II
“Come on, sonny,” said Superintendent¹ Huish encouragingly. “Let’s hearall about it.”
Master Cyril Green took a deep breath. Before he could speak, hismother interposed.
“As you might say, Mr. Huish, I didn’t take much notice at the time. Youknow what these children are. Always talking and thinking about spaceships and things. And he comes home to me and he says, ‘Mum, I’ve seen asputnik, it’s come down.’ Well, I mean, before that it was flying saucers.
It’s always something. It’s these Russians that go putting things into theirheads.”
Superintendent Huish sighed and thought how much easier it would beif mothers would not insist on accompanying their sons and talking forthem.
“Come on, Cyril,” he said, “you went home and told your Mum—that’sright, isn’t it?—that you’d seen this Russian sputnik—whatever it was.”
“Didn’t know no better then,” said Cyril. “I was only a kid then. That’stwo years ago. Course, I know better now.”
“Them bubble cars,” his mother put in, “was quite new at the time.
There hadn’t been one about locally, so naturally when he saw it—andbright red too—he didn’t realize as it was just an ordinary car. And whenwe heard the next morning as Mrs. Argyle had been done in, Cyril he saysto me, ‘Mum,’ he says, ‘it’s them Russians,’ he says, ‘they come down inthat sputnik of theirs and they must have got in and killed her.’ ‘Don’t talksuch nonsense,’ I said. And then of course later in the day we hear herown son has been arrested for having done it.”
Superintendent Huish addressed himself patiently once more to Cyril.
“It was in the evening, I understand? What time, do you remember?”
“I’d had me tea,” said Cyril, breathing hard in the effort of remem-brance, “and Mum was out at the Institute, so I went out again a bit withthe boys and we larked² around a bit up that way down the new road.”
“And what was you doing there, I’d like to know,” his mother put in.
PC Good, who’d brought in this promising³ piece of evidence, interposed.
He knew well enough what Cyril and the boys had been doing down thenew road. The

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