A young burglar enters the apartment of an elderly blind woman while her maid is out for the evening. He demands the key to her safe, while she tries to talk him out of it. Eventually he attacks her, takes the key from round her neck. She collapses and dies, so how can he ever be found out?
This is one of Canning's best short stories. He also uses the motif of blindness in the story "Chance at the Wheel" and in the script he wrote for the episode "Blind Spot" in the TV series Man in a Suitcase.
Argosy, October 1961.
Reprinted as "Intruder in the dark" in This Week supplement to Kansas City Star et al., 21 July 1963.
Reprinted in John Creasey's Crime Collection 1986, ed Herbert Harris, Victor Gollancz.
Included in the now discontinued collection Crime and Detection, edited by John Higgins, Lulu.com, 2010.
Included in the collection The Aberdyll Onion and other mysteries, Farrago Books, 2020.
It was included in a simplified version in the collection Singing Wind and other stories, Longman New Method Stage 5 Readers, 1963.