initial commit of ebook 2014HEADmain

8 files changed, 40267 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/2014-8.txt b/old/2014-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2355c38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/2014-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10081 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Lodger
+
+Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2005 [EBook #2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LODGER ***
+
+
+
+
+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+
+
+The Lodger
+
+by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+
+
+
+"Lover and friend hast thou put far from me,
+and mine acquaintance into darkness."
+    PSALM lxxxviii. 18
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning,
+carefully-banked-up fire.
+
+The room, especially when it be known that it was part of a house
+standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare,
+was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for. A casual stranger,
+more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly
+opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr.
+and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of
+comfortable married life. Bunting, who was leaning back in a deep
+leather arm-chair, was clean-shaven and dapper, still in appearance
+what he had been for many years of his life--a self-respecting
+man-servant.
+
+On his wife, now sitting up in an uncomfortable straight-backed
+chair, the marks of past servitude were less apparent; but they
+were there all the same--in her neat black stuff dress, and in
+her scrupulously clean, plain collar and cuffs. Mrs. Bunting, as
+a single woman, had been what is known as a useful maid.
+
+But peculiarly true of average English life is the time-worn
+English proverb as to appearances being deceitful. Mr. and Mrs.
+Bunting were sitting in a very nice room and in their time--how
+long ago it now seemed!--both husband and wife had been proud of
+their carefully chosen belongings. Everything in the room was
+strong and substantial, and each article of furniture had been
+bought at a well-conducted auction held in a private house.
+
+Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden,
+drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song,
+and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years.
+A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which
+covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat
+forward, staring into the dull, small fire. In fact, that arm-chair
+had been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting. She had wanted her husband
+to be comfortable after the day's work was done, and she had paid
+thirty-seven shillings for the chair. Only yesterday Bunting had
+tried to find a purchaser for it, but the man who had come to look at
+it, guessing their cruel necessities, had only offered them twelve
+shillings and sixpence for it; so for the present they were keeping
+their arm-chair.
+
+But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort,
+much as that is valued by the Buntings of this world. So, on the
+walls of the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded
+photographs--photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's various former
+employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had
+separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not
+unhappy servitude.
+
+But appearances were not only deceitful, they were more than
+usually deceitful with regard to these unfortunate people. In
+spite of their good furniture--that substantial outward sign of
+respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall
+into trouble try to dispose of--they were almost at the end of
+their tether. Already they had learnt to go hungry, and they were
+beginning to learn to go cold. Tobacco, the last thing the sober
+man foregoes among his comforts, had been given up some time ago
+by Bunting. And even Mrs. Bunting--prim, prudent, careful woman
+as she was in her way--had realised what this must mean to him.
+So well, indeed, had she understood that some days back she had
+crept out and bought him a packet of Virginia.
+
+Bunting had been touched--touched as he had not been for years by
+any woman's thought and love for him. Painful tears had forced
+themselves into his eyes, and husband and wife had both felt in
+their odd, unemotional way, moved to the heart.
+
+Fortunately he never guessed--how could he have guessed, with his
+slow, normal, rather dull mind?--that his poor Ellen had since
+more than once bitterly regretted that fourpence-ha'penny, for they
+were now very near the soundless depths which divide those who dwell
+on the safe tableland of security--those, that is, who are sure of
+making a respectable, if not a happy, living--and the submerged
+multitude who, through some lack in themselves, or owing to the
+conditions under which our strange civilisation has become organised,
+struggle rudderless till they die in workhouse, hospital, or prison.
+
+Had the Buntings been in a class lower than their own, had they
+belonged to the great company of human beings technically known to
+so many of us as the poor, there would have been friendly neighbours
+ready to help them, and the same would have been the case had they
+belonged to the class of smug, well-meaning, if unimaginative, folk
+whom they had spent so much of their lives in serving.
+
+There was only one person in the world who might possibly be brought
+to help them. That was an aunt of Bunting's first wife. With this
+woman, the widow of a man who had been well-to-do, lived Daisy,
+Bunting's only child by his first wife, and during the last long two
+days he had been trying to make up his mind to write to the old lady,
+and that though he suspected that she would almost certainly retort
+with a cruel, sharp rebuff.
+
+As to their few acquaintances, former fellow-servants, and so on,
+they had gradually fallen out of touch with them. There was but
+one friend who often came to see them in their deep trouble. This
+was a young fellow named Chandler, under whose grandfather Bunting
+had been footman years and years ago. Joe Chandler had never gone
+into service; he was attached to the police; in fact not to put too
+fine a point upon it, young Chandler was a detective.
+
+When they had first taken the house which had brought them, so they
+both thought, such bad luck, Bunting had encouraged the young chap
+to come often, for his tales were well worth listening to--quite
+exciting at times. But now poor Bunting didn't want to hear that
+sort of stories--stories of people being cleverly "nabbed," or
+stupidly allowed to escape the fate they always, from Chandler's
+point of view, richly deserved.
+
+But Joe still came very faithfully once or twice a week, so timing
+his calls that neither host nor hostess need press food upon him
+--nay, more, he had done that which showed him to have a good and
+feeling heart. He had offered his father's old acquaintance a loan,
+and Bunting, at last, had taken 30s. Very little of that money
+now remained: Bunting still could jingle a few coppers in his pocket;
+and Mrs. Bunting had 2s. 9d.; that and the rent they would have to
+pay in five weeks, was all they had left. Everything of the light,
+portable sort that would fetch money had been sold. Mrs. Bunting
+had a fierce horror of the pawnshop. She had never put her feet in
+such a place, and she declared she never would--she would rather
+starve first.
+
+But she had said nothing when there had occurred the gradual
+disappearance of various little possessions she knew that Bunting
+valued, notably of the old-fashioned gold watch-chain which had been
+given to him after the death of his first master, a master he had
+nursed faithfully and kindly through a long and terrible illness.
+There had also vanished a twisted gold tie-pin, and a large mourning
+ring, both gifts of former employers.
+
+When people are living near that deep pit which divides the secure
+from the insecure--when they see themselves creeping closer and
+closer to its dread edge--they are apt, however loquacious by
+nature, to fall into long silences. Bunting had always been a
+talker, but now he talked no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but
+then she had always been a silent woman, and that was perhaps one
+reason why Bunting had felt drawn to her from the very first moment
+he had seen her.
+
+It had fallen out in this way. A lady had just engaged him as
+butler, and he had been shown, by the man whose place he was to
+take, into the dining-room. There, to use his own expression, he
+had discovered Ellen Green, carefully pouring out the glass of port
+wine which her then mistress always drank at 11.30 every morning.
+And as he, the new butler, had seen her engaged in this task, as he
+had watched her carefully stopper the decanter and put it back into
+the old wine-cooler, he had said to himself, "That is the woman for
+me!"
+
+But now her stillness, her--her dumbness, had got on the
+unfortunate man's nerves. He no longer felt like going into the
+various little shops, close by, patronised by him in more prosperous
+days, and Mrs. Bunting also went afield to make the slender purchases
+which still had to be made every day or two, if they were to be
+saved from actually starving to death.
+
+Suddenly, across the stillness of the dark November evening there
+came the muffled sounds of hurrying feet and of loud, shrill shouting
+outside--boys crying the late afternoon editions of the evening
+papers.
+
+Bunting turned uneasily in his chair. The giving up of a daily
+paper had been, after his tobacco, his bitterest deprivation. And
+the paper was an older habit than the tobacco, for servants are
+great readers of newspapers.
+
+As the shouts came through the closed windows and the thick damask
+curtains, Bunting felt a sudden sense of mind hunger fall upon him.
+
+It was a shame--a damned shame--that he shouldn't know what was
+happening in the world outside! Only criminals are kept from hearing
+news of what is going on beyond their prison walls. And those
+shouts, those hoarse, sharp cries must portend that something really
+exciting had happened, something warranted to make a man forget for
+the moment his own intimate, gnawing troubles.
+
+He got up, and going towards the nearest window strained his ears to
+listen. There fell on them, emerging now and again from the confused
+babel of hoarse shouts, the one clear word "Murder!"
+
+Slowly Bunting's brain pieced the loud, indistinct cries into some
+sort of connected order. Yes, that was it--"Horrible Murder!
+Murder at St. Pancras!" Bunting remembered vaguely another murder
+which had been committed near St. Pancras--that of an old lady by
+her servant-maid. It had happened a great many years ago, but was
+still vividly remembered, as of special and natural interest, among
+the class to which he had belonged.
+
+The newsboys--for there were more than one of them, a rather unusual
+thing in the Marylebone Road--were coming nearer and nearer; now
+they had adopted another cry, but he could not quite catch what they
+were crying. They were still shouting hoarsely, excitedly, but he
+could only hear a word or two now and then. Suddenly "The Avenger!
+The Avenger at his work again!" broke on his ear.
+
+During the last fortnight four very curious and brutal murders had
+been committed in London and within a comparatively small area.
+
+The first had aroused no special interest--even the second had only
+been awarded, in the paper Bunting was still then taking in, quite a
+small paragraph.
+
+Then had come the third--and with that a wave of keen excitement,
+for pinned to the dress of the victim--a drunken woman--had been
+found a three-cornered piece of paper, on which was written, in red
+ink, and in printed characters, the words,
+
+"THE AVENGER"
+
+It was then realised, not only by those whose business it is to
+investigate such terrible happenings, but also by the vast world
+of men and women who take an intelligent interest in such sinister
+mysteries, that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes;
+and before that extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into
+the public mind there took place yet another murder, and again the
+murderer had been to special pains to make it clear that some
+obscure and terrible lust for vengeance possessed him.
+
+Now everyone was talking of The Avenger and his crimes! Even the
+man who left their ha'porth of milk at the door each morning had
+spoken to Bunting about them that very day.
+
+******
+
+Bunting came back to the fire and looked down at his wife with mild
+excitement. Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of
+weary, mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him.
+He felt he could have shaken her!
+
+Ellen had hardly taken the trouble to listen when he, Bunting, had
+come back to bed that morning, and told her what the milkman had
+said. In fact, she had been quite nasty about it, intimating that
+she didn't like hearing about such horrid things.
+
+It was a curious fact that though Mrs. Bunting enjoyed tales of
+pathos and sentiment, and would listen with frigid amusement to
+the details of a breach of promise action, she shrank from stories
+of immorality or of physical violence. In the old, happy days,
+when they could afford to buy a paper, aye, and more than one paper
+daily, Bunting had often had to choke down his interest in some
+exciting "case" or "mystery" which was affording him pleasant mental
+relaxation, because any allusion to it sharply angered Ellen.
+
+But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she
+felt.
+
+Walking away from the window he took a slow, uncertain step towards
+the door; when there he turned half round, and there came over his
+close-shaven, round face the rather sly, pleading look with which
+a child about to do something naughty glances at its parent.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting remained quite still; her thin, narrow shoulders
+just showed above the back of the chair on which she was sitting,
+bolt upright, staring before her as if into vacancy.
+
+Bunting turned round, opened the door, and quickly he went out into
+the dark hall--they had given up lighting the gas there some time
+ago--and opened the front door.
+
+Walking down the small flagged path outside, he flung open the iron
+gate which gave on to the damp pavement. But there he hesitated.
+The coppers in his pocket seemed to have shrunk in number, and he
+remembered ruefully how far Ellen could make even four pennies go.
+
+Then a boy ran up to him with a sheaf of evening papers, and Bunting,
+being sorely tempted--fell. "Give me a Sun," he said roughly, "Sun
+or Echo!"
+
+But the boy, scarcely stopping to take breath, shook his head. "Only
+penny papers left," he gasped. "What'll yer 'ave, sir?"
+
+With an eagerness which was mingled with shame, Bunting drew a penny
+out of his pocket and took a paper--it was the Evening Standard--
+from the boy's hand.
+
+Then, very slowly, he shut the gate and walked back through the raw,
+cold air, up the flagged path, shivering yet full of eager, joyful
+anticipation.
+
+Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly he would pass
+a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent,
+miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments
+of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife,
+with careworn, troubled Ellen.
+
+A hot wave of unease, almost of remorse, swept over Bunting. Ellen
+would never have spent that penny on herself--he knew that well
+enough--and if it hadn't been so cold, so foggy, so--so drizzly,
+he would have gone out again through the gate and stood under the
+street lamp to take his pleasure. He dreaded with a nervous dread
+the glance of Ellen's cold, reproving light-blue eye. That glance
+would tell him that he had had no business to waste a penny on a
+paper, and that well he knew it!
+
+Suddenly the door in front of him opened, and he beard a familiar
+voice saying crossly, yet anxiously, "What on earth are you doing
+out there, Bunting? Come in--do! You'll catch your death of cold!
+I don't want to have you ill on my hands as well as everything else!"
+Mrs. Bunting rarely uttered so many words at once nowadays.
+
+He walked in through the front door of his cheerless house. "I
+went out to get a paper," he said sullenly.
+
+After all, he was master. He had as much right to spend the money
+as she had; for the matter of that the money on which they were now
+both living had been lent, nay, pressed on him--not on Ellen--by
+that decent young chap, Joe Chandler. And he, Bunting, had done
+all he could; he had pawned everything he could pawn, while Ellen,
+so he resentfully noticed, still wore her wedding ring.
+
+He stepped past her heavily, and though she said nothing, he knew
+she grudged him his coming joy. Then, full of rage with her and
+contempt for himself, and giving himself the luxury of a mild, a
+very mild, oath--Ellen had very early made it clear she would
+have no swearing in her presence--he lit the hall gas full-flare.
+
+"How can we hope to get lodgers if they can't even see the card?"
+he shouted angrily.
+
+And there was truth in what he said, for now that he had lit the
+gas, the oblong card, though not the word "Apartments" printed on
+it, could be plainly seen out-lined against the old-fashioned
+fanlight above the front door.
+
+Bunting went into the sitting-room, silently followed by his wife,
+and then, sitting down in his nice arm-chair, he poked the little
+banked-up fire. It was the first time Bunting had poked the fire
+for many a long day, and this exertion of marital authority made
+him feel better. A man has to assert himself sometimes, and he,
+Bunting, had not asserted himself enough lately.
+
+A little colour came into Mrs. Bunting's pale face. She was not
+used to be flouted in this way. For Bunting, when not thoroughly
+upset, was the mildest of men.
+
+She began moving about the room, flicking off an imperceptible
+touch of dust here, straightening a piece of furniture there.
+
+But her hands trembled--they trembled with excitement, with
+self-pity, with anger. A penny? It was dreadful--dreadful to
+have to worry about a penny! But they had come to the point when
+one has to worry about pennies. Strange that her husband didn't
+realise that.
+
+Bunting looked round once or twice; he would have liked to ask Ellen
+to leave off fidgeting, but he was fond of peace, and perhaps, by
+now, a little bit ashamed of himself, so he refrained from remark,
+and she soon gave over what irritated him of her own accord.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting did not come and sit down as her husband would have
+liked her to do. The sight of him, absorbed in his paper as he was,
+irritated her, and made her long to get away from him. Opening the
+door which separated the sitting-room from the bedroom behind, and
+--shutting out the aggravating vision of Bunting sitting comfortably
+by the now brightly burning fire, with the Evening Standard spread
+out before him--she sat down in the cold darkness, and pressed her
+hands against her temples.
+
+Never, never had she felt so hopeless, so--so broken as now. Where
+was the good of having been an upright, conscientious, self-respecting
+woman all her life long, if it only led to this utter, degrading
+poverty and wretchedness? She and Bunting were just past the age
+which gentlefolk think proper in a married couple seeking to enter
+service together, unless, that is, the wife happens to be a professed
+cook. A cook and a butler can always get a nice situation. But Mrs.
+Bunting was no cook. She could do all right the simple things any
+lodger she might get would require, but that was all.
+
+Lodgers? How foolish she had been to think of taking lodgers! For
+it had been her doing. Bunting had been like butter in her hands.
+
+Yet they had begun well, with a lodging-house in a seaside place.
+There they had prospered, not as they had hoped to do, but still
+pretty well; and then had come an epidemic of scarlet fever, and
+that had meant ruin for them, and for dozens, nay, hundreds, of
+other luckless people. Then had followed a business experiment
+which had proved even more disastrous, and which had left them in
+debt--in debt to an extent they could never hope to repay, to a
+good-natured former employer.
+
+After that, instead of going back to service, as they might have
+done, perhaps, either together or separately, they had made up
+their minds to make one last effort, and they had taken over, with
+the trifle of money that remained to them, the lease of this house
+in the Marylebone Road.
+
+In former days, when they had each been leading the sheltered,
+impersonal, and, above all, financially easy existence which is
+the compensation life offers to those men and women who deliberately
+take upon themselves the yoke of domestic service, they had both
+lived in houses overlooking Regent's Park. It had seemed a wise
+plan to settle in the same neighbourhood, the more so that Bunting,
+who had a good appearance, had retained the kind of connection
+which enables a man to get a job now and again as waiter at private
+parties.
+
+But life moves quickly, jaggedly, for people like the Buntings.
+Two of his former masters had moved to another part of London, and
+a caterer in Baker Street whom he had known went bankrupt.
+
+And now? Well, just now Bunting could not have taken a job had
+one been offered him, for he had pawned his dress clothes. He had
+not asked his wife's permission to do this, as so good a husband
+ought to have done. He had just gone out and done it. And she had
+not had the heart to say anything; nay, it was with part of the
+money that he had handed her silently the evening he did it that
+she had bought that last packet of tobacco.
+
+And then, as Mrs. Bunting sat there thinking these painful thoughts,
+there suddenly came to the front door the sound of a loud, tremulous,
+uncertain double knock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Mr. Bunting jumped nervously to her feet. She stood for a moment
+listening in the darkness, a darkness made the blacker by the line
+of light under the door behind which sat Bunting reading his paper.
+
+And then it came again, that loud, tremulous, uncertain double
+knock; not a knock, so the listener told herself, that boded any
+good. Would-be lodgers gave sharp, quick, bold, confident raps.
+No; this must be some kind of beggar. The queerest people came at
+all hours, and asked--whining or threatening--for money.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had had some sinister experiences with men and women
+--especially women--drawn from that nameless, mysterious class
+made up of the human flotsam and jetsam which drifts about every
+great city. But since she had taken to leaving the gas in the
+passage unlit at night she had been very little troubled with that
+kind of visitors, those human bats which are attracted by any kind
+of light but leave alone those who live in darkness.
+
+She opened the door of the sitting-room. It was Bunting's place
+to go to the front door, but she knew far better than he did how
+to deal with difficult or obtrusive callers. Still, somehow, she
+would have liked him to go to-night. But Bunting sat on, absorbed
+in his newspaper; all he did at the sound of the bedroom door
+opening was to look up and say, "Didn't you hear a knock?"
+
+Without answering his question she went out into the hall.
+
+Slowly she opened the front door.
+
+On the top of the three steps which led up to the door, there stood
+the long, lanky figure of a man, clad in an Inverness cape and an
+old-fashioned top hat. He waited for a few seconds blinking at her,
+perhaps dazzled by the light of the gas in the passage. Mrs.
+Bunting's trained perception told her at once that this man, odd as
+he looked, was a gentleman, belonging by birth to the class with
+whom her former employment had brought her in contact.
+
+"Is it not a fact that you let lodgings?" he asked, and there was
+something shrill, unbalanced, hesitating, in his voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said uncertainly--it was a long, long time since
+anyone had come after their lodgings, anyone, that is, that they
+could think of taking into their respectable house.
+
+Instinctively she stepped a little to one side, and the stranger
+walked past her, and so into the hall.
+
+And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting noticed that he held a
+narrow bag in his left hand. It was quite a new bag, made of strong
+brown leather.
+
+"I am looking for some quiet rooms," he said; then he repeated the
+words, "quiet rooms," in a dreamy, absent way, and as he uttered
+them he looked nervously round him.
+
+Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully
+furnished, and was very clean.
+
+There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary
+feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which
+matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
+
+A very superior lodging-house this, and evidently a superior
+lodging-house keeper.
+
+"You'd find my rooms quite quiet, sir," she said gently. "And just
+now I have four to let. The house is empty, save for my husband
+and me, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting spoke in a civil, passionless voice. It seemed too
+good to be true, this sudden coming of a possible lodger, and of a
+lodger who spoke in the pleasant, courteous way and voice which
+recalled to the poor woman her happy, far-off days of youth and
+of security.
+
+"That sounds very suitable," he said. "Four rooms? Well, perhaps
+I ought only to take two rooms, but, still, I should like to see
+all four before I make my choice."
