And on the footpath to the left of me there’s a woman coming along. She hasn’t crossed from the Ladies’ Course—that’s on the right—I should have seen her if she had done so. And it’s odd I didn’t see her on the footpath before—from the fifth tee, for instance.”
He paused.
“You said just now I knew the course, Tuppence. Just behind the sixth tee, there’s a little hut or shelter made of turf. Anyone could wait in there until—the right moment came. They could change their appearance there. I mean—tell me, Tuppence this is where your special knowledge comes in again—would it be very difficult for a man to look like a woman, and then change back to being a man again? Could he wear a skirt over plus fours, for instance?”
“Certainly he could. The woman would look a bit bulky, that would be all. A longish brown skirt, say, a brown sweater of the kind both men and women wear, and a woman’s felt hat with a bunch of side curls attached each side. That would be all that was needed—I’m speaking, of course, of what would pass at a distance, which I take to be what you are driving at. Switch off the skirt, take off the hat and curls, and put on a man’s cap which you can carry rolled up in your hand, and there you’d be—back as a man again.”
“And the time required for the transformation?”
“From woman to man, a minute and a half at the outside, probably a good deal less. The other way about would take longer, you’d have to arrange the hat and curls a bit, and the skirt would stick getting it on over the plus fours.”
“That doesn’t worry me. It’s the time for the first that matters. As I tell you, I’m playing the sixth hole. The woman in brown has reached the seventh tee now. She crosses it and waits. Sessle in his blue coat goes