Noisy Neighbours

The neighbors who are above us, on the fourth floor, are noisy and annoying.  My wife has had a few run-ins with them because they trying to cheat their water meter.  I don't know how this cheating process exactly works but it takes place overnight and involves dripping water which makes a noise that gets on Jenny's nerves: and trust me you don't want to get on Jenny's nerves!  As well, these neighbors always seem to be pushing things about during waking hours, if they are not squabbling as married couples will do.  Jenny says they are from the countryside and that there are seven of them living in an apartment that is barely big enough for three.

On a recent Saturday night, we were lying in bed and heard louder than usual noises coming from the fourth floor.  I was expecting Jenny to get annoyed, but she figured, correctly as it turned out, that the husband of the apartment was trying to get in the house but his wife was fast asleep and not hearing his knocks.  The husband was locked out not because he didn't have a key, but because of the way the doors in our apartment complex can be locked.  One can lock or unlock the deadbolt of these doors using a key from the inside or the outside.  One can also lock the door by manually turning a latch bolt from the inside.  So, there are two strange scenarios that can result from this arrangement.  First, one can actually be locked inside the apartment if one doesn't have a key and if the door's deadbolt was last locked using a key from the outside.  Secondly, one can be locked out, even if they have a key, if someone inside the apartment has locked the door using the latch bolt.  The latter scenario is what took place on the Saturday evening.  So, for about thirty minutes, we heard the husband knocking.  There was also screaming that we first heard from the stairwell, but then from street level below our window as the husband tried to get his wife's attention by screaming at their bedroom which is directly above ours.