+
+How fortunate, how very fortunate it was that Bunting had lit the
+gas! But for that circumstance this gentleman would have passed
+them by.
+
+She turned towards the staircase, quite forgetting in her agitation
+that the front door was still open; and it was the stranger whom
+she already in her mind described as "the lodger," who turned and
+rather quickly walked down the passage and shut it.
+
+"Oh, thank you, sir!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry you should have
+had the trouble."
+
+For a moment their eyes met. "It's not safe to leave a front door
+open in London," he said, rather sharply. "I hope you do not often
+do that. It would be so easy for anyone to slip in."
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt rather upset. The stranger had still spoken
+courteously, but he was evidently very much put out.
+
+"I assure you, sir, I never leave my front door open," she answered
+hastily. "You needn't be at all afraid of that!"
+
+And then, through the closed door of the sitting-room, came the
+sound of Bunting coughing--it was just a little, hard cough, but
+Mrs. Bunting's future lodger started violently.
+
+"Who's that?" he said, putting out a hand and clutching her arm.
+"Whatever was that?"
+
+"Only my husband, sir. He went out to buy a paper a few minutes
+ago, and the cold just caught him, I suppose."
+
+"Your husband--?" he looked at her intently, suspiciously. "What
+--what, may I ask, is your husband's occupation?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting drew herself up. The question as to Bunting's
+occupation was no one's business but theirs. Still, it wouldn't do
+for her to show offence. "He goes out waiting," she said stiffly.
+"He was a gentleman's servant, sir. He could, of course, valet you
+should you require him to do so."
+
+And then she turned and led the way up the steep, narrow staircase.
+
+At the top of the first flight of stairs was what Mrs. Bunting, to
+herself, called the drawing-room floor. It consisted of a
+sitting-room in front, and a bedroom behind. She opened the door
+of the sitting-room and quickly lit the chandelier.
+
+This front room was pleasant enough, though perhaps a little
+over-encumbered with furniture. Covering the floor was a green
+carpet simulating moss; four chairs were placed round the table
+which occupied the exact middle of the apartment, and in the
+corner, opposite the door giving on to the landing, was a roomy,
+old-fashioned chiffonnier.
+
+On the dark-green walls hung a series of eight engravings, portraits
+of early Victorian belles, clad in lace and tarletan ball dresses,
+clipped from an old Book of Beauty. Mrs. Bunting was very fond of
+these pictures; she thought they gave the drawing-room a note of
+elegance and refinement.
+
+As she hurriedly turned up the gas she was glad, glad indeed, that
+she had summoned up sufficient energy, two days ago, to give the
+room a thorough turn-out.
+
+It had remained for a long time in the state in which it had been
+left by its last dishonest, dirty occupants when they had been
+scared into going away by Bunting's rough threats of the police.
+But now it was in apple-pie order, with one paramount exception,
+of which Mrs. Bunting was painfully aware. There were no white
+curtains to the windows, but that omission could soon be remedied
+if this gentleman really took the lodgings.
+
+But what was this--? The stranger was looking round him rather
+dubiously. "This is rather--rather too grand for me," he said at
+last "I should like to see your other rooms, Mrs. er--"
+
+"--Bunting," she said softly. "Bunting, sir."
+
+And as she spoke the dark, heavy load of care again came down and
+settled on her sad, burdened heart. Perhaps she had been mistaken,
+after all--or rather, she had not been mistaken in one sense, but
+perhaps this gentleman was a poor gentleman--too poor, that is, to
+afford the rent of more than one room, say eight or ten shillings
+a week; eight or ten shillings a week would be very little use to
+her and Bunting, though better than nothing at all.
+
+"Will you just look at the bedroom, sir?"
+
+"No," he said, "no. I think I should like to see what you have
+farther up the house, Mrs.--," and then, as if making a prodigious
+mental effort, he brought out her name, "Bunting," with a kind of
+gasp.
+
+The two top rooms were, of course, immediately above the
+drawing-room floor. But they looked poor and mean, owing to the fact
+that they were bare of any kind of ornament. Very little trouble had
+been taken over their arrangement; in fact, they had been left in much
+the same condition as that in which the Buntings had found them.
+
+For the matter of that, it is difficult to make a nice, genteel
+sitting-room out of an apartment of which the principal features
+are a sink and a big gas stove. The gas stove, of an obsolete
+pattern, was fed by a tiresome, shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
+It had been the property of the people from whom the Buntings had
+taken over the lease of the house, who, knowing it to be of no
+monetary value, had thrown it in among the humble fittings they
+had left behind.
+
+What furniture there was in the room was substantial and clean, as
+everything belonging to Mrs. Bunting was bound to be, but it was a
+bare, uncomfortable-looking place, and the landlady now felt sorry
+that she had done nothing to make it appear more attractive.
+
+To her surprise, however, her companion's dark, sensitive,
+hatchet-shaped face became irradiated with satisfaction. "Capital!
+Capital!" he exclaimed, for the first time putting down the bag he
+held at his feet, and rubbing his long, thin hands together with a
+quick, nervous movement.
+
+"This is just what I have been looking for." He walked with long,
+eager strides towards the gas stove. "First-rate--quite first-rate!
+Exactly what I wanted to find! You must understand, Mrs.--er--
+Bunting, that I am a man of science. I make, that is, all sorts of
+experiments, and I often require the--ah, well, the presence of
+great heat."
+
+He shot out a hand, which she noticed shook a little, towards the
+stove. "This, too, will be useful--exceedingly useful, to me," and
+he touched the edge of the stone sink with a lingering, caressing
+touch.
+
+He threw his head back and passed his hand over his high, bare
+forehead; then, moving towards a chair, he sat down--wearily.
+"I'm tired," he muttered in a low voice, "tired--tired! I've been
+walking about all day, Mrs. Bunting, and I could find nothing to sit
+down upon. They do not put benches for tired men in the London
+streets. They do so on the Continent. In some ways they are far
+more humane on the Continent than they are in England, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Indeed, sir," she said civilly; and then, after a nervous glance,
+she asked the question of which the answer would mean so much to her,
+"Then you mean to take my rooms, sir?"
+
+"This room, certainly," he said, looking round. "This room is
+exactly what I have been looking for, and longing for, the last
+few days;" and then hastily he added, "I mean this kind of place
+is what I have always wanted to possess, Mrs. Bunting. You would
+be surprised if you knew how difficult it is to get anything of
+the sort. But now my weary search has ended, and that is a relief
+--a very, very great relief to me!"
+
+He stood up and looked round him with a dreamy, abstracted air. And
+then, "Where's my bag?" he asked suddenly, and there came a note of
+sharp, angry fear in his voice. He glared at the quiet woman
+standing before him, and for a moment Mrs. Bunting felt a tremor of
+fright shoot through her. It seemed a pity that Bunting was so far
+away, right down the house.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting was aware that eccentricity has always been a
+perquisite, as it were the special luxury, of the well-born and of
+the well-educated. Scholars, as she well knew, are never quite like
+other people, and her new lodger was undoubtedly a scholar. "Surely
+I had a bag when I came in?" he said in a scared, troubled voice.
+
+"Here it is, sir," she said soothingly, and, stooping, picked it
+up and handed it to him. And as she did so she noticed that the
+bag was not at all heavy; it was evidently by no means full.
+
+He took it eagerly from her. "I beg your pardon," he muttered.
+"But there is something in that bag which is very precious to me
+--something I procured with infinite difficulty, and which I could
+never get again without running into great danger, Mrs. Bunting.
+That must be the excuse for my late agitation."
+
+"About terms, sir?" she said a little timidly, returning to the
+subject which meant so much, so very much to her.
+
+"About terms?" he echoed. And then there came a pause. "My name
+is Sleuth," he said suddenly,--"S-l-e-u-t-h. Think of a hound,
+Mrs. Bunting, and you'll never forget my name. I could provide you
+with a reference--" (he gave her what she described to herself as
+a funny, sideways look), "but I should prefer you to dispense with
+that, if you don't mind. I am quite willing to pay you--well, shall
+we say a month in advance?"
+
+A spot of red shot into Mrs. Bunting's cheeks. She felt sick with
+relief--nay, with a joy which was almost pain. She had not known
+till that moment how hungry she was--how eager for--a good meal.
+"That would be all right, sir," she murmured.
+
+"And what are you going to charge me?" There had come a kindly,
+almost a friendly note into his voice. "With attendance, mind! I
+shall expect you to give me attendance, and I need hardly ask if
+you can cook, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," she said. "I am a plain cook. What would you say
+to twenty-five shillings a week, sir?" She looked at him
+deprecatingly, and as he did not answer she went on falteringly,
+"You see, sir, it may seem a good deal, but you would have the best
+of attendance and careful cooking--and my husband, sir--he would
+be pleased to valet you."
+
+"I shouldn't want anything of that sort done for me," said Mr.
+Sleuth hastily. "I prefer looking after my own clothes. I am used
+to waiting on myself. But, Mrs. Bunting, I have a great dislike to
+sharing lodgings--"
+
+She interrupted eagerly, "I could let you have the use of the two
+floors for the same price--that is, until we get another lodger.
+I shouldn't like you to sleep in the back room up here, sir. It's
+such a poor little room. You could do as you say, sir--do your work
+and your experiments up here, and then have your meals in the
+drawing-room."
+
+"Yes," he said hesitatingly, "that sounds a good plan. And if I
+offered you two pounds, or two guineas? Might I then rely on your
+not taking another lodger?"
+
+"Yes," she said quietly. "I'd be very glad only to have you to
+wait on, sir."
+
+"I suppose you have a key to the door of this room, Mrs. Bunting?
+I don't like to be disturbed while I'm working."
+
+He waited a moment, and then said again, rather urgently, "I suppose
+you have a key to this door, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, there's a key--a very nice little key. The people
+who lived here before had a new kind of lock put on to the door."
+She went over, and throwing the door open, showed him that a round
+disk had been fitted above the old keyhole.
+
+He nodded his head, and then, after standing silent a little, as if
+absorbed in thought, "Forty-two shillings a week? Yes, that will
+suit me perfectly. And I'll begin now by paying my first month's
+rent in advance. Now, four times forty-two shillings is"--he
+jerked his head back and stared at his new landlady; for the first
+time he smiled, a queer, wry smile--"why, just eight pounds eight
+shillings, Mrs. Bunting!"
+
+He thrust his hand through into an inner pocket of his long
+cape-like coat and took out a handful of sovereigns. Then he began
+putting these down in a row on the bare wooden table which stood in
+the centre of the room. "Here's five--six--seven--eight--nine
+--ten pounds. You'd better keep the odd change, Mrs. Bunting,
+for I shall want you to do some shopping for me to-morrow morning.
+I met with a misfortune to-day." But the new lodger did not speak
+as if his misfortune, whatever it was, weighed on his spirits.
+
+"Indeed, sir. I'm sorry to hear that." Mrs. Bunting's heart was
+going thump--thump--thump. She felt extraordinarily moved, dizzy
+with relief and joy.
+
+"Yes, a very great misfortune! I lost my luggage, the few things
+I managed to bring away with me." His voice dropped suddenly. "I
+shouldn't have said that," he muttered. "I was a fool to say that!"
+Then, more loudly, "Someone said to me, 'You can't go into a
+lodging-house without any luggage. They wouldn't take you in.' But
+you have taken me in, Mrs. Bunting, and I'm grateful for--for the
+kind way you have met me--" He looked at her feelingly, appealingly,
+and Mrs. Bunting was touched. She was beginning to feel very kindly
+towards her new lodger.
+
+"I hope I know a gentleman when I see one," she said, with a break
+in her staid voice.
+
+"I shall have to see about getting some clothes to-morrow, Mrs. Bunting."
+Again he looked at her appealingly.
+
+"I expect you'd like to wash your hands now, sir. And would you tell
+me what you'd like for supper? We haven't much in the house."
+
+"Oh, anything'll do," he said hastily. "I don't want you to go out
+for me. It's a cold, foggy, wet night, Mrs. Bunting. If you have a
+little bread-and-butter and a cup of milk I shall be quite satisfied."
+
+"I have a nice sausage," she said hesitatingly.
+
+It was a very nice sausage, and she had bought it that same morning
+for Bunting's supper; as to herself, she had been going to content
+herself with a little bread and cheese. But now--wonderful, almost,
+intoxicating thought--she could send Bunting out to get anything
+they both liked. The ten sovereigns lay in her hand full of comfort
+and good cheer.
+
+"A sausage? No, I fear that will hardly do. I never touch flesh
+meat," he said; "it is a long, long time since I tasted a sausage,
+Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Is it indeed, sir?" She hesitated a moment, then asked stiffly,
+"And will you be requiring any beer, or wine, sir?"
+
+A strange, wild look of lowering wrath suddenly filled Mr. Sleuth's
+pale face.
+
+"Certainly not. I thought I had made that quite clear, Mrs. Bunting.
+I had hoped to hear that you were an abstainer--"
+
+"So I am, sir, lifelong. And so's Bunting been since we married."
+She might have said, had she been a woman given to make such
+confidences, that she had made Bunting abstain very early in their
+acquaintance. That he had given in about that had been the thing
+that first made her believe, that he was sincere in all the nonsense
+that he talked to her, in those far-away days of his courting. Glad
+she was now that he had taken the pledge as a younger man; but for
+that nothing would have kept him from the drink during the bad times
+they had gone through.
+
+And then, going downstairs, she showed Mr. Sleuth the nice bedroom
+which opened out of the drawing-room. It was a replica of Mrs.
+Bunting's own room just underneath, excepting that everything up
+here had cost just a little more, and was therefore rather better
+in quality.
+
+The new lodger looked round him with such a strange expression of
+content and peace stealing over his worn face. "A haven of rest,"
+he muttered; and then, "'He bringeth them to their desired haven.'
+Beautiful words, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt a little startled. It was the first time anyone
+had quoted the Bible to her for many a long day. But it seemed to
+set the seal, as it were, on Mr. Sleuth's respectability.
+
+What a comfort it was, too, that she had to deal with only one
+lodger, and that a gentleman, instead of with a married couple!
+Very peculiar married couples had drifted in and out of Mr. and
+Mrs. Bunting's lodgings, not only here, in London, but at the
+seaside.
+
+How unlucky they had been, to be sure! Since they had come to
+London not a single pair of lodgers had been even moderately
+respectable and kindly. The last lot had belonged to that horrible
+underworld of men and women who, having, as the phrase goes, seen
+better days, now only keep their heads above water with the help of
+petty fraud.
+
+"I'll bring you up some hot water in a minute, sir, and some clean
+towels," she said, going to the door.
+
+And then Mr. Sleuth turned quickly round. "Mrs. Bunting"--and as
+he spoke he stammered a little--"I--I don't want you to interpret
+the word attendance too liberally. You need not run yourself off
+your feet for me. I'm accustomed to look after myself."
+
+And, queerly, uncomfortably, she felt herself dismissed--even a
+little snubbed. "All right, sir," she said. "I'll only just let
+you know when I've your supper ready."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+But what was a little snub compared with the intense relief and joy
+of going down and telling Bunting of the great piece of good fortune
+which had fallen their way?
+
+Staid Mrs. Bunting seemed to make but one leap down the steep stairs.
+In the hall, however, she pulled herself together, and tried to still
+her agitation. She had always disliked and despised any show of
+emotion; she called such betrayal of feeling "making a fuss."
+
+Opening the door of their sitting-room, she stood for a moment
+looking at her husband's bent back, and she realised, with a pang
+of pain, how the last few weeks had aged him.
+
+Bunting suddenly looked round, and, seeing his wife, stood up. He
+put the paper he had been holding down on to the table: "Well," he
+said, "well, who was it, then?"
+
+He felt rather ashamed of himself; it was he who ought to have
+answered the door and done all that parleying of which he had heard
+murmurs.
+
+And then in a moment his wife's hand shot out, and the ten sovereigns
+fell in a little clinking heap on the table.
+
+"Look there!" she whispered, with an excited, tearful quiver in her
+voice. "Look there, Bunting!"
+
+And Bunting did look there, but with a troubled, frowning gaze.
+
+He was not quick-witted, but at once he jumped to the conclusion
+that his wife had just had in a furniture dealer, and that this
+ten pounds represented all their nice furniture upstairs. If that
+were so, then it was the beginning of the end. That furniture in
+the first-floor front had cost--Ellen had reminded him of the fact
+bitterly only yesterday--seventeen pounds nine shillings, and
+every single item had been a bargain. It was too bad that she had
+only got ten pounds for it.
+
+Yet he hadn't the heart to reproach her.
+
+He did not speak as he looked across at her, and meeting that
+troubled, rebuking glance, she guessed what it was that he thought
+had happened.
+
+"We've a new lodger!" she cried. "And--and, Bunting? He's quite
+the gentleman! He actually offered to pay four weeks in advance, at
+two guineas a week."
+
+"No, never!"
+
+Bunting moved quickly round the table, and together they stood there,
+fascinated by the little heap of gold. "But there's ten sovereigns
+here," he said suddenly.
+
+"Yes, the gentleman said I'd have to buy some things for him
+to-morrow. And, oh, Bunting, he's so well spoken, I really felt
+that--I really felt that--" and then Mrs. Bunting, taking a step
+or two sideways, sat down, and throwing her little black apron over
+her face burst into gasping sobs.
+
+Bunting patted her back timidly. "Ellen?" he said, much moved by her
+agitation, "Ellen? Don't take on so, my dear--"
+
+"I won't," she sobbed, "I--I won't! I'm a fool--I know I am!
+But, oh, I didn't think we was ever going to have any luck again!"
+
+And then she told him--or rather tried to tell him--what the
+lodger was like. Mrs. Bunting was no hand at talking, but one thing
+she did impress on her husband's mind, namely, that Mr. Sleuth was
+eccentric, as so many clever people are eccentric--that is, in a
+harmless way--and that he must be humoured.
+
+"He says he doesn't want to be waited on much," she said at last
+wiping her eyes, "but I can see he will want a good bit of looking
+after, all the same, poor gentleman."
+
+And just as the words left her mouth there came the unfamiliar sound
+of a loud ring. It was that of the drawing-room bell being pulled
+again and again.
+
+Bunting looked at his wife eagerly. "I think I'd better go up, eh,
+Ellen?" he said. He felt quite anxious to see their new lodger.
+For the matter of that, it would be a relief to be doing something
+again.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "you go up! Don't keep him waiting! I wonder
+what it is he wants? I said I'd let him know when his supper was
+ready."
+
+A moment later Bunting came down again. There was an odd smile on
+his face. "Whatever d'you think he wanted?" he whispered
+mysteriously. And as she said nothing, he went on, "He's asked me
+for the loan of a Bible!"
+
+"Well, I don't see anything so out of the way in that," she said
+hastily, "'specially if he don't feel well. I'll take it up to him."
+
+And then going to a small table which stood between the two windows,
+Mrs. Bunting took off it a large Bible, which had been given to her
+as a wedding present by a married lady with whose mother she had
+lived for several years.
+
+"He said it would do quite well when you take up his supper," said
+Bunting; and, then, "Ellen? He's a queer-looking cove--not like
+any gentleman I ever had to do with."
+
+"He is a gentleman," said Mrs. Bunting rather fiercely.
+
+"Oh, yes, that's all right." But still he looked at her doubtfully.
+"I asked him if he'd like me to just put away his clothes. But,
+Ellen, he said he hadn't got any clothes!"
+
+"No more he hasn't;" she spoke quickly, defensively. "He had the
+misfortune to lose his luggage. He's one dishonest folk 'ud take
+advantage of."
+
+"Yes, one can see that with half an eye," Bunting agreed.
+
+And then there was silence for a few moments, while Mrs. Bunting
+put down on a little bit of paper the things she wanted her husband
+to go out and buy for her. She handed him the list, together with
+a sovereign. "Be as quick as you can," she said, "for I feel a bit
+hungry. I'll be going down now to see about Mr. Sleuth's supper.
+He only wants a glass of milk and two eggs. I'm glad I've never
+fallen to bad eggs!"
+
+"Sleuth," echoed Bunting, staring at her. "What a queer name!
+How d'you spell it--S-l-u-t-h?"
+
+"No," she shot out, "S-l-e--u--t--h."
+
+"Oh," he said doubtfully.
+
+"He said, 'Think of a hound and you'll never forget my name,'"
+and Mrs. Bunting smiled.
+
+When he got to the door, Bunting turned round: "We'll now be able
+to pay young Chandler back some o' that thirty shillings. I am
+glad." She nodded; her heart, as the saying is, too full for words.
+
+And then each went about his and her business--Bunting out into
+the drenching fog, his wife down to her cold kitchen.
