And then this silly kid did exactly what the man hoped he would—he asked the man to come in and wait in the lounge while he went out the back to fetch his mum. Having recently seen Double Indemnity, I should have known better.
    Well, maybe not. All I really remembered from the movie was the scary silhouette of a man on crutches walking toward the camera under the titles, and Edward G. Robinson lighting Fred MacMurray’s cigarette at the end. For the rest of it, I was under the seat. I don’t know why I thought it so frightening, but that is the illusion of movies and the way they work on the mind. A good, tight thriller like this can take for its title a totally innocuous phrase from the insurance business and transform it into an expression of seething menace. Had I spent less time under the seat, I might have had a better appreciation of the dangers of door-to-door salesmen.
    The man knew that getting in was half the battle. Had Horrie been home he would have told the man to piss off and, if that was not immediately responded to, tipped the salesman and his wares over the fence and into the street. Had my mother answered the door, she would have said nothing (just as Horrie instructed) and simply quietly closed the door in the man’s face. But now that he was in the lounge room, matters of human decency came into play and my mother found it impossible to be rude enough to throw him out. Instead she made them both a cup of tea and settled down to listen to what he had to say. The man might have been selling brushes or vacuum cleaners or even life insurance—and probably had at different times in his career—but on this particular occasion he was selling encyclopaedias.