of people appeared to be destroying interminable red and grey snakes

under the heated direction of Mr. Rusper; it was as if the High Street

had a plague of worms, and beyond again the more timid and less active

crowded in front of an accumulation of arrested traffic. Most of the

men were in Sabbatical black, and this and the white and starched

quality of the women and children in their best clothes gave a note of

ceremony to the whole affair.

For a moment the attention of the telephone clerk was held by the

activities of Mr. Tashingford, the chemist, who, regardless of

everyone else, was rushing across the road hurling fire grenades into

the fire station and running back for more, and then her eyes lifted

to the slanting outhouse roof that went up to a ridge behind the

parapet of Mantell and Throbson's. An expression of incredulity came

into the telephone operator's eyes and gave place to hard activity.

She flung up the window and screamed out: "Two people on the roof up

there! Two people on the roof!"

Her eyes had not deceived her. Two figures which had emerged from the

upper staircase window of Mr. Rumbold's and had got after a perilous

paddle in his cistern, on to the fire station, were now slowly but

resolutely clambering up the outhouse roof towards the back of the

main premises of Messrs. Mantell and Throbson's. They clambered slowly

237

The History of Mr Polly