+
+The lodger's tray was soon ready; everything upon it nicely and
+daintily arranged. Mrs. Bunting knew how to wait upon a gentleman.
+
+Just as the landlady was going up the kitchen stair, she suddenly
+remembered Mr. Sleuth's request for a Bible. Putting the tray down
+in the hall, she went into her sitting-room and took up the Book;
+but when back in the hall she hesitated a moment as to whether it
+was worth while to make two journeys. But, no, she thought she
+could manage; clasping the large, heavy volume under her arm, and
+taking up the tray, she walked slowly up the staircase.
+
+But a great surprise awaited her; in fact, when Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady opened the door of the drawing-room she very nearly dropped
+the tray. She actually did drop the Bible, and it fell with a heavy
+thud to the ground.
+
+The new lodger had turned all those nice framed engravings of the
+early Victorian beauties, of which Mrs. Bunting had been so proud,
+with their faces to the wall!
+
+For a moment she was really too surprised to speak. Putting the
+tray down on the table, she stooped and picked up the Book. It
+troubled her that the Book should have fallen to the ground; but
+really she hadn't been able to help it--it was mercy that the
+tray hadn't fallen, too.
+
+Mr. Sleuth got up. "I--I have taken the liberty to arrange the
+room as I should wish it to be," he said awkwardly. "You see,
+Mrs.--er--Bunting, I felt as I sat here that these women's eyes
+followed me about. It was a most unpleasant sensation, and gave
+me quite an eerie feeling."
+
+The landlady was now laying a small tablecloth over half of the
+table. She made no answer to her lodger's remark, for the good
+reason that she did not know what to say.
+
+Her silence seemed to distress Mr. Sleuth. After what seemed a
+long pause, he spoke again.
+
+"I prefer bare walls, Mrs. Bunting," he spoke with some agitation.
+"As a matter of fact, I have been used to seeing bare walls about
+me for a long time." And then, at last his landlady answered him,
+in a composed, soothing voice, which somehow did him good to hear.
+"I quite understand, sir. And when Bunting comes in he shall take
+the pictures all down. We have plenty of space in our own rooms
+for them."
+
+"Thank you--thank you very much."
+
+Mr. Sleuth appeared greatly relieved.
+
+"And I have brought you up my Bible, sir. I understood you wanted
+the loan of it?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth stared at her as if dazed for a moment; and then, rousing
+himself, he said, "Yes, yes, I do. There is no reading like the Book.
+There is something there which suits every state of mind, aye, and of
+body too--"
+
+"Very true, sir." And then Mrs. Bunting, having laid out what really
+looked a very appetising little meal, turned round and quietly shut
+the door.
+
+She went down straight into her sitting-room and waited there for
+Bunting, instead of going to the kitchen to clear up. And as she
+did so there came to her a comfortable recollection, an incident of
+her long-past youth, in the days when she, then Ellen Green, had
+maided a dear old lady.
+
+The old lady had a favourite nephew--a bright, jolly young gentleman,
+who was learning to paint animals in Paris. And one morning Mr.
+Algernon--that was his rather peculiar Christian name--had had the
+impudence to turn to the wall six beautiful engravings of paintings
+done by the famous Mr. Landseer!
+
+Mrs. Bunting remembered all the circumstances as if they had only
+occurred yesterday, and yet she had not thought of them for years.
+
+It was quite early; she had come down--for in those days maids
+weren't thought so much of as they are now, and she slept with the
+upper housemaid, and it was the upper housemaid's duty to be down
+very early--and, there, in the dining-room, she had found Mr.
+Algernon engaged in turning each engraving to the wall! Now, his
+aunt thought all the world of those pictures, and Ellen had felt
+quite concerned, for it doesn't do for a young gentleman to put
+himself wrong with a kind aunt.
+
+"Oh, sir," she had exclaimed in dismay, "whatever are you doing?"
+And even now she could almost hear his merry voice, as he had
+answered, "I am doing my duty, fair Helen"--he had always called
+her "fair Helen" when no one was listening. "How can I draw ordinary
+animals when I see these half-human monsters staring at me all the
+time I am having my breakfast, my lunch, and my dinner?" That was
+what Mr. Algernon had said in his own saucy way, and that was what
+he repeated in a more serious, respectful manner to his aunt, when
+that dear old lady had come downstairs. In fact he had declared,
+quite soberly, that the beautiful animals painted by Mr. Landseer
+put his eye out!
+
+But his aunt had been very much annoyed--in fact, she had made him
+turn the pictures all back again; and as long as he stayed there he
+just had to put up with what he called "those half-human monsters."
+Mrs. Bunting, sitting there, thinking the matter of Mr. Sleuth's
+odd behaviour over, was glad to recall that funny incident of her
+long-gone youth. It seemed to prove that her new lodger was not so
+strange as he appeared to be. Still, when Bunting came in, she did
+not tell him the queer thing which had happened. She told herself
+that she would be quite able to manage the taking down of the
+pictures in the drawing-room herself.
+
+But before getting ready their own supper, Mr. Sleuth's landlady
+went upstairs to clear away, and when on the staircase she heard the
+sound of--was it talking, in the drawing-room? Startled, she
+waited a moment on the landing outside the drawing-room door, then
+she realised that it was only the lodger reading aloud to himself.
+There was something very awful in the words which rose and fell on
+her listening ears:
+
+"A strange woman is a narrow gate. She also lieth in wait as for
+a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men."
+
+She remained where she was, her hand on the handle of the door,
+and again there broke on her shrinking ears that curious, high,
+sing-song voice, "Her house is the way to hell, going down to
+the chambers of death."
+
+It made the listener feel quite queer. But at last she summoned up
+courage, knocked, and walked in.
+
+"I'd better clear away, sir, had I not?" she said. And Mr. Sleuth
+nodded.
+
+Then he got up and closed the Book. "I think I'll go to bed now,"
+he said. "I am very, very tired. I've had a long and a very
+weary day, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+After he had disappeared into the back room, Mrs. Bunting climbed
+up on a chair and unhooked the pictures which had so offended Mr.
+Sleuth. Each left an unsightly mark on the wall--but that, after
+all, could not be helped.
+
+Treading softly, so that Bunting should not hear her, she carried
+them down, two by two, and stood them behind her bed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Mrs. Bunting woke up the next morning feeling happier than she had
+felt for a very, very long time.
+
+For just one moment she could not think why she felt so different
+--and then she suddenly remembered.
+
+How comfortable it was to know that upstairs, just over her head,
+lay, in the well-found bed she had bought with such satisfaction at
+an auction held in a Baker Street house, a lodger who was paying two
+guineas a week! Something seemed to tell her that Mr. Sleuth would
+be "a permanency." In any case, it wouldn't be her fault if he
+wasn't. As to his--his queerness, well, there's always something
+funny in everybody. But after she had got up, and as the morning
+wore itself away, Mrs. Bunting grew a little anxious, for there
+came no sound at all from the new lodger's rooms. At twelve,
+however, the drawing-room bell rang. Mrs. Bunting hurried upstairs.
+She was painfully anxious to please and satisfy Mr. Sleuth. His
+coming had only been in the nick of time to save them from terrible
+disaster.
+
+She found her lodger up, and fully dressed. He was sitting at the
+round table which occupied the middle of the sitting-room, and his
+landlady's large Bible lay open before him.
+
+As Mrs. Bunting came in, he looked up, and she was troubled to see
+how tired and worn he seemed.
+
+"You did not happen," he asked, "to have a Concordance, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She shook her head; she had no idea what a Concordance could be,
+but she was quite sure that she had nothing of the sort about.
+
+And then her new lodger proceeded to tell her what it was he
+desired her to buy for him. She had supposed the bag he had
+brought with him to contain certain little necessaries of
+civilised life--such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush,
+a set of razors, a toothbrush, to say nothing of a couple of
+nightshirts--but no, that was evidently not so, for Mr. Sleuth
+required all these things to be bought now.
+
+After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs. Bunting hurried
+out to purchase the things of which he was in urgent need.
+
+How pleasant it was to feel that there was money in her purse
+again--not only someone else's money, but money she was now in
+the very act of earning so agreeably.
+
+Mrs. Bunting first made her way to a little barber's shop close by.
+It was there she purchased the brush and comb and the razors. It
+was a funny, rather smelly little place, and she hurried as much as
+she could, the more so that the foreigner who served her insisted
+on telling her some of the strange, peculiar details of this
+Avenger murder which had taken place forty-eight hours before, and
+in which Bunting took such a morbid interest.
+
+The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting. She didn't want to think of
+anything painful or disagreeable on such a day as this.
+
+Then she came back and showed the lodger her various purchases. Mr.
+Sleuth was pleased with everything, and thanked her most courteously.
+But when she suggested doing his bedroom he frowned, and looked
+quite put out.
+
+"Please wait till this evening," he said hastily. "It is my custom
+to stay at home all day. I only care to walk about the streets when
+the lights are lit. You must bear with me, Mrs. Bunting, if I seem
+a little, just a little, unlike the lodgers you have been accustomed
+to. And I must ask you to understand that I must not be disturbed
+when thinking out my problems--" He broke off short, sighed, then
+added solemnly, "for mine are the great problems of life and death."
+
+And Mrs. Bunting willingly fell in with his wishes. In spite of her
+prim manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's landlady was a true woman
+--she had, that is, an infinite patience with masculine vagaries
+and oddities.
+
+
+When she was downstairs again, Mr. Sleuth's landlady met with a
+surprise; but it was quite a pleasant surprise. While she had
+been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young friend, Joe
+Chandler, the detective, had come in, and as she walked into the
+sitting-room she saw that her husband was pushing half a sovereign
+across the table towards Joe.
+
+Joe Chandler's fair, good-natured face was full of satisfaction:
+not at seeing his money again, mark you, but at the news Bunting
+had evidently been telling him--that news of the sudden wonderful
+change in their fortunes, the coming of an ideal lodger.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth don't want me to do his bedroom till he's gone out!"
+she exclaimed. And then she sat down for a bit of a rest.
+
+It was a comfort to know that the lodger was eating his good
+breakfast, and there was no need to think of him for the present.
+In a few minutes she would be going down to make her own and
+Bunting's dinner, and she told Joe Chandler that he might as well
+stop and have a bite with them.
+
+Her heart warmed to the young man, for Mrs. Bunting was in a mood
+which seldom surprised her--a mood to be pleased with anything
+and everything. Nay, more. When Bunting began to ask Joe Chandler
+about the last of those awful Avenger murders, she even listened
+with a certain languid interest to all he had to say.
+
+In the morning paper which Bunting had begun taking again that
+very day three columns were devoted to the extraordinary mystery
+which was now beginning to be the one topic of talk all over London,
+West and East, North and South. Bunting had read out little bits
+about it while they ate their breakfast, and in spite of herself
+Mrs. Bunting had felt thrilled and excited.
+
+"They do say," observed Bunting cautiously, "They do say, Joe, that
+the police have a clue they won't say nothing about?" He looked
+expectantly at his visitor. To Bunting the fact that Chandler was
+attached to the detective section of the Metropolitan Police
+invested the young man with a kind of sinister glory--especially
+just now, when these awful and mysterious crimes were amazing and
+terrifying the town.
+
+"Them who says that says wrong," answered Chandler slowly, and a
+look of unease, of resentment came over his fair, stolid face.
+"'Twould make a good bit of difference to me if the Yard had a clue."
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting interposed. "Why that, Joe?" she said,
+smiling indulgently; the young man's keenness about his work pleased
+her. And in his slow, sure way Joe Chandler was very keen, and took
+his job very seriously. He put his whole heart and mind into it.
+
+"Well, 'tis this way," he explained. "From to-day I'm on this
+business myself. You see, Mrs. Bunting, the Yard's nettled--that's
+what it is, and we're all on our mettle--that we are. I was right
+down sorry for the poor chap who was on point duty in the street
+where the last one happened--"
+
+"No!" said Bunting incredulously. "You don't mean there was a
+policeman there, within a few yards?"
+
+That fact hadn't been recorded in his newspaper.
+
+Chandler nodded. "That's exactly what I do mean, Mr. Bunting! The
+man is near off his head, so I'm told. He did hear a yell, so he
+says, but he took no notice--there are a good few yells in that
+part o' London, as you can guess. People always quarrelling and
+rowing at one another in such low parts."
+
+"Have you seen the bits of grey paper on which the monster writes
+his name?" inquired Bunting eagerly.
+
+Public imagination had been much stirred by the account of those
+three-cornered pieces of grey paper, pinned to the victims' skirts,
+on which was roughly written in red ink and in printed characters
+the words "The Avenger."
+
+His round, fat face was full of questioning eagerness. He put his
+elbows on the table, and stared across expectantly at the young man.
+
+"Yes, I have," said Joe briefly.
+
+"A funny kind of visiting card, eh!" Bunting laughed; the notion
+struck him as downright comic.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting coloured. "It isn't a thing to make a joke about,"
+she said reprovingly.
+
+And Chandler backed her up. "No, indeed," he said feelingly. "I'll
+never forget what I've been made to see over this job. And as for
+that grey bit of paper, Mr. Bunting--or, rather, those grey bits of
+paper"--he corrected himself hastily--"you know they've three of
+them now at the Yard--well, they gives me the horrors!"
+
+And then he jumped up. "That reminds me that I oughtn't to be
+wasting my time in pleasant company--"
+
+"Won't you stay and have a bit of dinner?" said Mrs. Bunting
+solicitously.
+
+But the detective shook his head. "No," he said, "I had a bite
+before I came out. Our job's a queer kind of job, as you know. A
+lot's left to our discretion, so to speak, but it don't leave us
+much time for lazing about, I can tell you."
+
+When he reached the door he turned round, and with elaborate
+carelessness he inquired, "Any chance of Miss Daisy coming to London
+again soon?"
+
+Bunting shook his head, but his face brightened. He was very, very
+fond of his only child; the pity was he saw her so seldom. "No,"
+he said, "I'm afraid not Joe. Old Aunt, as we calls the old lady,
+keeps Daisy pretty tightly tied to her apron-string. She was quite
+put about that week the child was up with us last June."
+
+"Indeed? Well, so long!"
+
+After his wife had let their friend out, Bunting said cheerfully,
+"Joe seems to like our Daisy, eh, Ellen?"
+
+But Mrs. Bunting shook her head scornfully. She did not exactly
+dislike the girl, though she did not hold with the way Bunting's
+daughter was being managed by that old aunt of hers--an idle,
+good-for-nothing way, very different from the fashion in which
+she herself had been trained at the Foundling, for Mrs. Bunting
+as a little child had known no other home, no other family than
+those provided by good Captain Coram.
+
+"Joe Chandler's too sensible a young chap to be thinking of girls
+yet awhile," she said tartly.
+
+"No doubt you're right," Bunting agreed. "Times be changed. In my
+young days chaps always had time for that. 'Twas just a notion that
+came into my head, hearing him asking, anxious-like, after her."
+
+******
+
+About five o'clock, after the street lamps were well alight, Mr.
+Sleuth went out, and that same evening there came two parcels
+addressed to his landlady. These parcels contained clothes. But
+it was quite clear to Mrs. Bunting's eyes that they were not new
+clothes. In fact, they had evidently been bought in some good
+second-hand clothes-shop. A funny thing for a real gentleman like
+Mr. Sleuth to do! It proved that he had given up all hope of
+getting back his lost luggage.
+
+When the lodger had gone out he had not taken his bag with him, of
+that Mrs. Bunting was positive. And yet, though she searched high
+and low for it, she could not find the place where Mr. Sleuth kept
+it. And at last, had it not been that she was a very clear-headed
+woman, with a good memory, she would have been disposed to think
+that the bag had never existed, save in her imagination.
+
+But no, she could not tell herself that! She remembered exactly
+how it had looked when Mr. Sleuth had first stood, a strange,
+queer-looking figure of a man, on her doorstep.
+
+She further remembered how he had put the bag down on the floor of
+the top front room, and then, forgetting what he had done, how he
+had asked her eagerly, in a tone of angry fear, where the bag was
+--only to find it safely lodged at his feet!
+
+As time went on Mrs. Bunting thought a great deal about that bag,
+for, strange and amazing fact, she never saw Mr. Sleuth's bag again.
+But, of course, she soon formed a theory as to its whereabouts.
+The brown leather bag which had formed Mr. Sleuth's only luggage
+the afternoon of his arrival was almost certainly locked up in the
+lower part of the drawing-room chiffonnier. Mr. Sleuth evidently
+always carried the key of the little corner cupboard about his
+person; Mrs. Bunting had also had a good hunt for that key, but,
+as was the case with the bag, the key disappeared, and she never
+saw either the one or the other again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+How quietly, how uneventfully, how pleasantly, sped the next few
+days. Already life was settling down into a groove. Waiting on
+Mr. Sleuth was just what Mrs. Bunting could manage to do easily,
+and without tiring herself.
+
+It had at once become clear that the lodger preferred to be waited
+on only by one person, and that person his landlady. He gave her
+very little trouble. Indeed, it did her good having to wait on the
+lodger; it even did her good that he was not like other gentlemen;
+for the fact occupied her mind, and in a way it amused her. The
+more so that whatever his oddities Mr. Sleuth had none of those
+tiresome, disagreeable ways with which landladies are only too
+familiar, and which seem peculiar only to those human beings who
+also happen to be lodgers. To take but one point: Mr. Sleuth did
+not ask to be called unduly early. Bunting and his Ellen had fallen
+into the way of lying rather late in the morning, and it was a great
+comfort not to have to turn out to make the lodger a cup of tea at
+seven, or even half-past seven. Mr. Sleuth seldom required anything
+before eleven.
+
+But odd he certainly was.
+
+The second evening he had been with them Mr. Sleuth had brought in
+a book of which the queer name was Cruden's Concordance. That and
+the Bible--Mrs. Bunting had soon discovered that there was a
+relation between the two books--seemed to be the lodger's only
+reading. He spent hours each day, generally after he had eaten
+the breakfast which also served for luncheon, poring over the Old
+Testament and over that strange kind of index to the Book.
+
+As for the delicate and yet the all-important question of money,
+Mr. Sleuth was everything--everything that the most exacting
+landlady could have wished. Never had there been a more confiding
+or trusting gentleman. On the very first day he had been with them
+he had allowed his money--the considerable sum of one hundred and
+eighty-four sovereigns--to lie about wrapped up in little pieces
+of rather dirty newspaper on his dressing-table. That had quite
+upset Mrs. Bunting. She had allowed herself respectfully to point
+out to him that what he was doing was foolish, indeed wrong. But
+as only answer he had laughed, and she had been startled when the
+loud, unusual and discordant sound had issued from his thin lips.
+
+"I know those I can trust," he had answered, stuttering rather, as
+was his way when moved. "And--and I assure you, Mrs. Bunting, that
+I hardly have to speak to a human being--especially to a woman"
+(and he had drawn in his breath with a hissing sound) "before I
+know exactly what manner of person is before me."
+
+It hadn't taken the landlady very long to find out that her lodger
+had a queer kind of fear and dislike of women. When she was doing
+the staircase and landings she would often hear Mr. Sleuth reading
+aloud to himself passages in the Bible that were very uncomplimentary
+to her sex. But Mrs. Bunting had no very great opinion of her sister
+woman, so that didn't put her out. Besides, where one's lodger is
+concerned, a dislike of women is better than--well, than the other
+thing.
+
+In any case, where would have been the good of worrying about the
+lodger's funny ways? Of course, Mr. Sleuth was eccentric. If he
+hadn't been, as Bunting funnily styled it, "just a leetle touched
+upstairs," he wouldn't be here, living this strange, solitary life
+in lodgings. He would be living in quite a different sort of way
+with some of his relatives, or with a friend of his own class.
+
+There came a time when Mrs. Bunting, looking back--as even the
+least imaginative of us are apt to look back to any part of our
+own past lives which becomes for any reason poignantly memorable
+--wondered how soon it was that she had discovered that her
+lodger was given to creeping out of the house at a time when
+almost all living things prefer to sleep.
+
+She brought herself to believe--but I am inclined to doubt whether
+she was right in so believing--that the first time she became aware
+of this strange nocturnal habit of Mr. Sleuth's happened to be
+during the night which preceded the day on which she had observed a
+very curious circumstance. This very curious circumstance was the
+complete disappearance of one of Mr. Sleuth's three suits of clothes.
+
+It always passes my comprehension how people can remember, over any
+length of time, not every moment of certain happenings, for that is
+natural enough, but the day, the hour, the minute when these
+happenings took place! Much as she thought about it afterwards,
+even Mrs. Bunting never quite made up her mind whether it was during
+the fifth or the sixth night of Mr. Sleuth's stay under her roof
+that she became aware that he had gone out at two in the morning and
+had only come in at five.
