slippers, a well-cooked dinner, a glass of wine, a good cigar and the evening paper.... In sudden frenzy he flung himself bodily upon the door.
******
Vivian Strange had given up all attempt to write. He was sitting in the arm-chair by the fire reading poetry to soothe his nerves. His nerves were very much upset. He kept imagining that he heard strange noises—bangs and shouts, and once he shuddered, imagining that he heard William's whistle. He decided to go back to town as soon as possible. The much-vaunted peace of the countryside was a fiction. The country was not peaceful. It contained William, and William's whistle, and William's water creatures, and William's conversations. There was more peace in the middle of Piccadilly—without William—than there was in the country with William.
The door opened suddenly and William appeared. There was on his face a look of conscious pride as of one who has something attempted something done, but is prepared to be quite modest about it.
"You can go an' hear wot he says an' does in reel life," he said. "He's sayin' an' doin' it now in the coal-shed. I've been listenin' for ever so long."