three mud-stained figures and a dog are slowly
walking toward them. Horrified, he leaps to his
feet and runs from the house, much to the conster-
nation of his hostess, for, as we find out presently,
Vera made the entire story up. She then shows off
her talent for prevarication again by convincing
her family that Nuttel had a morbid fear of dogs
and that this was why he raced away without ex-
planation. The story is one of the best examples of
a twist ending and is noteworthy as well for having
concentrated a relatively complex story into a sur-
prisingly short narrative.266 “The Open Window”