+
+But that there did come such a night is certain--as certain as is
+the fact that her discovery coincided with various occurrences
+which were destined to remain retrospectively memorable.
+
+******
+
+It was intensely dark, intensely quiet--the darkest quietest hour
+of the night, when suddenly Mrs. Bunting was awakened from a deep,
+dreamless sleep by sounds at once unexpected and familiar. She
+knew at once what those sounds were. They were those made by Mr.
+Sleuth, first coming down the stairs, and walking on tiptoe--she
+was sure it was on tiptoe--past her door, and finally softly
+shutting the front door behind him.
+
+Try as she would, Mrs. Bunting found it quite impossible to go to
+sleep again. There she lay wide awake, afraid to move lest Bunting
+should waken up too, till she heard Mr. Sleuth, three hours later,
+creep back into the house and so up to bed.
+
+Then, and not till then, she slept again. But in the morning she
+felt very tired, so tired indeed, that she had been very glad when
+Bunting good-naturedly suggested that he should go out and do their
+little bit of marketing.
+
+The worthy couple had very soon discovered that in the matter of
+catering it was not altogether an easy matter to satisfy Mr. Sleuth,
+and that though he always tried to appear pleased. This perfect
+lodger had one serious fault from the point of view of those who
+keep lodgings. Strange to say, he was a vegetarian. He would not
+eat meat in any form. He sometimes, however, condescended to a
+chicken, and when he did so condescend he generously intimated that
+Mr. and Mrs. Bunting were welcome to a share in it.
+
+Now to-day--this day of which the happenings were to linger in Mrs.
+Bunting's mind so very long, and to remain so very vivid, it had
+been arranged that Mr. Sleuth was to have some fish for his lunch,
+while what he left was to be "done up" to serve for his simple supper.
+
+Knowing that Bunting would be out for at least an hour, for he was
+a gregarious soul, and liked to have a gossip in the shops he
+frequented, Mrs. Bunting rose and dressed in a leisurely manner;
+then she went and "did" her front sitting-room.
+
+She felt languid and dull, as one is apt to feel after a broken
+night, and it was a comfort to her to know that Mr. Sleuth was not
+likely to ring before twelve.
+
+But long before twelve a loud ring suddenly clanged through the
+quiet house. She knew it for the front door bell.
+
+Mrs. Bunting frowned. No doubt the ring betokened one of those
+tiresome people who come round for old bottles and such-like
+fal-lals.
+
+She went slowly, reluctantly to the door. And then her face cleared,
+for it was that good young chap, Joe Chandler, who stood waiting
+outside.
+
+He was breathing a little hard, as if he had walked over-quickly
+through the moist, foggy air.
+
+"Why, Joe?" said Mrs. Bunting wonderingly. "Come in--do! Bunting's
+out, but he won't be very long now. You've been quite a stranger
+these last few days."
+
+"Well, you know why, Mrs. Bunting--"
+
+She stared at him for a moment, wondering what he could mean. Then,
+suddenly she remembered. Why, of course, Joe was on a big job just
+now--the job of trying to catch The Avenger! Her husband had
+alluded to the fact again and again when reading out to her little
+bits from the halfpenny evening paper he was taking again.
+
+She led the way to the sitting-room. It was a good thing Bunting
+had insisted on lighting the fire before he went out, for now the
+room was nice and warm--and it was just horrible outside. She had
+felt a chill go right through her as she had stood, even for that
+second, at the front door.
+
+And she hadn't been alone to feel it, for, "I say, it is jolly to
+be in here, out of that awful cold!" exclaimed Chandler, sitting
+down heavily in Bunting's easy chair.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting bethought herself that the young man was tired,
+as well as cold. He was pale, almost pallid under his usual healthy,
+tanned complexion--the complexion of the man who lives much out of
+doors.
+
+"Wouldn't you like me just to make you a cup of tea?" she said
+solicitously.
+
+"Well, to tell truth, I should be right down thankful for one, Mrs.
+Bunting!" Then he looked round, and again he said her name, "Mrs.
+Bunting--?"
+
+He spoke in so odd, so thick a tone that she turned quickly. "Yes,
+what is it, Joe?" she asked. And then, in sudden terror, "You've
+never come to tell me that anything's happened to Bunting? He's
+not had an accident?"
+
+"Goodness, no! Whatever made you think that? But--but, Mrs.
+Bunting, there's been another of them!"
+
+His voice dropped almost to a whisper. He was staring at her with
+unhappy, it seemed to her terror-filled, eyes.
+
+"Another of them?" She looked at him, bewildered--at a loss.
+And then what he meant flashed across her--"another of them"
+meant another of these strange, mysterious, awful murders.
+
+But her relief for the moment was so great--for she really had
+thought for a second that he had come to give her ill news of
+Bunting--that the feeling that she did experience on hearing
+this piece of news was actually pleasurable, though she would
+have been much shocked had that fact been brought to her notice.
+
+Almost in spite of herself, Mrs. Bunting had become keenly interested
+in the amazing series of crimes which was occupying the imagination
+of the whole of London's nether-world. Even her refined mind had
+busied itself for the last two or three days with the strange problem
+so frequently presented to it by Bunting--for Bunting, now that they
+were no longer worried, took an open, unashamed, intense interest in
+"The Avenger" and his doings.
+
+She took the kettle off the gas-ring. "It's a pity Bunting isn't
+here," she said, drawing in her breath. "He'd a-liked so much to
+hear you tell all about it, Joe."
+
+As she spoke she was pouring boiling water into a little teapot.
+
+But Chandler said nothing, and she turned and glanced at him. "Why,
+you do look bad!" she exclaimed.
+
+And, indeed, the young fellow did look bad--very bad indeed.
+
+"I can't help it," he said, with a kind of gasp. "It was your
+saying that about my telling you all about it that made me turn
+queer. You see, this time I was one of the first there, and it
+fairly turned me sick--that it did. Oh, it was too awful, Mrs.
+Bunting! Don't talk of it."
+
+He began gulping down the hot tea before it was well made.
+
+She looked at him with sympathetic interest. "Why, Joe," she said,
+"I never would have thought, with all the horrible sights you see,
+that anything could upset you like that."
+
+"This isn't like anything there's ever been before," he said. "And
+then--then--oh, Mrs. Bunting, 'twas I that discovered the piece of
+paper this time."
+
+"Then it is true," she cried eagerly. "It is The Avenger's bit of
+paper! Bunting always said it was. He never believed in that
+practical joker."
+
+"I did," said Chandler reluctantly. "You see, there are some queer
+fellows even--even--" (he lowered his voice, and looked round him
+as if the walls had ears)--"even in the Force, Mrs. Bunting, and
+these murders have fair got on our nerves."
+
+"No, never!" she said. "D'you think that a Bobby might do a thing
+like that?"
+
+He nodded impatiently, as if the question wasn't worth answering.
+Then, "It was all along of that bit of paper and my finding it while
+the poor soul was still warm,"--he shuddered--"that brought me out
+West this morning. One of our bosses lives close by, in Prince
+Albert Terrace, and I had to go and tell him all about it. They
+never offered me a bit or a sup--I think they might have done that,
+don't you, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Yes," she said absently. "Yes, I do think so."
+
+"But, there, I don't know that I ought to say that," went on Chandler.
+"He had me up in his dressing-room, and was very considerate-like to
+me while I was telling him."
+
+"Have a bit of something now?" she said suddenly.
+
+"Oh, no, I couldn't eat anything," he said hastily. "I don't feel
+as if I could ever eat anything any more."
+
+"That'll only make you ill." Mrs. Bunting spoke rather crossly,
+for she was a sensible woman. And to please her he took a bite
+out of the slice of bread-and-butter she had cut for him.
+
+"I expect you're right," he said. "And I've a goodish heavy day
+in front of me. Been up since four, too--"
+
+"Four?" she said. "Was it then they found--" she hesitated a
+moment, and then said, "it?"
+
+He nodded. "It was just a chance I was near by. If I'd been half
+a minute sooner either I or the officer who found her must have
+knocked up against that--that monster. But two or three people
+do think they saw him slinking away."
+
+"What was he like?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Well, that's hard to answer. You see, there was such an awful
+fog. But there's one thing they all agree about. He was carrying
+a bag--"
+
+"A bag?" repeated Mrs. Bunting, in a low voice. "Whatever sort of
+bag might it have been, Joe?"
+
+There had come across her--just right in her middle, like--such a
+strange sensation, a curious kind of tremor, or fluttering.
+
+She was at a loss to account for it.
+
+"Just a hand-bag," said Joe Chandler vaguely. "A woman I spoke to
+--cross-examining her, like--who was positive she had seen him,
+said, 'Just a tall, thin shadow--that's what he was, a tall, thin
+shadow of a man--with a bag.'"
+
+"With a bag?" repeated Mrs. Bunting absently. "How very strange
+and peculiar--"
+
+"Why, no, not strange at all. He has to carry the thing he does
+the deed with in something, Mrs. Bunting. We've always wondered how
+he hid it. They generally throws the knife or fire-arms away, you
+know."
+
+"Do they, indeed?" Mrs. Bunting still spoke in that absent, wondering
+way. She was thinking that she really must try and see what the
+lodger had done with his bag. It was possible--in fact, when one
+came to think of it, it was very probable--that he had just lost
+it, being so forgetful a gentleman, on one of the days he had gone
+out, as she knew he was fond of doing, into the Regent's Park.
+
+"There'll be a description circulated in an hour or two," went on
+Chandler. "Perhaps that'll help catch him. There isn't a London
+man or woman, I don't suppose, who wouldn't give a good bit to lay
+that chap by the heels. Well, I suppose I must be going now."
+
+"Won't you wait a bit longer for Bunting?" she said hesitatingly.
+
+"No, I can't do that. But I'll come in, maybe, either this evening
+or to-morrow, and tell you any more that's happened. Thanks kindly
+for the tea. It's made a man of me, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Well, you've had enough to unman you, Joe."
+
+"Aye, that I have," he said heavily.
+
+A few minutes later Bunting did come in, and he and his wife had
+quite a little tiff--the first tiff they had had since Mr. Sleuth
+became their lodger.
+
+It fell out this way. When he heard who had been there, Bunting
+was angry that Mrs. Bunting hadn't got more details of the horrible
+occurrence which had taken place that morning, out of Chandler.
+
+"You don't mean to say, Ellen, that you can't even tell me where it
+happened?" he said indignantly. "I suppose you put Chandler off
+--that's what you did! Why, whatever did he come here for,
+excepting to tell us all about it?"
+
+"He came to have something to eat and drink," snapped out Mrs.
+Bunting. "That's what the poor lad came for, if you wants to know.
+He could hardly speak of it at all--he felt so bad. In fact, he
+didn't say a word about it until he'd come right into the room and
+sat down. He told me quite enough!"
+
+"Didn't he tell you if the piece of paper on which the murderer had
+written his name was square or three-cornered?" demanded Bunting.
+
+"No; he did not. And that isn't the sort of thing I should have
+cared to ask him."
+
+"The more fool you!" And then he stopped abruptly. The newsboys
+were coming down the Marylebone Road, shouting out the awful
+discovery which had been made that morning--that of The Avenger's
+fifth murder. Bunting went out to buy a paper, and his wife took
+the things he had brought in down to the kitchen.
+
+The noise the newspaper-sellers made outside had evidently wakened
+Mr. Sleuth, for his landlady hadn't been in the kitchen ten minutes
+before his bell rang.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Mr. Sleuth's bell rang again.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's breakfast was quite ready, but for the first time since
+he had been her lodger Mrs. Bunting did not answer the summons at
+once. But when there came the second imperative tinkle--for
+electric bells had not been fitted into that old-fashioned house--
+she made up her mind to go upstairs.
+
+As she emerged into the hall from the kitchen stairway, Bunting,
+sitting comfortably in their parlour, heard his wife stepping heavily
+under the load of the well-laden tray.
+
+"Wait a minute!" he called out. "I'll help you, Ellen," and he came
+out and took the tray from her.
+
+She said nothing, and together they proceeded up to the drawing-room
+floor landing.
+
+There she stopped him. "Here," she whispered quickly, "you give me
+that, Bunting. The lodger won't like your going in to him." And
+then, as he obeyed her, and was about to turn downstairs again, she
+added in a rather acid tone, "You might open the door for me, at
+any rate! How can I manage to do it with this here heavy tray on
+my hands?"
+
+She spoke in a queer, jerky way, and Bunting felt surprised--rather
+put out. Ellen wasn't exactly what you'd call a lively, jolly woman,
+but when things were going well--as now--she was generally equable
+enough. He supposed she was still resentful of the way he had
+spoken to her about young Chandler and the new Avenger murder.
+
+However, he was always for peace, so he opened the drawing-room door,
+and as soon as he had started going downstairs Mrs. Bunting walked
+into the room.
+
+And then at once there came over her the queerest feeling of relief,
+of lightness of heart.
+
+As usual, the lodger was sitting at his old place, reading the Bible.
+
+Somehow--she could not have told you why, she would not willingly
+have told herself--she had expected to see Mr. Sleuth looking
+different. But no, he appeared to be exactly the same--in fact,
+as he glanced up at her a pleasanter smile than usual lighted up
+his thin, pallid face.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bunting," he said genially, "I overslept myself this
+morning, but I feel all the better for the rest."
+
+"I'm glad of that, sir," she answered, in a low voice. "One of the
+ladies I once lived with used to say, 'Rest is an old-fashioned
+remedy, but it's the best remedy of all.'"
+
+Mr. Sleuth himself removed the Bible and Cruden's Concordance off
+the table out of her way, and then he stood watching his landlady
+laying the cloth.
+
+Suddenly he spoke again. He was not often so talkative in the
+morning. "I think, Mrs. Bunting, that there was someone with you
+outside the door just now?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Bunting helped me up with the tray."
+
+"I'm afraid I give you a good deal of trouble," he said hesitatingly.
+
+But she answered quickly, "Oh, no, sir! Not at all, sir! I was
+only saying yesterday that we've never had a lodger that gave us as
+little trouble as you do, sir."
+
+"I'm glad of that. I am aware that my habits are somewhat peculiar."
+
+He looked at her fixedly, as if expecting her to give some sort of
+denial to this observation. But Mrs. Bunting was an honest and
+truthful woman. It never occurred to her to question his statement.
+Mr. Sleuth's habits were somewhat peculiar. Take that going out at
+night, or rather in the early morning, for instance? So she remained
+silent.
+
+After she had laid the lodger's breakfast on the table she prepared
+to leave the room. "I suppose I'm not to do your room till you goes
+out, sir?"
+
+And Mr. Sleuth looked up sharply. "No, no!" he said. "I never
+want my room done when I am engaged in studying the Scriptures, Mrs.
+Bunting. But I am not going out to-day. I shall be carrying out a
+somewhat elaborate experiment--upstairs. If I go out at all" he
+waited a moment, and again he looked at her fixedly "--I shall wait
+till night-time to do so." And then, coming back to the matter in
+hand, he added hastily, "Perhaps you could do my room when I go
+upstairs, about five o'clock--if that time is convenient to you,
+that is?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir! That'll do nicely!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and as she did so she took herself
+wordlessly, ruthlessly to task, but she did not face--even in her
+inmost heart--the strange tenors and tremors which had so shaken
+her. She only repeated to herself again and again, "I've got upset
+--that's what I've done," and then she spoke aloud, "I must get
+myself a dose at the chemist's next time I'm out. That's what I
+must do."
+
+And just as she murmured the word "do," there came a loud double
+knock on the front door.
+
+It was only the postman's knock, but the postman was an unfamiliar
+visitor in that house, and Mrs. Bunting started violently. She was
+nervous, that's what was the matter with her,--so she told herself
+angrily. No doubt this was a letter for Mr. Sleuth; the lodger must
+have relations and acquaintances somewhere in the world. All
+gentlefolk have. But when she picked the small envelope off the
+hall floor, she saw it was a letter from Daisy, her husband's daughter.
+
+"Bunting!" she called out sharply. "Here's a letter for you."
+
+She opened the door of their sitting-room and looked in. Yes, there
+was her husband, sitting back comfortably in his easy chair, reading
+a paper. And as she saw his broad, rather rounded back, Mrs. Bunting
+felt a sudden thrill of sharp irritation. There he was, doing
+nothing--in fact, doing worse than nothing--wasting his time
+reading all about those horrid crimes.
+
+She sighed--a long, unconscious sigh. Bunting was getting into
+idle ways, bad ways for a man of his years. But how could she
+prevent it? He had been such an active, conscientious sort of man
+when they had first made acquaintance. . .
+
+She also could remember, even more clearly than Bunting did himself,
+that first meeting of theirs in the dining-room of No. 90 Cumberland
+Terrace. As she had stood there, pouring out her mistress's glass of
+port wine, she had not been too much absorbed in her task to have a
+good out-of-her-eye look at the spruce, nice, respectable-looking
+fellow who was standing over by the window. How superior he had
+appeared even then to the man she already hoped he would succeed as
+butler!
+
+To-day, perhaps because she was not feeling quite herself, the past
+rose before her very vividly, and a lump came into her throat.
+
+Putting the letter addressed to her husband on the table, she closed
+the door softly, and went down into the kitchen; there were various
+little things to put away and clean up, as well as their dinner to
+cook. And all the time she was down there she fixed her mind
+obstinately, determinedly on Bunting and on the problem of Bunting.
+She wondered what she'd better do to get him into good ways again.
+
+Thanks to Mr. Sleuth, their outlook was now moderately bright. A
+week ago everything had seemed utterly hopeless. It seemed as if
+nothing could save them from disaster. But everything was now
+changed!
+
+Perhaps it would be well for her to go and see the new proprietor
+of that registry office, in Baker Street, which had lately changed
+hands. It would be a good thing for Bunting to get even an
+occasional job--for the matter of that he could now take up a
+fairly regular thing in the way of waiting. Mrs. Bunting knew that
+it isn't easy to get a man out of idle ways once he has acquired
+those ways.
+
+When, at last, she went upstairs again she felt a little ashamed of
+what she had been thinking, for Bunting had laid the cloth, and laid
+it very nicely, too, and brought up the two chairs to the table.
+
+"Ellen?" he cried eagerly, "here's news! Daisy's coming to-morrow!
+There's scarlet fever in their house. Old Aunt thinks she'd better
+come away for a few days. So, you see, she'll be here for her
+birthday. Eighteen, that's what she be on the nineteenth! It do
+make me feel old--that it do!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting put down the tray. "I can't have the girl here just
+now," she said shortly. "I've just as much to do as I can manage.
+The lodger gives me more trouble than you seem to think for."
+
+"Rubbish!" he said sharply. "I'll help you with the lodger. It's
+your own fault you haven't had help with him before. Of course,
+Daisy must come here. Whatever other place could the girl go to?"
+
+Bunting felt pugnacious--so cheerful as to be almost light-hearted.
+But as he looked across at his wife his feeling of satisfaction
+vanished. Ellen's face was pinched and drawn to-day; she looked ill
+--ill and horribly tired. It was very aggravating of her to go and
+behave like this--just when they were beginning to get on nicely
+again.
+
+"For the matter of that," he said suddenly, "Daisy'll be able to help
+you with the work, Ellen, and she'll brisk us both up a bit."
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no answer. She sat down heavily at the table.
+And then she said languidly, "You might as well show me the girl's
+letter."
+
+He handed it across to her, and she read it slowly to herself.
+
+"DEAR FATHER (it ran)--I hope this finds you as well at it leaves
+me. Mrs. Puddle's youngest has got scarlet fever, and Aunt thinks
+I had better come away at once, just to stay with you for a few
+days. Please tell Ellen I won't give her no trouble. I'll start
+at ten if I don't hear nothing.--Your loving daughter,
+
+
+"Yes, I suppose Daisy will have to come here," Mrs. Bunting slowly.
+"It'll do her good to have a bit of work to do for once in her life."
+
+And with that ungraciously worded permission Bunting had to content
+himself.
+
+******
+
+Quietly the rest of that eventful day sped by. When dusk fell Mr.
+Sleuth's landlady heard him go upstairs to the top floor. She
+remembered that this was the signal for her to go and do his room.
+
+He was a tidy man, was the lodger; he did not throw his things
+about as so many gentlemen do, leaving them all over the place.
+No, he kept everything scrupulously tidy. His clothes, and the
+various articles Mrs. Bunting had bought for him during the first
+two days he had been there, were carefully arranged in the chest
+of drawers. He had lately purchased a pair of boots. Those he
+had arrived in were peculiar-looking footgear, buff leather shoes
+with rubber soles, and he had told his landlady on that very first
+day that he never wished them to go down to be cleaned.
+
+A funny idea--a funny habit that, of going out for a walk after
+midnight in weather so cold and foggy that all other folk were
+glad to be at home, snug in bed. But then Mr. Sleuth himself
+admitted that he was a funny sort of gentleman.
+
+After she had done his bedroom the landlady went into the
+sitting-room and gave it a good dusting. This room was not kept
+quite as nice as she would have liked it to be. Mrs. Bunting
+longed to give the drawing-room something of a good turn out; but
+Mr. Sleuth disliked her to be moving about in it when he himself
+was in his bedroom; and when up he sat there almost all the time.
+Delighted as he had seemed to be with the top room, he only used
+it when making his mysterious experiments, and never during the
+day-time.
+
+And now, this afternoon, she looked at the rosewood chiffonnier with
+longing eyes--she even gave that pretty little piece of furniture
+a slight shake. If only the doors would fly open, as the locked
+doors of old cupboards sometimes do, even after they have been
+securely fastened, how pleased she would be, how much more
+comfortable somehow she would feel!
+
+But the chiffonnier refused to give up its secret.
+
+******
+
+About eight o'clock on that same evening Joe Chandler came in, just
+for a few minutes' chat. He had recovered from his agitation of the
+morning, but he was full of eager excitement, and Mrs. Bunting
+listened in silence, intensely interested in spite of herself, while
+he and Bunting talked.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I'm as right as a trivet now! I've had a good rest
+--laid down all this afternoon. You see, the Yard thinks there's
+going to be something on to-night. He's always done them in pairs."
+
+"So he has," exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. "So he has! Now, I
+never thought o' that. Then you think, Joe, that the monster'll be
+on the job again to-night?"
+
+Chandler nodded. "Yes. And I think there's a very good chance of
+his being caught too--"
+
+"I suppose there'll be a lot on the watch to-night, eh?"
+
+"I should think there will be! How many of our men d'you think
+there'll be on night duty to-night, Mr. Bunting?"
+
+Bunting shook his head. "I don't know," he said helplessly.
+
+"I mean extra," suggested Chandler, in an encouraging voice.
+
+"A thousand?" ventured Bunting.
+
+"Five thousand, Mr. Bunting."
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Bunting, amazed.
+
+And even Mrs. Bunting echoed "Never!" incredulously.
+
+"Yes, that there will. You see, the Boss has got his monkey up!"
+Chandler drew a folded-up newspaper out of his coat pocket. "Just
+listen to this:
+
+"'The police have reluctantly to admit that they have no clue to
+the perpetrators of these horrible crimes, and we cannot feel any
+surprise at the information that a popular attack has been organised
+on the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. There is even
+talk of an indignation mass meeting.'
+
+"What d'you think of that? That's not a pleasant thing for a
+gentleman as is doing his best to read, eh?"
+
+"Well, it does seem queer that the police can't catch him, now
+doesn't it?" said Bunting argumentatively.
+
+"I don't think it's queer at all," said young Chandler crossly.
+"Now you just listen again! Here's a bit of the truth for once--
+in a newspaper." And slowly he read out:
+
+"'The detection of crime in London now resembles a game of blind
+man's buff, in which the detective has his hands tied and his eyes
+bandaged. Thus is he turned loose to hunt the murderer through
+the slums of a great city.'"
+
+"Whatever does that mean?" said Bunting. "Your hands aren't tied,
+and your eyes aren't bandaged, Joe?"
+
+"It's metaphorical-like that it's intended, Mr. Bunting. We haven't
+got the same facilities--no, not a quarter of them--that the
+French 'tecs have."
+
+And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting spoke: "What was that
+word, Joe--'perpetrators'? I mean that first bit you read out."
+
+"Yes," he said, turning to her eagerly.
+
+"Then do they think there's more than one of them?" she said, and
+a look of relief came over her thin face.
+
+"There's some of our chaps thinks it's a gang," said Chandler.
+"They say it can't be the work of one man."
+
+"What do you think, Joe?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bunting, I don't know what to think. I'm fair puzzled."
+
+He got up. "Don't you come to the door. I'll shut it all right.
+So long! See you to-morrow, perhaps." As he had done the other
+evening, Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's visitor stopped at the door. "Any
+news of Miss Daisy?" he asked casually.
+
+"Yes; she's coming to-morrow," said her father. "They've got scarlet
+fever at her place. So Old Aunt thinks she'd better clear out."
+
+
+The husband and wife went to bed early that night, but Mrs. Bunting
+found she could not sleep. She lay wide awake, hearing the hours,
+the half-hours, the quarters chime out from the belfry of the old
+church close by.
+
+And then, just as she was dozing off--it must have been about one
+o'clock--she heard the sound she had half unconsciously been
+expecting to hear, that of the lodger's stealthy footsteps coming
+down the stairs just outside her room.
+
+He crept along the passage and let himself out very, very quietly.
+
+But though she tried to keep awake, Mrs. Bunting did not hear him
+come in again, for she soon fell into a heavy sleep.
+
+Oddly enough, she was the first to wake the next morning; odder
+still, it was she, not Bunting, who jumped out of bed, and going
+out into the passage, picked up the newspaper which had just been
+pushed through the letter-box.
+
+But having picked it up, Mrs. Bunting did not go back at once into
+her bedroom. Instead she lit the gas in the passage, and leaning
+up against the wall to steady herself, for she was trembling with
+cold and fatigue, she opened the paper.
+
+Yes, there was the heading she sought:
+
+"The AVENGER Murders"
+
+But, oh, how glad she was to see the words that followed:
+
+"Up to the time of going to press there is little new to report
+concerning the extraordinary series of crimes which are amazing,
+and, indeed, staggering not only London, but the whole civilised
+world, and which would seem to be the work of some woman-hating
+teetotal fanatic. Since yesterday morning, when the last of these
+dastardly murders was committed, no reliable clue to the perpetrator,
+or perpetrators, has been obtained, though several arrests were made
+in the course of the day. In every case, however, those arrested
+were able to prove a satisfactory alibi."
+
+And then, a little lower down:
+
+"The excitement grows and grows. It is not too much to say that
+even a stranger to London would know that something very unusual
+was in the air. As for the place where the murder was committed
+last night--"
+
+"Last night!" thought Mrs. Bunting, startled; and then she realised
+that "last night," in this connection, meant the night before last.
+
+She began the sentence again:
+
+"As for the place where the murder was committed last night, all
+approaches to it were still blocked up to a late hour by hundreds
+of onlookers, though, of course, nothing now remains in the way of
+traces of the tragedy."
+
+Slowly and carefully Mrs. Bunting folded the paper up again in its
+original creases, and then she stooped and put it back down on the
+mat where she had found it. She then turned out the gas, and going
+back into bed she lay down by her still sleeping husband.
+
+"Anything the matter?" Bunting murmured, and stirred uneasily.
+"Anything the matter, Ellen?"
+
+She answered in a whisper, a whisper thrilling with a strange
+gladness, "No, nothing, Bunting--nothing the matter! Go to sleep
+again, my dear."
+
+They got up an hour later, both in a happy, cheerful mood. Bunting
+rejoiced at the thought of his daughter's coming, and even Daisy's
+stepmother told herself that it would be pleasant having the girl
+about the house to help her a bit.
+
+About ten o'clock Bunting went out to do some shopping. He brought
+back with him a nice little bit of pork for Daisy's dinner, and
+three mince-pies. He even remembered to get some apples for the
+sauce.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate.
+
+It brought Daisy--pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy--a
+sight to gladden any father's heart.
+
+"Old Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad," she
+cried out joyously.
+
+There was a bit of a wrangle over the fare. King's Cross, as all
+the world knows, is nothing like two miles from the Marylebone Road,
+but the man clamoured for one and sixpence, and hinted darkly that
+he had done the young lady a favour in bringing her at all.
+
+While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it,
+walked up the flagged path to the door where her stepmother was
+awaiting her.
+
+As they were exchanging a rather frigid kiss, indeed, 'twas a mere
+peck on Mrs. Bunting's part, there fell, with startling suddenness,
+loud cries on the still, cold air. Long-drawn and wailing, they
+sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar
+of traffic in the Edgware Road.
+
+"What's that?" exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. "Why, whatever's
+that?"
+
+The cabman lowered his voice. "Them's 'a-crying out that 'orrible
+affair at King's Cross. He's done for two of 'em this time! That's
+what I meant when I said I might 'a got a better fare. I wouldn't
+say nothink before little missy there, but folk 'ave been coming
+from all over London the last five or six hours; plenty of toffs,
+too--but there, there's nothing to see now!"
+
+"What? Another woman murdered last night?"
+
+Bunting felt tremendously thrilled. What had the five thousand
+constables been about to let such a dreadful thing happen?
+
+The cabman stared at him, surprised. "Two of 'em, I tell yer--
+within a few yards of one another. He 'ave--got a nerve--But,
+of course, they was drunk. He are got a down on the drink!"
+
+"Have they caught him?" asked Bunting perfunctorily.
+
+"Lord, no! They'll never catch 'im! It must 'ave happened hours
+and hours ago--they was both stone cold. One each end of a little
+passage what ain't used no more. That's why they didn't find 'em
+before."
+
+The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer--two news vendors
+trying to outshout each other.
+
+"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross!" they yelled exultingly.
+"The Avenger again!"
+
+And Bunting, with his daughter's large straw hold-all in his hand,
+ran forward into the roadway and recklessly gave a boy a penny for
+a halfpenny paper.
+
+He felt very much moved and excited. Somehow his acquaintance with
+young Joe Chandler made these murders seem a personal affair. He
+hoped that Chandler would come in soon and tell them all about it,
+as he had done yesterday morning when he, Bunting, had unluckily
+been out.
+
+As he walked back into the little hall, he heard Daisy's voice--
+high, voluble, excited--giving her stepmother a long account of
+the scarlet fever case, and how at first Old Aunt's neighbours had
+thought it was not scarlet fever at all, but just nettlerash.
+
+But as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room, there
+came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter's voice, and he heard
+her cry, "Why, Ellen, whatever is the matter? You do look bad!"
+and his wife's muffled answer, "Open the window--do."
+
+"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross--a clue at last!" yelled
+the newspaper-boys triumphantly.
+
+And then, helplessly, Mrs. Bunting began to laugh. She laughed,
+and laughed, and laughed, rocking herself to and fro as if in an
+ecstasy of mirth.
+
+"Why, father, whatever's the matter with her?"
+
+Daisy looked quite scared.
+
+"She's in 'sterics--that's what it is," he said shortly.
+"I'll just get the water-jug. Wait a minute!"
+
+Bunting felt very put out. Ellen was ridiculous--that's what she
+was, to be so easily upset.
+
+The lodger's bell suddenly pealed through the quiet house. Either
+that sound, or maybe the threat of the water-jug, had a magical
+effect on Mrs. Bunting. She rose to her feet, still shaking all
+over, but mentally composed.
+
+"I'll go up," she said a little chokingly. "As for you, child,
+just run down into the kitchen. You'll find a piece of pork
+roasting in the oven. You might start paring the apples for the
+sauce."
+
+As Mrs. Bunting went upstairs her legs felt as if they were made
+of cotton wool. She put out a trembling hand, and clutched at the
+banister for support. But soon, making a great effort over herself,
+she began to feel more steady; and after waiting for a few moments
+on the landing, she knocked at the door of the drawing-room.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's voice answered her from the bedroom. "I'm not well,"
+he called out querulously; "I think I've caught a chill. I should
+be obliged if you would kindly bring me up a cup of tea, and put it
+outside my door, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting turned and went downstairs. She still felt queer and
+giddy, so instead of going into the kitchen, she made the lodger his
+cup of tea over her sitting-room gas-ring.
+
+During their midday dinner the husband and wife had a little
+discussion as to where Daisy should sleep. It had been settled
+that a bed should be made up for her in the top back room, but
+Mrs. Bunting saw reason to change this plan. "I think 'twould be
+better if Daisy were to sleep with me, Bunting, and you was to
+sleep upstairs."
+
+Bunting felt and looked rather surprised, but he acquiesced. Ellen
+was probably right; the girl would be rather lonely up there, and,
+after all, they didn't know much about the lodger, though he seemed
+a respectable gentleman enough.
+
+Daisy was a good-natured girl; she liked London, and wanted to make
+herself useful to her stepmother. "I'll wash up; don't you bother to
+come downstairs," she said cheerfully.
+
+Bunting began to walk up and down the room. His wife gave him a
+furtive glance; she wondered what he was thinking about.
+
+"Didn't you get a paper?" she said at last.
+
+"Yes, of course I did," he answered hastily. "But I've put it away.
+I thought you'd rather not look at it, as you're that nervous."
+
+Again she glanced at him quickly, furtively, but he seemed just as
+usual--he evidently meant just what he said and no more.
+
+"I thought they was shouting something in the street--I mean just
+before I was took bad."
+
+It was now Bunting's turn to stare at his wife quickly and rather
+furtively. He had felt sure that her sudden attack of queerness,
+of hysterics--call it what you might--had been due to the shouting
+outside. She was not the only woman in London who had got the
+Avenger murders on her nerves. His morning paper said quite a lot
+of women were afraid to go out alone. Was it possible that the
+curious way she had been taken just now had had nothing to do with
+the shouts and excitement outside?
+
+"Don't you know what it was they were calling out?" he asked slowly.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked across at him. She would have given a very
+great deal to be able to lie, to pretend that she did not know what
+those dreadful cries had portended. But when it came to the point
+she found she could not do so.
+
+"Yes," she said dully. "I heard a word here and there. There's
+been another murder, hasn't there?"
+
+"Two other murders," he said soberly.
+
+"Two? That's worse news!" She turned so pale--a sallow
+greenish-white--that Bunting thought she was again going queer.
+
+"Ellen?" he said warningly, "Ellen, now do have a care! I can't
+think what's come over you about these murders. Turn your mind
+away from them, do! We needn't talk about them--not so much,
+that is--"
+
+"But I wants to talk about them," cried Mrs. Bunting hysterically.
+
+The husband and wife were standing, one each side of the table,
+the man with his back to the fire, the woman with her back to the
+door.
+
+Bunting, staring across at his wife, felt sadly perplexed and
+disturbed. She really did seem ill; even her slight, spare figure
+looked shrunk. For the first time, so he told himself ruefully,
+Ellen was beginning to look her full age. Her slender hands--she
+had kept the pretty, soft white hands of the woman who has never
+done rough work--grasped the edge of the table with a convulsive
+movement.
+
+Bunting didn't at all like the look of her. "Oh, dear," he said
+to himself, "I do hope Ellen isn't going to be ill! That would be
+a to-do just now."
+
+"Tell me about it," she commanded, in a low voice. "Can't you see
+I'm waiting to hear? Be quick now, Bunting!"
+
+"There isn't very much to tell," he said reluctantly. "There's
+precious little in this paper, anyway. But the cabman what brought
+Daisy told me--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What I said just now. There's two of 'em this time, and they'd
+both been drinking heavily, poor creatures."
+
+"Was it where the others was done?" she asked looking at her husband
+fearfully.
+
+"No," he said awkwardly. "No, it wasn't, Ellen. It was a good bit
+farther West--in fact, not so very far from here. Near King's Cross
+--that's how the cabman knew about it, you see. They seems to have
+been done in a passage which isn't used no more." And then, as he
+thought his wife's eyes were beginning to look rather funny, he added
+hastily. "There, that's enough for the present! We shall soon be
+hearing a lot more about it from Joe Chandler. He's pretty sure to
+come in some time to-day."
+
+"Then the five thousand constables weren't no use?" said Mrs.
+Bunting slowly.
+
+She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was standing more
+upright.
+
+"No use at all," said Bunting briefly. "He is artful and no mistake
+about it. But wait a minute--" he turned and took up the paper
+which he had laid aside, on a chair. "Yes they says here that they
+has a clue."
+
+"A clue, Bunting?" Mrs. Bunting spoke in a soft, weak, die-away
+voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the edge of the
+table.
+
+But her husband was not noticing her now. He was holding the paper
+close up to his eyes, and he read from it, in a tone of considerable
+satisfaction:
+
+"'It is gratifying to be able to state that the police at last
+believe they are in possession of a clue which will lead to the
+arrest of the--'" and then Bunting dropped the paper and rushed
+round the table.
+
+His wife, with a curious sighing moan, had slipped down on to the
+floor, taking with her the tablecloth as she went. She lay there
+in what appeared to be a dead faint. And Bunting, scared out of
+his wits, opened the door and screamed out, "Daisy! Daisy! Come
+up, child. Ellen's took bad again."
+
+And Daisy, hurrying in, showed an amount of sense and resource
+which even at this anxious moment roused her fond father's
+admiration.
+
+"Get a wet sponge, Dad--quick!" she cried, "a sponge,--and, if
+you've got such a thing, a drop o' brandy. I'll see after her!"
+And then, after he had got the little medicine flask, "I can't think
+what's wrong with Ellen," said Daisy wonderingly. "She seemed quite
+all right when I first came in. She was listening, interested-like,
+to what I was telling her, and then, suddenly--well, you saw how
+she was took, father? 'Tain't like Ellen this, is it now?"
+
+"No," he whispered. "No, 'tain't. But you see, child, we've been
+going through a pretty bad time--worse nor I should ever have let
+you know of, my dear. Ellen's just feeling it now--that's what it
+is. She didn't say nothing, for Ellen's a good plucked one, but
+it's told on her--it's told on her!"
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting, sitting up, slowly opened her eyes, and
+instinctively put her hand up to her head to see if her hair was
+all right.
+
+She hadn't really been quite "off." It would have been better for
+her if she had. She had simply had an awful feeling that she
+couldn't stand up--more, that she must fall down. Bunting's words
+touched a most unwonted chord in the poor woman's heart, and the
+eyes which she opened were full of tears. She had not thought her
+husband knew how she had suffered during those weeks of starving
+and waiting.
+
+But she had a morbid dislike of any betrayal of sentiment. To her
+such betrayal betokened "foolishness," and so all she said was,
+"There's no need to make a fuss! I only turned over a little queer.
+I never was right off, Daisy."
+
+Pettishly she pushed away the glass in which Bunting had hurriedly
+poured a little brandy. "I wouldn't touch such stuff--no, not if
+I was dying!" she exclaimed.
+
+Putting out a languid hand, she pulled herself up, with the help of
+the table, on to her feet. "Go down again to the kitchen, child";
+but there was a sob, a kind of tremor in her voice.
+
+"You haven't been eating properly, Ellen--that's what's the matter
+with you," said Bunting suddenly. "Now I come to think of it, you
+haven't eat half enough these last two days. I always did say--in
+old days many a time I telled you--that a woman couldn't live on
+air. But there, you never believed me!"
+
+Daisy stood looking from one to the other, a shadow over her bright,
+pretty face. "I'd no idea you'd had such a bad time, father," she
+said feelingly. "Why didn't you let me know about it? I might have
+got something out of Old Aunt."
+
+"We didn't want anything of that sort," said her stepmother hastily.
+"But of course--well, I expect I'm still feeling the worry now. I
+don't seem able to forget it. Those days of waiting, of--of--"
+she restrained herself; another moment and the word "starving" would
+have left her lips.
+
+"But everything's all right now," said Bunting eagerly, "all right,
+thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is."
+
+"Yes," repeated his wife, in a low, strange tone of voice. "Yes,
+we're all right now, and as you say, Bunting, it's all along of
+Mr. Sleuth."
+
+She walked across to a chair and sat down on it. "I'm just a little
+tottery still," she muttered.
+
+And Daisy, looking at her, turned to her father and said in a
+whisper, but not so low but that Mrs. Bunting heard her, "Don't you
+think Ellen ought to see a doctor, father? He might give her
+something that would pull her round."
+
+"I won't see no doctor!" said Mrs. Bunting with sudden emphasis. "I
+saw enough of doctors in my last place. Thirty-eight doctors in ten
+months did my poor missis have. Just determined on having 'em she
+was! Did they save her? No! She died just the same! Maybe a bit
+sooner."
+
+"She was a freak, was your last mistress, Ellen," began Bunting
+aggressively.
+
+Ellen had insisted on staying on in that place till her poor mistress
+died. They might have been married some months before they were
+married but for that fact. Bunting had always resented it.
+
+His wife smile wanly. "We won't have no words about that," she said,
+and again she spoke in a softer, kindlier tone than usual. "Daisy?
+If you won't go down to the kitchen again, then I must"--she turned
+to her stepdaughter, and the girl flew out of the room.
+
+"I think the child grows prettier every minute," said Bunting fondly.
+
+"Folks are too apt to forget that beauty is but skin deep," said his
+wife. She was beginning to feel better. "But still, I do agree,
+Bunting, that Daisy's well enough. And she seems more willing, too."
+
+"I say, we mustn't forget the lodger's dinner," Bunting spoke
+uneasily. "It's a bit of fish to-day, isn't it? Hadn't I better
+just tell Daisy to see to it, and then I can take it up to him, as
+you're not feeling quite the thing, Ellen?"
+
+"I'm quite well enough to take up Mr. Sleuth's luncheon," she said
+quickly. It irritated her to hear her husband speak of the lodger's
+dinner. They had dinner in the middle of the day, but Mr. Sleuth
+had luncheon. However odd he might be, Mrs. Bunting never forgot
+her lodger was a gentleman.
+
+"After all, he likes me to wait on him, doesn't he? I can manage
+all right. Don't you worry," she added after a long pause.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later
+than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs
+with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice
+slice of roast pork downstairs.
+
+"I hope you're feeling a little better, sir," Mrs. Bunting had forced
+herself to say when she first took in his tray.
+
+And he had answered plaintively, querulously, "No, I can't say I
+feel well to-day, Mrs. Bunting. I am tired--very tired. And as I
+lay in bed I seemed to hear so many sounds--so much crying and
+shouting. I trust the Marylebone Road is not going to become a noisy
+thoroughfare, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I don't think that. We're generally reckoned very
+quiet indeed, sir."
+
+She waited a moment--try as she would, she could not allude to what
+those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened. "I expect you've
+got a chill, sir," she said suddenly. "If I was you, I shouldn't
+go out this afternoon; I'd just stay quietly indoors. There's a lot
+of rough people about--" Perhaps there was an undercurrent of
+warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated
+in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and
+an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous grey eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bunting. But I think I'll take your
+advice. That is, I will stay quietly at home, I am never at a loss
+to know what to do with myself so long as I can study the Book of
+Books."
+
+"Then you're not afraid about your eyes, sir?" said Mrs. Bunting
+curiously. Somehow she was beginning to feel better. It comforted
+her to be up here, talking to Mr. Sleuth, instead of thinking about
+him downstairs. It seemed to banish the terror which filled her
+soul--aye, and her body, too--at other times. When she was with
+him Mr. Sleuth was so gentle, so reasonable, so--so grateful.
+
+Poor kindly, solitary Mr. Sleuth! This kind of gentleman surely
+wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone a human being. Eccentric--so much
+must be admitted. But Mrs. Bunting had seen a good deal of eccentric
+folk, eccentric women rather than eccentric men, in her long career
+as useful maid.
+
+Being at ordinary times an exceptionally sensible, well-balanced
+woman, she had never, in old days, allowed her mind to dwell on
+certain things she had learnt as to the aberrations of which human
+nature is capable--even well-born, well-nurtured, gentle human
+nature--as exemplified in some of the households where she had
+served. It would, indeed, be unfortunate if she now became morbid
+or--or hysterical.
+
+So it was in a sharp, cheerful voice, almost the voice in which she
+had talked during the first few days of Mr. Sleuth's stay in her
+house, that she exclaimed, "Well, sir, I'll be up again to clear
+away in about half an hour. And if you'll forgive me for saying so,
+I hope you will stay in and have a rest to-day. Nasty, muggy weather
+--that's what it is! If there's any little thing you want, me or
+Bunting can go out and get it."
+
+******
+
+It must have been about four o'clock when there came a ring at the
+front door.
+
+The three were sitting chatting together, for Daisy had washed up
+--she really was saving her stepmother a good bit of trouble--and
+the girl was now amusing her elders by a funny account of Old Aunt's
+pernickety ways.
+
+"Whoever can that be?" said Bunting, looking up. "It's too early
+for Joe Chandler, surely."
+
+"I'll go," said his wife, hurriedly jumping up from her chair.
+"I'll go! We don't want no strangers in here."
+
+And as she stepped down the short bit of passage she said to herself,
+"A clue? What clue?"
+
+But when she opened the front door a glad sigh of relief broke from
+her. "Why, Joe? We never thought 'twas you! But you're very
+welcome, I'm sure. Come in."
+
+And Chandler came in, a rather sheepish look on his good-looking,
+fair young face.
+
+"I thought maybe that Mr. Bunting would like to know--" he began,
+in a loud, cheerful voice, and Mrs. Bunting hurriedly checked him.
+She didn't want the lodger upstairs to hear what young Chandler
+might be going to say.
+
+"Don't talk so loud," she said a little sharply. "The lodger is
+not very well to-day. He's had a cold," she added hastily, "and
+during the last two or three days he hasn't been able to go out."
+
+She wondered at her temerity, her--her hypocrisy, and that moment,
+those few words, marked an epoch in Ellen Bunting's life. It was
+the first time she had told a bold and deliberate lie. She was
+one of those women--there are many, many such--to whom there is
+a whole world of difference between the suppression of the truth
+and the utterance of an untruth.
+
+But Chandler paid no heed to her remarks. "Has Miss Daisy arrived?"
+he asked, in a lower voice.
+
+She nodded. And then he went through into the room where the father
+and daughter were sitting.
+
+"Well?" said Bunting, starting up. "Well, Joe? Now you can tell
+us all about that mysterious clue. I suppose it'd be too good news
+to expect you to tell us they've caught him?"
+
+"No fear of such good news as that yet awhile. If they'd caught
+him," said Joe ruefully, "well, I don't suppose I should be here,
+Mr. Bunting. But the Yard are circulating a description at last.
+And--well, they've found his weapon!"
+
+"No?" cried Bunting excitedly. "You don't say so! Whatever sort
+of a thing is it? And are they sure 'tis his?"
+
+"Well, 'tain't sure, but it seems to be likely."
+
+Mrs. Bunting had slipped into the room and shut the door behind her.
+But she was still standing with her back against the door, looking
+at the group in front of her. None of them were thinking of her
+--she thanked God for that! She could hear everything that was
+said without joining in the talk and excitement.
+
+"Listen to this!" cried Joe Chandler exultantly. "'Tain't given
+out yet--not for the public, that is--but we was all given it by
+eight o'clock this morning. Quick work that, eh?" He read out:
+
+
+  "WANTED
+
+  A man, of age approximately 28, slight in figure, height
+  approximately 5 ft. 8 in. Complexion dark. No beard or
+  whiskers. Wearing a black diagonal coat, hard felt hat, high
+  white collar, and tie. Carried a newspaper parcel. Very
+  respectable appearance."
+
+
+Mrs. Bunting walked forward. She gave a long, fluttering sigh of
+unutterable relief.
+
+"There's the chap!" said Joe Chandler triumphantly. "And now, Miss
+Daisy"--he turned to her jokingly, but there was a funny little
+tremor in his frank, cheerful-sounding voice--"if you knows of any
+nice, likely young fellow that answers to that description--well,
+you've only got to walk in and earn your reward of five hundred
+pounds."
+
+"Five hundred pounds!" cried Daisy and her father simultaneously.
+
+"Yes. That's what the Lord Mayor offered yesterday. Some private
+bloke--nothing official about it. But we of the Yard is barred
+from taking that reward, worse luck. And it's too bad, for we has
+all the trouble, after all."
+
+"Just hand that bit of paper over, will you?" said Bunting. "I'd
+like to con it over to myself."
+
+Chandler threw over the bit of flimsy.
+
+A moment later Bunting looked up and handed it back. "Well, it's
+clear enough, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. And there's hundreds--nay, thousands--of young fellows
+that might be a description of," said Chandler sarcastically. "As
+a pal of mine said this morning, 'There isn't a chap will like to
+carry a newspaper parcel after this.' And it won't do to have a
+respectable appearance--eh?"
+
+Daisy's voice rang out in merry, pealing laughter. She greatly
+appreciated Mr. Chandler's witticism.
+
+"Why on earth didn't the people who saw him try and catch him?"
+asked Bunting suddenly.
+
+And Mrs. Bunting broke in, in a lower voice, "Yes, Joe--that seems
+odd, don't it?"
+
+Joe Chandler coughed. "Well, it's this way," he said. "No one
+person did see all that. The man who's described here is just made
+up from the description of two different folk who think they saw
+him. You see, the murders must have taken place--well, now, let
+me see--perhaps at two o'clock this last time. Two o'clock--
+that's the idea. Well, at such a time as that not many people are
+about, especially on a foggy night. Yes, one woman declares she
+saw a young chap walking away from the spot where 'twas done; and
+another one--but that was a good bit later--says The Avenger
+passed by her. It's mostly her they're following in this 'ere
+description. And then the boss who has charge of that sort of
+thing looked up what other people had said--I mean when the other
+crimes was committed. That's how he made up this 'Wanted.'"
+
+"Then The Avenger may be quite a different sort of man?" said
+Bunting slowly, disappointedly.
+
+"Well, of course he may be. But, no; I think that description
+fits him all right," said Chandler; but he also spoke in a
+hesitating voice.
+
+"You was saying, Joe, that they found a weapon?" observed Bunting
+insinuatingly.
+
+He was glad that Ellen allowed the discussion to go on--in fact,
+that she even seemed to take an intelligent interest in it. She
+had come up close to them, and now looked quite her old self again.
+
+"Yes. They believe they've found the weapon what he does his awful
+deeds with," said Chandler. "At any rate, within a hundred yards
+of that little dark passage where they found the bodies--one at
+each end, that was--there was discovered this morning a very
+peculiar kind o' knife--'keen as a razor, pointed as a dagger'--
+that's the exact words the boss used when he was describing it to
+a lot of us. He seemed to think a lot more of that clue than of
+the other--I mean than of the description people gave of the chap
+who walked quickly by with a newspaper parcel. But now there's a
+pretty job in front of us. Every shop where they sell or might a'
+sold, such a thing as that knife, including every eating-house in
+the East End, has got to be called at!"
+
+"Whatever for?" asked Daisy.
+
+"Why, with an idea of finding out if anyone saw such a knife fooling
+about there any time, and, if so, in whose possession it was at the
+time. But, Mr. Bunting"--Chandler's voice changed; it became
+businesslike, official--"they're not going to say anything about
+that--not in newspapers--till to-morrow, so don't you go and
+tell anybody. You see, we don't want to frighten the fellow off.
+If he knew they'd got his knife--well, he might just make himself
+scarce, and they don't want that! If it's discovered that any knife
+of that kind was sold, say a month ago, to some customer whose ways
+are known, then--then--"
+
+"What'll happen then?" said Mrs. Bunting, coming nearer.
+
+"Well, then, nothing'll be put about it in the papers at all," said
+Chandler deliberately. "The only objec' of letting the public know
+about it would be if nothink was found--I mean if the search of
+the shops, and so on, was no good. Then, of course, we must try
+and find out someone--some private person-like, who's watched that
+knife in the criminal's possession. It's there the reward--the
+five hundred pounds will come in."
+
+"Oh, I'd give anything to see that knife!" exclaimed Daisy, clasping
+her hands together.
+
+"You cruel, bloodthirsty, girl!" cried her stepmother passionately.
+
+They all looked round at her, surprised.
+
+"Come, come, Ellen!" said Bunting reprovingly.
+
+"Well, it is a horrible idea!" said his wife sullenly. "To go and
+sell a fellow-being for five hundred pounds."
+
+But Daisy was offended. "Of course I'd like to see it!" she cried
+defiantly. "I never said nothing about the reward. That was Mr.
+Chandler said that! I only said I'd like to see the knife."
+
+Chandler looked at her soothingly. "Well, the day may come when
+you will see it," he said slowly.
+
+A great idea had come into his mind.
+
+"No! What makes you think that?"
+
+"If they catches him, and if you comes along with me to see our
+Black Museum at the Yard, you'll certainly see the knife, Miss Daisy.
+They keeps all them kind of things there. So if, as I say, this
+weapon should lead to the conviction of The Avenger--well, then,
+that knife 'ull be there, and you'll see it!"
+
+"The Black Museum? Why, whatever do they have a museum in your
+place for?" asked Daisy wonderingly. "I thought there was only the
+British Museum--"
+
+And then even Mrs. Bunting, as well as Bunting and Chandler,
+laughed aloud.
+
+"You are a goosey girl!" said her father fondly. "Why, there's a
+lot of museums in London; the town's thick with 'em. Ask Ellen
+there. She and me used to go to them kind of places when we was
+courting--if the weather was bad."
+
+"But our museum's the one that would interest Miss Daisy," broke in
+Chandler eagerly. "It's a regular Chamber of 'Orrors!"
+
+"Why, Joe, you never told us about that place before," said Bunting
+excitedly. "D'you really mean that there's a museum where they
+keeps all sorts of things connected with crimes? Things like knives
+murders have been committed with?"
+
+"Knives?" cried Joe, pleased at having become the centre of
+attention, for Daisy had also fixed her blue eyes on him, and even
+Mrs. Bunting looked at him expectantly. "Much more than knives, Mr.
+Bunting! Why, they've got there, in little bottles, the real poison
+what people have been done away with."
+
+"And can you go there whenever you like?" asked Daisy wonderingly.
+She had not realised before what extraordinary and agreeable
+privileges are attached to the position of a detective member of
+the London Police Force.
+
+"Well, I suppose I could--" Joe smiled. "Anyway I can certainly
+get leave to take a friend there." He looked meaningly at Daisy,
+and Daisy looked eagerly at him.
+
+But would Ellen ever let her go out by herself with Mr. Chandler?
+Ellen was so prim, so--so irritatingly proper. But what was this
+father was saying? "D'you really mean that, Joe?"
+
+"Yes, of course I do!"
+
+"Well, then, look here! If it isn't asking too much of a favour, I
+should like to go along there with you very much one day. I don't
+want to wait till The Avenger's caught"--Bunting smiled broadly.
+"I'd be quite content as it is with what there is in that museum
+o' yours. Ellen, there,"--he looked across at his wife--"don't
+agree with me about such things. Yet I don't think I'm a
+bloodthirsty man! But I'm just terribly interested in all that sort
+of thing--always have been. I used to positively envy the butler
+in that Balham Mystery!"
+
+Again a look passed between Daisy and the young man--it was a look
+which contained and carried a great many things backwards and
+forwards, such as--"Now, isn't it funny that your father should
+want to go to such a place? But still, I can't help it if he does
+want to go, so we must put up with his company, though it would
+have been much nicer for us to go just by our two selves." And
+then Daisy's look answered quite as plainly, though perhaps Joe
+didn't read her glance quite as clearly as she had read his: "Yes,
+it is tiresome. But father means well; and 'twill be very pleasant
+going there, even if he does come too."
+
+"Well, what d'you say to the day after to-morrow, Mr. Bunting? I'd
+call for you here about--shall we say half-past two?--and just
+take you and Miss Daisy down to the Yard. 'Twouldn't take very
+long; we could go all the way by bus, right down to Westminster
+Bridge." He looked round at his hostess: "Wouldn't you join us,
+Mrs. Bunting? 'Tis truly a wonderful interesting place."
+
+But his hostess shook her head decidedly. "'Twould turn me sick,"
+she exclaimed, "to see the bottle of poison what had done away with
+the life of some poor creature!
+
+"And as for knives--!" a look of real horror, of startled fear,
+crept over her pale face.
+
+"There, there!" said Bunting hastily. "Live and let live--that's
+what I always say. Ellen ain't on in this turn. She can just
+stay at home and mind the cat--I beg his pardon, I mean the lodger!"
+
+"I won't have Mr. Sleuth laughed at," said Mrs. Bunting darkly.
+"But there! I'm sure it's very kind of you, Joe, to think of giving
+Bunting and Daisy such a rare treat"--she spoke sarcastically, but
+none of the three who heard her understood that.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The moment she passed though the great arched door which admits the
+stranger to that portion of New Scotland Yard where throbs the heart
+of that great organism which fights the forces of civilised crime,
+Daisy Bunting felt that she had indeed become free of the Kingdom of
+Romance. Even the lift in which the three of them were whirled up
+to one of the upper floors of the huge building was to the girl a
+new and delightful experience. Daisy had always lived a simple,
+quiet life in the little country town where dwelt Old Aunt and this
+was the first time a lift had come her way.
+
+With a touch of personal pride in the vast building, Joe Chandler
+marched his friends down a wide, airy corridor.
+
+Daisy clung to her father's arm, a little bewildered, a little
+oppressed by her good fortune. Her happy young voice was
+stilled by the awe she felt at the wonderful place where she
+found herself, and by the glimpses she caught of great rooms full
+of busy, silent men engaged in unravelling--or so she supposed
+--the mysteries of crime.
+
+They were passing a half-open door when Chandler suddenly stopped
+short. "Look in there," he said, in a low voice, addressing the
+father rather than the daughter, "that's the Finger-Print Room.
+We've records here of over two hundred thousand men's and women's
+finger-tips! I expect you know, Mr. Bunting, as how, once we've got
+the print of a man's five finger-tips, well, he's done for--if he
+ever does anything else, that is. Once we've got that bit of him
+registered he can't never escape us--no, not if he tries ever so.
+But though there's nigh on a quarter of a million records in there,
+yet it don't take--well, not half an hour, for them to tell
+whether any particular man has ever been convicted before! Wonderful
+thought, ain't it?"
+
+"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing a deep breath. And then a
+troubled look came over his stolid face. "Wonderful, but also a
+very fearful thought for the poor wretches as has got their
+finger-prints in, Joe."
+
+Joe laughed. "Agreed!" he said. "And the cleverer ones knows that
+only too well. Why, not long ago, one man who knew his record was
+here safe, managed to slash about his fingers something awful, just
+so as to make a blurred impression--you takes my meaning? But
+there, at the end of six weeks the skin grew all right again, and
+in exactly the same little creases as before!"
+
+"Poor devil!" said Bunting under his breath, and a cloud even came
+over Daisy's bright eager face.
+
+They were now going along a narrower passage, and then again they
+came to a half-open door, leading into a room far smaller than
+that of the Finger-Print Identification Room.
+
+"If you'll glance in there," said Joe briefly, "you'll see how we
+finds out all about any man whose finger-tips has given him away, so
+to speak. It's here we keeps an account of what he's done, his
+previous convictions, and so on. His finger-tips are where I told
+you, and his record in there--just connected by a number."
+
+"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing in his breath. But Daisy was
+longing to get on--to get to the Black Museum. All this that Joe
+and her father were saying was quite unreal to her, and, for the
+matter of that not worth taking the trouble to understand. However,
+she had not long to wait.
+
+A broad-shouldered, pleasant-looking young fellow, who seemed on
+very friendly terms with Joe Chandler, came forward suddenly, and,
+unlocking a common-place-looking door, ushered the little party of
+three through into the Black Museum.
+
+For a moment there came across Daisy a feeling of keen disappointment
+and surprise. This big, light room simply reminded her of what they
+called the Science Room in the public library of the town where she
+lived with Old Aunt. Here, as there, the centre was taken up with
+plain glass cases fixed at a height from the floor which enabled
+their contents to be looked at closely.
+
+She walked forward and peered into the case nearest the door. The
+exhibits shown there were mostly small, shabby-looking little things,
+the sort of things one might turn out of an old rubbish cupboard in
+an untidy house--old medicine bottles, a soiled neckerchief, what
+looked like a child's broken lantern, even a box of pills. . .
+
+As for the walls, they were covered with the queerest-looking
+objects; bits of old iron, odd-looking things made of wood and
+leather, and so on.
+
+It was really rather disappointing.
+
+Then Daisy Bunting gradually became aware that standing on a shelf
+just below the first of the broad, spacious windows which made the
+great room look so light and shadowless, was a row of life-size
+white plaster heads, each head slightly inclined to the right.
+There were about a dozen of these, not more--and they had such odd,
+staring, helpless, real-looking faces.
+
+"Whatever's those?" asked Bunting in a low voice.
+
+Daisy clung a thought closer to her father's arm. Even she guessed
+that these strange, pathetic, staring faces were the death-masks of
+those men and women who had fulfilled the awful law which ordains
+that the murderer shall be, in his turn, done to death.
+
+"All hanged!" said the guardian of the Black Museum briefly. "Casts
+taken after death."
+
+Bunting smiled nervously. "They don't look dead somehow. They
+looks more as if they were listening," he said.
+
+"That's the fault of Jack Ketch," said the man facetiously. "It's
+his idea--that of knotting his patient's necktie under the left
+ear! That's what he does to each of the gentlemen to whom he has
+to act valet on just one occasion only. It makes them lean just a
+bit to one side. You look here--?"
+
+Daisy and her father came a little closer, and the speaker pointed
+with his finger to a little dent imprinted on the left side of each
+neck; running from this indentation was a curious little furrow,
+well ridged above, showing how tightly Jack Ketch's necktie had been
+drawn when its wearer was hurried through the gates of eternity.
+
+"They looks foolish-like, rather than terrified, or--or hurt," said
+Bunting wonderingly.
+
+He was extraordinarily moved and fascinated by those dumb, staring
+faces.
+
+But young Chandler exclaimed in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice,
+"Well, a man would look foolish at such a time as that, with all his
+plans brought to naught--and knowing he's only got a second to live
+--now wouldn't he?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose he would," said Bunting slowly.
+
+Daisy had gone a little pale. The sinister, breathless atmosphere
+of the place was beginning to tell on her. She now began to
+understand that the shabby little objects lying there in the glass
+case close to her were each and all links in the chain of evidence
+which, in almost every case, had brought some guilty man or woman
+to the gallows.
+
+"We had a yellow gentleman here the other day," observed the guardian
+suddenly; "one of those Brahmins--so they calls themselves. Well,
+you'd a been quite surprised to see how that heathen took on! He
+declared--what was the word he used?"--he turned to Chandler.
+
+"He said that each of these things, with the exception of the casts,
+mind you--queer to say, he left them out--exuded evil, that was
+the word he used! Exuded--squeezed out it means. He said that
+being here made him feel very bad. And twasn't all nonsense either.
+He turned quite green under his yellow skin, and we had to shove him
+out quick. He didn't feel better till he'd got right to the other
+end of the passage!"
+
+"There now! Who'd ever think of that?" said Bunting. "I should say
+that man 'ud got something on his conscience, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Well, I needn't stay now," said Joe's good-natured friend. "You
+show your friends round, Chandler. You knows the place nearly as
+well as I do, don't you?"
+
+He smiled at Joe's visitors, as if to say good-bye, but it seemed
+that he could not tear himself away after all.
+
+"Look here," he said to Bunting. "In this here little case are the
+tools of Charles Peace. I expect you've heard of him."
+
+"I should think I have!" cried Bunting eagerly.
+
+"Many gents as comes here thinks this case the most interesting of
+all. Peace was such a wonderful man! A great inventor they say he
+would have been, had he been put in the way of it. Here's his
+ladder; you see it folds up quite compactly, and makes a nice little
+bundle--just like a bundle of old sticks any man might have been
+seen carrying about London in those days without attracting any
+attention. Why, it probably helped him to look like an honest
+working man time and time again, for on being arrested he declared
+most solemnly he'd always carried that ladder openly under his arm."
+
+"The daring of that!" cried Bunting.
+
+"Yes, and when the ladder was opened out it could reach from the
+ground to the second storey of any old house. And, oh! how clever
+he was! Just open one section, and you see the other sections open
+automatically; so Peace could stand on the ground and force the
+thing quietly up to any window he wished to reach. Then he'd go
+away again, having done his job, with a mere bundle of old wood
+under his arm! My word, he was artful! I wonder if you've heard
+the tale of how Peace once lost a finger. Well, he guessed the
+constables were instructed to look out for a man missing a finger;
+so what did he do?"
+
+"Put on a false finger," suggested Bunting.
+
+"No, indeed! Peace made up his mind just to do without a hand
+altogether. Here's his false stump: you see, it's made of wood
+--wood and black felt? Well, that just held his hand nicely.
+Why, we considers that one of the most ingenious contrivances in
+the whole museum."
+
+Meanwhile, Daisy had let go her hold of her father. With Chandler
+in delighted attendance, she had moved away to the farther end of
+the great room, and now she was bending over yet another glass case.
+"Whatever are those little bottles for?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+There were five small phials, filled with varying quantities of
+cloudy liquids.
+
+"They're full of poison, Miss Daisy, that's what they are. There's
+enough arsenic in that little whack o' brandy to do for you and me
+--aye, and for your father as well, I should say."
+
+"Then chemists shouldn't sell such stuff," said Daisy, smiling.
+Poison was so remote from herself, that the sight of these little
+bottles only brought a pleasant thrill.
+
+"No more they don't. That was sneaked out of a flypaper, that was.
+Lady said she wanted a cosmetic for her complexion, but what she was
+really going for was flypapers for to do away with her husband.
+She'd got a bit tired of him, I suspect."
+
+"Perhaps he was a horrid man, and deserved to be done away with,"
+said Daisy. The idea struck them both as so very comic that they
+began to laugh aloud in unison.
+
+"Did you ever hear what a certain Mrs. Pearce did?" asked Chandler,
+becoming suddenly serious.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Daisy, and she shuddered a little. "That was the
+wicked, wicked woman what killed a pretty little baby and its mother.
+They've got her in Madame Tussaud's. But Ellen, she won't let me go
+to the Chamber of Horrors. She wouldn't let father take me there
+last time I was in London. Cruel of her, I called it. But somehow
+I don't feel as if I wanted to go there now, after having been here!"
+
+"Well," said Chandler slowly, "we've a case full of relics of Mrs.
+Pearce. But the pram the bodies were found in, that's at Madame
+Tussaud's--at least so they claim, I can't say. Now here's something
+just as curious, and not near so dreadful. See that man's jacket
+there?"
+
+"Yes," said Daisy falteringly. She was beginning to feel oppressed,
+frightened. She no longer wondered that the Indian gentleman had
+been taken queer.
+
+"A burglar shot a man dead who'd disturbed him, and by mistake he
+went and left that jacket behind him. Our people noticed that one
+of the buttons was broken in two. Well, that don't seem much of a
+clue, does it, Miss Daisy? Will you believe me when I tells you
+that that other bit of button was discovered, and that it hanged
+the fellow? And 'twas the more wonderful because all three buttons
+was different!"
+
+Daisy stared wonderingly, down at the little broken button which
+had hung a man. "And whatever's that!" she asked, pointing to a
+piece of dirty-looking stuff.
+
+"Well," said Chandler reluctantly, "that's rather a horrible thing
+--that is. That's a bit o' shirt that was buried with a woman--
+buried in the ground, I mean--after her husband had cut her up and
+tried, to burn her. 'Twas that bit o' shirt that brought him to the
+gallows."
+
+"I considers your museum's a very horrid place!" said Daisy
+pettishly, turning away.
+
+She longed to be out in the passage again, away from this brightly
+lighted, cheerful-looking, sinister room.
+
+But her father was now absorbed in the case containing various types
+of infernal machines. "Beautiful little works of art some of them
+are," said his guide eagerly, and Bunting could not but agree.
+
+"Come along--do, father!" said Daisy quickly. "I've seen about
+enough now. If I was to stay in here much longer it 'ud give me
+the horrors. I don't want to have no nightmares to-night. It's
+dreadful to think there are so many wicked people in the world.
+Why, we might knock up against some murderer any minute without
+knowing it, mightn't we?"
+
+"Not you, Miss Daisy," said Chandler smilingly. "I don't suppose
+you'll ever come across even a common swindler, let alone anyone
+who's committed a murder--not one in a million does that. Why,
+even I have never had anything to do with a proper murder case!"
+
+But Bunting was in no hurry. He was thoroughly enjoying every
+moment of the time. Just now he was studying intently the various
+photographs which hung on the walls of the Black Museum; especially
+was he pleased to see those connected with a famous and still
+mysterious case which had taken place not long before in Scotland,
+and in which the servant of the man who died had played a
+considerable part--not in elucidating, but in obscuring, the mystery.
+
+"I suppose a good many murderers get off?" he said musingly.
+
+And Joe Chandler's friend nodded. "I should think they did!" he
+exclaimed. "There's no such thing as justice here in England.
+'Tis odds on the murderer every time. 'Tisn't one in ten that
+come to the end he should do--to the gallows, that is."
+
+"And what d'you think about what's going on now--I mean about
+those Avenger murders?"
+
+Bunting lowered his voice, but Daisy and Chandler were already
+moving towards the door.
+
+"I don't believe he'll ever be caught," said the other
+confidentially. "In some ways 'tis a lot more of a job to catch a
+madman than 'tis to run down just an ordinary criminal. And, of
+course--leastways to my thinking--The Avenger is a madman--one
+of the cunning, quiet sort. Have you heard about the letter?" his
+voice dropped lower.
+
+ "No," said Bunting, staring eagerly at him. "What letter d'you
+mean?"
+
+"Well, there's a letter--it'll be in this museum some day--which
+came just before that last double event. 'Twas signed 'The Avenger,'
+in just the same printed characters as on that bit of paper he always
+leaves behind him. Mind you, it don't follow that it actually was The
+Avenger what sent that letter here, but it looks uncommonly like it,
+and I know that the Boss attaches quite a lot of importance to it."
+
+"And where was it posted?" asked Bunting. "That might be a bit of a
+clue, you know."
+
+"Oh, no," said the other. "They always goes a very long way to
+post anything--criminals do. It stands to reason they would. But
+this particular one was put in the Edgware Road Post Office."
+
+"What? Close to us?" said Bunting. "Goodness! dreadful!"
+
+"Any of us might knock up against him any minute. I don't suppose
+The Avenger's in any way peculiar-looking--in fact we know he ain't."
+
+"Then you think that woman as says she saw him did see him?" asked
+Bunting hesitatingly.
+
+"Our description was made up from what she said," answered the other
+cautiously. "But, there, you can't tell! In a case like that it's
+groping--groping in the dark all the time--and it's just a lucky
+accident if it comes out right in the end. Of course, it's upsetting
+us all very much here. You can't wonder at that!"
+
+"No, indeed," said Bunting quickly. "I give you my word, I've hardly
+thought of anything else for the last month."
+
+Daisy had disappeared, and when her father joined her in the passage
+she was listening, with downcast eyes, to what Joe Chandler was
+saying.
+
+He was telling her about his real home, of the place where his mother
+lived, at Richmond--that it was a nice little house, close to the
+park. He was asking her whether she could manage to come out there
+one afternoon, explaining that his mother would give them tea, and
+how nice it would be.
+
+"I don't see why Ellen shouldn't let me," the girl said rebelliously.
+"But she's that old-fashioned and pernickety is Ellen--a regular
+old maid! And, you see, Mr. Chandler, when I'm staying with them,
+father don't like for me to do anything that Ellen don't approve of.
+But she's got quite fond of you, so perhaps if you ask her--?"
+She looked at him, and he nodded sagely.
+
+"Don't you be afraid," he said confidently. "I'll get round Mrs.
+Bunting. But, Miss Daisy"--he grew very red--"I'd just like to
+ask you a question--no offence meant--"
+
+"Yes?" said Daisy a little breathlessly. "There's father close to
+us, Mr. Chandler. Tell me quick; what is it?"
+
+"Well, I take it, by what you said just now, that you've never
+walked out with any young fellow?"
+
+Daisy hesitated a moment; then a very pretty dimple came into her
+cheek. "No," she said sadly. "No, Mr. Chandler, that I have not."
+In a burst of candour she added, "You see, I never had the chance!"
+
+And Joe Chandler smiled, well pleased.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+By what she regarded as a fortunate chance, Mrs. Bunting found
+herself for close on an hour quite alone in the house during her
+husband's and Daisy's jaunt with young Chandler.
+
+Mr. Sleuth did not often go out in the daytime, but on this
+particular afternoon, after he had finished his tea, when dusk was
+falling, he suddenly observed that he wanted a new suit of clothes,
+and his landlady eagerly acquiesced in his going out to purchase it.
+
+As soon as he had left the house, she went quickly up to the
+drawing-room floor. Now had come her opportunity of giving the two
+rooms a good dusting; but Mrs. Bunting knew well, deep in her heart,
+that it was not so much the dusting of Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room she
+wanted to do--as to engage in a vague search for--she hardly knew
+for what.
+
+During the years she had been in service Mrs. Bunting had always
+had a deep, wordless contempt for those of her fellow-servants who
+read their employers' private letters, and who furtively peeped
+into desks and cupboards in the hope, more vague than positive, of
+discovering family skeletons.
+
+But now, with regard to Mr. Sleuth, she was ready, aye, eager, to
+do herself what she had once so scorned others for doing.
+
+Beginning with the bedroom, she started on a methodical search. He
+was a very tidy gentleman was the lodger, and his few things,
+under-garments, and so on, were in apple-pie order. She had early
+undertaken, much to his satisfaction, to do the very little bit of
+washing he required done, with her own and Bunting's. Luckily he
+wore soft shirts.
+
+At one time Mrs. Bunting had always had a woman in to help her with
+this tiresome weekly job, but lately she had grown quite clever at
+it herself. The only things she had to send out were Bunting's
+shirts. Everything else she managed to do herself.
+
+From the chest of drawers she now turned her attention to the
+dressing-table.
+
+Mr. Sleuth did not take his money with him when he went out, he
+generally left it in one of the drawers below the old-fashioned
+looking-glass. And now, in a perfunctory way, his landlady pulled
+out the little drawer, but she did not touch what was lying there;
+she only glanced at the heap of sovereigns and a few bits of silver.
+The lodger had taken just enough money with him to buy the clothes
+he required. He had consulted her as to how much they would cost,
+making no secret of why he was going out, and the fact had vaguely
+comforted Mrs. Bunting.
+
+Now she lifted the toilet-cover, and even rolled up the carpet a
+little way, but no, there was nothing there, not so much as a scrap
+of paper. And at last, when more or less giving up the search, as
+she came and went between the two rooms, leaving the connecting door
+wide open, her mind became full of uneasy speculation and wonder as
+to the lodger's past life.
+
+Odd Mr. Sleuth must surely always have been, but odd in a sensible
+sort of way, having on the whole the same moral ideals of conduct
+as have other people of his class. He was queer about the drink--one
+might say almost crazy on the subject--but there, as to that, he
+wasn't the only one! She, Ellen Bunting, had once lived with a
+lady who was just like that, who was quite crazed, that is, on the
+question of drink and drunkards--She looked round the neat
+drawing-room with vague dissatisfaction. There was only one place
+where anything could be kept concealed--that place was the
+substantial if small mahogany chiffonnier. And then an idea
+suddenly came to Mrs. Bunting, one she had never thought of before.
+
+After listening intently for a moment, lest something should suddenly
+bring Mr. Sleuth home earlier than she expected, she went to the
+corner where the chiffonnier stood, and, exerting the whole of her
+not very great physical strength, she tipped forward the heavy piece
+of furniture.
+
+As she did so, she heard a queer rumbling sound,--something rolling
+about on the second shelf, something which had not been there before
+Mr. Sleuth's arrival. Slowly, laboriously, she tipped the chiffonnier
+backwards and forwards--once, twice, thrice--satisfied, yet strangely
+troubled in her mind, for she now felt sure that the bag of which the
+disappearance had so surprised her was there, safely locked away by
+its owner.
+
+Suddenly a very uncomfortable thought came to Mrs. Bunting's mind.
+She hoped Mr. Sleuth would not notice that his bag had shifted inside
+the cupboard. A moment later, with sharp dismay, Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady realised that the fact that she had moved the chiffonnier
+must become known to her lodger, for a thin trickle of some
+dark-coloured liquid was oozing out though the bottom of the little
+cupboard door.
+
+She stooped down and touched the stuff. It showed red, bright red,
+on her finger.
+
+Mrs. Bunting grew chalky white, then recovered herself quickly. In
+fact the colour rushed into her face, and she grew hot all over.
+
+It was only a bottle of red ink she had upset--that was all! How
+could she have thought it was anything else?
+
+It was the more silly of her--so she told herself in scornful
+condemnation--because she knew that the lodger used red ink.
+Certain pages of Cruden's Concordance were covered with notes written
+in Mr. Sleuth's peculiar upright handwriting. In fact in some places
+you couldn't see the margin, so closely covered was it with remarks
+and notes of interrogation.
+
+Mr. Sleuth had foolishly placed his bottle of red ink in the
+chiffonnier--that was what her poor, foolish gentleman had done;
+and it was owing to her inquisitiveness, her restless wish to know
+things she would be none the better, none the happier, for knowing,
+that this accident had taken place.
+
+She mopped up with her duster the few drops of ink which had fallen
+on the green carpet and then, still feeling, as she angrily told
+herself, foolishly upset she went once more into the back room.
+
+It was curious that Mr. Sleuth possessed no notepaper. She would
+have expected him to have made that one of his first purchases--the
+more so that paper is so very cheap, especially that rather
+dirty-looking grey Silurian paper. Mrs. Bunting had once lived with
+a lady who always used two kinds of notepaper, white for her friends
+and equals, grey for those whom she called "common people." She,
+Ellen Green, as she then was, had always resented the fact. Strange
+she should remember it now, stranger in a way because that employer
+of her's had not been a real lady, and Mr. Sleuth, whatever his
+peculiarities, was, in every sense of the word, a real gentleman.
+Somehow Mrs. Bunting felt sure that if he had bought any notepaper
+it would have been white--white and probably cream-laid--not
+grey and cheap.
+
+Again she opened the drawer of the old-fashioned wardrobe and lifted
+up the few pieces of underclothing Mr. Sleuth now possessed.
+
+But there was nothing there--nothing, that is, hidden away. When
+one came to think of it there seemed something strange in the notion
+of leaving all one's money where anyone could take it, and in locking
+up such a valueless thing as a cheap sham leather bag, to say nothing
+of a bottle of ink.
+
+Mrs. Bunting once more opened out each of the tiny drawers below the
+looking-glass, each delicately fashioned of fine old mahogany. Mr.
+Sleuth kept his money in the centre drawer.
+
+The glass had only cost seven-and-sixpence, and, after the auction
+a dealer had come and offered her first fifteen shillings, and then
+a guinea for it. Not long ago, in Baker Street, she had seen a
+looking-glass which was the very spit of this one, labeled
+"Chippendale, Antique. £21 5s 0d."
+
+There lay Mr. Sleuth's money--the sovereigns, as the landlady well
+knew, would each and all gradually pass into her's and Bunting's
+possession, honestly earned by them no doubt but unattainable--in
+act unearnable--excepting in connection with the present owner of
+those dully shining gold sovereigns.
+
+At last she went downstairs to await Mr. Sleuth's return.
+
+When she heard the key turn in the door, she came out into the
+passage.
+
+"I'm sorry to say I've had an accident, sir," she said a little
+breathlessly. "Taking advantage of your being out I went up to
+dust the drawing-room, and while I was trying to get behind the
+chiffonnier it tilted. I'm afraid, sir, that a bottle of ink that
+was inside may have got broken, for just a few drops oozed out,
+sir. But I hope there's no harm done. I wiped it up as well as
+I could, seeing that the doors of the chiffonnier are locked."
+
+Mr. Sleuth stared at her with a wild, almost a terrified glance.
+But Mrs. Bunting stood her ground. She felt far less afraid now
+than she had felt before he came in. Then she had been so
+frightened that she had nearly gone out of the house, on to the
+pavement, for company.
+
+"Of course I had no idea, sir, that you kept any ink in there."
+
+She spoke as if she were on the defensive, and the lodger's brow
+cleared.
+
+"I was aware you used ink, sir," Mrs. Bunting went on, "for I have
+seen you marking that book of yours--I mean the book you read
+together with the Bible. Would you like me to go out and get you
+another bottle, sir?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Sleuth. "No, I thank you. I will at once proceed
+upstairs and see what damage has been done. When I require you I
+shall ring."
+
+He shuffled past her, and five minutes later the drawing-room bell
+did ring.
+
+At once, from the door, Mrs. Bunting saw that the chiffonnier was
+wide open, and that the shelves were empty save for the bottle of
+red ink which had turned over and now lay in a red pool of its own
+making on the lower shelf.
+
+"I'm afraid it will have stained the wood, Mrs. Bunting. Perhaps I
+was ill-advised to keep my ink in there."
+
+"Oh, no, sir! That doesn't matter at all. Only a drop or two fell
+out on to the carpet, and they don't show, as you see, sir, for it's
+a dark corner. Shall I take the bottle away? I may as well."
+
+Mr. Sleuth hesitated. "No," he said, after a long pause, "I think
+not, Mrs. Bunting. For the very little I require it the ink
+remaining in the bottle will do quite well, especially if I add a
+little water, or better still, a little tea, to what already
+remains in the bottle. I only require it to mark up passages which
+happen to be of peculiar interest in my Concordance--a work, Mrs.
+Bunting, which I should have taken great pleasure in compiling
+myself had not this--ah--this gentleman called Cruden, been before."
+
+******
+
+Not only Bunting, but Daisy also, thought Ellen far pleasanter in
+her manner than usual that evening. She listened to all they had
+to say about their interesting visit to the Black Museum, and did
+not snub either of them--no, not even when Bunting told of the
+dreadful, haunting, silly-looking death-masks taken from the hanged.
+
+But a few minutes after that, when her husband suddenly asked her
+a question, Mrs. Bunting answered at random. It was clear she had
+not heard the last few words he had been saying.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts!" he said jocularly. But she shook her
+head.
+
+Daisy slipped out of the room, and, five minutes later, came back
+dressed up in a blue-and-white check silk gown.
+
+"My!" said her father. "You do look fine, Daisy. I've never seen
+you wearing that before."
+
+"And a rare figure of fun she looks in it!" observed Mrs. Bunting
+sarcastically. And then, "I suppose this dressing up means that
+you're expecting someone. I should have thought both of you must
+have seen enough of young Chandler for one day. I wonder when that
+young chap does his work--that I do! He never seems too busy to
+come and waste an hour or two here."
+
+But that was the only nasty thing Ellen said all that evening. And
+even Daisy noticed that her stepmother seemed dazed and unlike
+herself. She went about her cooking and the various little things
+she had to do even more silently than was her wont.
+
+Yet under that still, almost sullen, manner, how fierce was the
+storm of dread, of sombre anguish, and, yes, of sick suspense,
+which shook her soul, and which so far affected her poor, ailing
+body that often she felt as if she could not force herself to
+accomplish her simple round of daily work.
+
+After they had finished supper Bunting went out and bought a penny
+evening paper, but as he came in he announced, with a rather rueful
+smile, that he had read so much of that nasty little print this
+last week or two that his eyes hurt him.
+
+"Let me read aloud a bit to you, father," said Daisy eagerly, and he
+handed her the paper.
+
+Scarcely had Daisy opened her lips when a loud ring and a knock
+echoed through the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+It was only Joe. Somehow, even Bunting called him "Joe" now, and no
+longer "Chandler," as he had mostly used to do.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way.
+She wasn't going to have any strangers pushing in past her.
+
+To her sharpened, suffering senses her house had become a citadel
+which must be defended; aye, even if the besiegers were a mighty
+horde with right on their side. And she was always expecting that
+first single spy who would herald the battalion against whom her
+only weapon would be her woman's wit and cunning.
+
+But when she saw who stood there smiling at her, the muscles of her
+face relaxed, and it lost the tense, anxious, almost agonised look
+it assumed the moment she turned her back on her husband and
+stepdaughter.
+
+"Why, Joe," she whispered, for she had left the door open behind
+her, and Daisy had already begun to read aloud, as her father had
+bidden her. "Come in, do! It's fairly cold to-night."
+
+A glance at his face had shown her that there was no fresh news.
+
+Joe Chandler walked in, past her, into the little hall. Cold?
+Well, he didn't feel cold, for he had walked quickly to be the
+sooner where he was now.
+
+Nine days had gone by since that last terrible occurrence, the
+double murder which had been committed early in the morning of
+the day Daisy had arrived in London. And though the thousands of
+men belonging to the Metropolitan Police--to say nothing of the
+smaller, more alert body of detectives attached to the Force--
+were keenly on the alert, not one but had begun to feel that
+there was nothing to be alert about. Familiarity, even with
+horror, breeds contempt.
+
+But with the public it was far otherwise. Each day something
+happened to revive and keep alive the mingled horror and interest
+this strange, enigmatic series of crimes had evoked. Even the
+more sober organs of the Press went on attacking, with gathering
+severity and indignation, the Commissioner of Police; and at the
+huge demonstration held in Victoria Park two days before violent
+speeches had also been made against the Home Secretary.
+
+But just now Joe Chandler wanted to forget all that. The little
+house in the Marylebone Road had become to him an enchanted isle
+of dreams, to which his thoughts were ever turning when he had a
+moment to spare from what had grown to be a wearisome, because an
+unsatisfactory, job. He secretly agreed with one of his pals who
+had exclaimed, and that within twenty-four hours of the last double
+crime, "Why, 'twould be easier to find a needle in a rick o' hay
+than this--bloke!"
+
+And if that had been true then, how much truer it was now--after
+nine long, empty days had gone by?
+
+Quickly he divested himself of his great-coat, muffler, and low hat.
+Then he put his finger on his lip, and motioned smilingly to Mrs.
+Bunting to wait a moment. From where he stood in the hall the
+father and daughter made a pleasant little picture of contented
+domesticity. Joe Chandler's honest heart swelled at the sight.
+
+Daisy, wearing the blue-and-white check silk dress about which her
+stepmother and she had had words, sat on a low stool on the left
+side of the fire, while Bunting, leaning back in his own comfortable
+arm-chair, was listening, his hand to his ear, in an attitude--as
+it was the first time she had caught him doing it, the fact brought
+a pang to Mrs. Bunting--which showed that age was beginning to
+creep over the listener.
+
+One of Daisy's duties as companion to her great-aunt was that of
+reading the newspaper aloud, and she prided herself on her
+accomplishment.
+
+Just as Joe had put his finger on his lip Daisy had been asking,
+"Shall I read this, father?" And Bunting had answered quickly,
+"Aye, do, my dear."
+
+He was absorbed in what he was hearing, and, on seeing Joe at the
+door, he had only just nodded his head. The young man was becoming
+so frequent a visitor as to be almost one of themselves.
+
+Daisy read out:
+
+"The Avenger: A--"
+
+And then she stopped short, for the next word puzzled her greatly.
+Bravely, however, she went on. "A the-o-ry."
+
+"Go in--do!" whispered Mrs. Bunting to her visitor. "Why should
+we stay out here in the cold? It's ridiculous."
+
+"I don't want to interrupt Miss Daisy," whispered Chandler back,
+rather hoarsely.
+
+"Well, you'll hear it all the better in the room. Don't think
+she'll stop because of you, bless you! There's nothing shy about
+our Daisy!"
+
+The young man resented the tart, short tone. "Poor little girl!"
+he said to himself tenderly. "That's what it is having a stepmother,
+instead of a proper mother." But he obeyed Mrs. Bunting, and then
+he was pleased he had done so, for Daisy looked up, and a bright
+blush came over her pretty face.
+
+"Joe begs you won't stop yet awhile. Go on with your reading,"
+commanded Mrs. Bunting quickly. "Now, Joe, you can go and sit over
+there, close to Daisy, and then you won't miss a word."
+
+There was a sarcastic inflection in her voice, even Chandler noticed
+that, but he obeyed her with alacrity, and crossing the room he went
+and sat on a chair just behind Daisy. From there he could note with
+reverent delight the charming way her fair hair grew upwards from
+the nape of her slender neck.
+
+"The AVENGER: A THE-O-RY"
+
+began Daisy again, clearing her throat.
+
+"DEAR Sir--I have a suggestion to put forward for which I think
+there is a great deal to be said. It seems to me very probable
+that The Avenger--to give him the name by which he apparently
+wishes to be known--comprises in his own person the peculiarities
+of Jekyll and Hyde, Mr. Louis Stevenson's now famous hero.
+
+"The culprit, according to my point of view, is a quiet,
+pleasant-looking gentleman who lives somewhere in the West End of
+London. He has, however, a tragedy in his past life. He is the
+husband of a dipsomaniac wife. She is, of course, under care, and
+is never mentioned in the house where he lives, maybe with his
+widowed mother and perhaps a maiden sister. They notice that he
+has become gloomy and brooding of late, but he lives his usual life,
+occupying himself each day with some harmless hobby. On foggy
+nights, once the quiet household is plunged in sleep, he creeps out
+of the house, maybe between one and two o'clock, and swiftly makes
+his way straight to what has become The Avenger's murder area.
+Picking out a likely victim, he approaches her with Judas-like
+gentleness, and having committed his awful crime, goes quietly home
+again. After a good bath and breakfast, he turns up happy, once
+more the quiet individual who is an excellent son, a kind brother,
+esteemed and even beloved by a large circle of friends and
+acquaintances. Meantime, the police are searching about the scene
+of the tragedy for what they regard as the usual type of criminal
+lunatic.
+
+"I give this theory, Sir, for what it is worth, but I confess that
+I am amazed the police have so wholly confined their inquiries to
+the part of London where these murders have been actually committed.
+I am quite sure from all that has come out--and we must remember
+that full information is never given to the newspapers--The Avenger
+should be sought for in the West and not in the East End of London
+--Believe me to remain, Sir, yours very truly--"
+
+Again Daisy hesitated, and then with an effort she brought out the
+word "Gab-o-ri-you," said she.
+
+"What a funny name!" said Bunting wonderingly.
+
+And then Joe broke in: "That's the name of a French chap what wrote
+detective stories," he said. "Pretty good, some of them are, too!"
+
+"Then this Gaboriyou has come over to study these Avenger murders,
+I take it?" said Bunting.
+
+"Oh, no," Joe spoke with confidence. "Whoever's written that silly
+letter just signed that name for fun."
+
+"It is a silly letter," Mrs. Bunting had broken in resentfully. "I
+wonder a respectable paper prints such rubbish."
+
+"Fancy if The Avenger did turn out to be a gentleman!" cried Daisy, in
+an awe-struck voice. "There'd be a how-to-do!"
+
+"There may be something in the notion," said her father thoughtfully.
+"After all, the monster must be somewhere. This very minute he must
+be somewhere a-hiding of himself."
+
+"Of course he's somewhere," said Mrs. Bunting scornfully.
+
+She had just heard Mr. Sleuth moving overhead. 'Twould soon be time
+for the lodger's supper.
+
+She hurried on: "But what I do say is that--that--he has nothing
+to do with the West End. Why, they say it's a sailor from the Docks
+--that's a good bit more likely, I take it. But there, I'm fair
+sick of the whole subject! We talk of nothing else in this house.
+The Avenger this--The Avenger that--"
+
+"I expect Joe has something to tell us new to-night," said Bunting
+cheerfully. "Well, Joe, is there anything new?"
+
+"I say, father, just listen to this!" Daisy broke in excitedly.
+She read out:
+
+
+"BLOODHOUNDS TO BE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED"
+
+
+"Bloodhounds?" repeated Mrs. Bunting, and there was terror in her
+tone. "Why bloodhounds? That do seem to me a most horrible idea!"
+
+Bunting looked across at her, mildly astonished. "Why, 'twould be
+a very good idea, if 'twas possible to have bloodhounds in a town.
+But, there, how can that be done in London, full of butchers' shops,
+to say nothing of slaughter-yards and other places o' that sort?"
+
+But Daisy went on, and to her stepmother's shrinking ear there
+seemed a horrible thrill of delight; of gloating pleasure, in her
+fresh young voice.
+
+"Hark to this," she said:
+
+"A man who had committed a murder in a lonely wood near Blackburn
+was traced by the help of a bloodhound, and thanks to the sagacious
+instincts of the animal, the miscreant was finally convicted and
+hanged."
+
+"La, now! Who'd ever have thought of such a thing?" Bunting
+exclaimed, in admiration. "The newspapers do have some useful
+hints in sometimes, Joe."
+
+But young Chandler shook his head. "Bloodhounds ain't no use," he
+said; "no use at all! If the Yard was to listen to all the
+suggestions that the last few days have brought in--well, all I
+can say is our work would be cut out for us--not but what it's
+cut out for us now, if it comes to that!" He sighed ruefully. He
+was beginning to feel very tired; if only he could stay in this
+pleasant, cosy room listening to Daisy Bunting reading on and on
+for ever, instead of having to go out, as he would presently have
+to do, into the cold and foggy night!
+
+Joe Chandler was fast becoming very sick of his new job. There
+was a lot of unpleasantness attached to the business, too. Why,
+even in the house where he lived, and in the little cook-shop where
+he habitually took his meals, the people round him had taken to
+taunt him with the remissness of the police. More than that one of
+his pals, a man he'd always looked up to, because the young fellow
+had the gift of the gab, had actually been among those who had
+spoken at the big demonstration in Victoria Park, making a violent
+speech, not only against the Commissioner of the Metropolitan
+Police, but also against the Home Secretary.
+
+But Daisy, like most people who believe themselves blessed with the
+possession of an accomplishment, had no mind to leave off reading
+just yet.
+
+"Here's another notion!" she exclaimed. "Another letter, father!"
+
+
+"PARDON TO ACCOMPLICES.
+
+
+"DEAR Sir--During the last day or two several of the more
+Intelligent of my acquaintances have suggested that The Avenger,
+whoever he may be, must be known to a certain number of persons.
+It is impossible that the perpetrator of such deeds, however
+nomad he may be in his habits--"
+
+"Now I wonder what 'nomad' can be?" Daisy interrupted herself, and
+looked round at her little audience.
+
+"I've always declared the fellow had all his senses about him,"
+observed Bunting confidently.
+
+Daisy went on, quite satisfied:
+
+"--however nomad he may be in his habit; must have some habitat
+where his ways are known to at least one person. Now the person
+who knows the terrible secret is evidently withholding information
+in expectation of a reward, or maybe because, being an accessory
+after the fact, he or she is now afraid of the consequences. My
+suggestion, Sir, is that the Home Secretary promise a free pardon.
+The more so that only thus can this miscreant be brought to justice.
+Unless he was caught red-handed in the act, it will be exceedingly
+difficult to trace the crime committed to any individual, for
+English law looks very askance at circumstantial evidence."
+
+"There's something worth listening to in that letter," said Joe,
+leaning forward.
+
+Now he was almost touching Daisy, and he smiled involuntarily as
+she turned her gay, pretty little face the better to hear what he
+was saying.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Chandler?" she said interrogatively.
+
+"Well, d'you remember that fellow what killed an old gentleman in
+a railway carriage? He took refuge with someone--a woman his
+mother had known, and she kept him hidden for quite a long time.
+But at last she gave him up, and she got a big reward, too!"
+
+"I don't think I'd like to give anybody up for a reward," said
+Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic way.
+
+"Oh, yes, you would, Mr. Bunting," said Chandler confidently. "You'd
+only be doing what it's the plain duty of everyone--everyone, that
+is, who's a good citizen. And you'd be getting something for doing
+it, which is more than most people gets as does their duty."
+
+"A man as gives up someone for a reward is no better than a common
+informer," went on Bunting obstinately. "And no man 'ud care to be
+called that! It's different for you, Joe," he added hastily. "It's
+your job to catch those who've done anything wrong. And a man'd be
+a fool who'd take refuge--like with you. He'd be walking into the
+lion's mouth--" Bunting laughed.
+
+And then Daisy broke in coquettishly: "If I'd done anything I
+wouldn't mind going for help to Mr. Chandler," she said.
+
+And Joe, with eyes kindling, cried, "No. And if you did you needn't
+be afraid I'd give you up, Miss Daisy!"
+
+And then, to their amazement, there suddenly broke from Mrs. Bunting,
+sitting with bowed head over the table, an exclamation of impatience
+and anger, and, it seemed to those listening, of pain.
+
+"Why, Ellen, don't you feel well?" asked Bunting quickly.
+
+"Just a spasm, a sharp stitch in my side, like," answered the poor
+woman heavily. "It's over now. Don't mind me."
+
+"But I don't believe--no, that I don't--that there's anybody in
+the world who knows who The Avenger is," went on Chandler quickly.
+"It stands to reason that anybody'd give him up--in their own
+interest, if not in anyone else's. Who'd shelter such a creature?
+Why, 'twould be dangerous to have him in the house along with one!"
+
+"Then it's your idea that he's not responsible for the wicked things
+he does?" Mrs. Bunting raised her head, and looked over at Chandler
+with eager, anxious eyes.
+
+"I'd be sorry to think he wasn't responsible enough to hang!" said
+Chandler deliberately. "After all the trouble he's been giving us, too!"
+
+"Hanging'd be too good for that chap," said Bunting.
+
+"Not if he's not responsible," said his wife sharply. "I never
+heard of anything so cruel--that I never did! If the man's a
+madman, he ought to be in an asylum--that's where he ought to be."
+
+"Hark to her now!" Bunting looked at his Ellen with amusement.
+"Contrary isn't the word for her! But there, I've noticed the last
+few days that she seemed to be taking that monster's part. That's
+what comes of being a born total abstainer."
+
+Mrs. Bunting had got up from her chair. "What nonsense you do talk!"
+she said angrily. "Not but what it's a good thing if these murders
+have emptied the public-houses of women for a bit. England's drink
+is England's shame--I'll never depart from that! Now, Daisy, child,
+get up, do! Put down that paper. We've heard quite enough. You can
+be laying the cloth while I goes down the kitchen."
+
+"Yes, you mustn't be forgetting the lodger's supper," called out
+Bunting. "Mr. Sleuth don't always ring--" he turned to Chandler.
+"For one thing, he's often out about this time."
+
+"Not often--just now and again, when he wants to buy something,"
+snapped out Mrs. Bunting. "But I hadn't forgot his supper. He
+never do want it before eight o'clock."
+
+"Let me take up the lodger's supper, Ellen," Daisy's eager voice
+broke in. She had got up in obedience to her stepmother, and was
+now laying the cloth.
+
+"Certainly not! I told you he only wanted me to wait on him. You
+have your work cut out looking after things down here--that's where
+I wants you to help me."
+
+Chandler also got up. Somehow he didn't like to be doing nothing
+while Daisy was so busy. "Yes," he said, looking across at Mrs.
+Bunting, "I'd forgotten about your lodger. Going on all right, eh?"
+
+"Never knew so quiet and well-behaved a gentleman," said Bunting.
+"He turned our luck, did Mr. Sleuth."
+
+His wife left the room, and after she had gone Daisy laughed.
+"You'll hardly believe it, Mr. Chandler, but I've never seen this
+wonderful lodger. Ellen keeps him to herself, that she does! If I
+was father I'd be jealous!"
+
+Both men laughed. Ellen? No, the idea was too funny.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go. One can't always do
+just what one wants to do--not in this world, at any rate!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular,
+though both her husband and her stepdaughter were in the room. She
+was standing by the table, staring straight before her, and as she
+spoke she avoided looking at either Bunting or Daisy. There was in
+her voice a tone of cross decision, of thin finality, with which
+they were both acquainted, and to which each listener knew the other
+would have to bow.
+
+There was silence for a moment, then Daisy broke out passionately,
+"I don't see why I should go if I don't want to!" she cried.
+"You'll allow I've been useful to you, Ellen? 'Tisn't even as if
+you was quite well."
+
+"I am quite well--perfectly well!" snapped out Mrs. Bunting, and
+she turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her
+stepdaughter.
+
+"'Tain't often I has a chance of being with you and father." There
+were tears in Daisy's voice, and Bunting glanced deprecatingly at
+his wife.
+
+An invitation had come to Daisy--an invitation from her own dead
+mother's sister, who was housekeeper in a big house in Belgrave
+Square. "The family" had gone away for the Christmas holidays, and
+Aunt Margaret--Daisy was her godchild--had begged that her niece
+might come and spend two or three days with her.
+
+But the girl had already had more than one taste of what life was
+like in the great gloomy basement of 100 Belgrave Square. Aunt
+Margaret was one of those old-fashioned servants for whom the modern
+employer is always sighing. While "the family" were away it was
+her joy--she regarded it as a privilege--to wash sixty-seven pieces
+of very valuable china contained in two cabinets in the drawing-room;
+she also slept in every bed by turns, to keep them all well aired.
+These were the two duties with which she intended her young niece
+to assist her, and Daisy's soul sickened at the prospect.
+
+But the matter had to be settled at once. The letter had come an
+hour ago, containing a stamped telegraph form, and Aunt Margaret
+was not one to be trifled with.
+
+Since breakfast the three had talked of nothing else, and from the
+very first Mrs. Bunting had said that Daisy ought to go--that there
+was no doubt about it, that it did not admit of discussion. But
+discuss it they all did, and for once Bunting stood up to his wife.
+But that, as was natural, only made his Ellen harder and more set
+on her own view.
+
+"What the child says is true," he observed. "It isn't as if you
+was quite well. You've been took bad twice in the last few days
+--you can't deny of it, Ellen. Why shouldn't I just take a bus
+and go over and see Margaret? I'd tell her just how it is. She'd
+understand, bless you!"
+
+"I won't have you doing nothing of the sort!" cried Mrs. Bunting,
+speaking almost as passionately as her stepdaughter had done.
+"Haven't I a right to be ill, haven't I a right to be took bad,
+aye, and to feel all right again--same as other people?"
+
+Daisy turned round and clasped her hands. "Oh, Ellen!" she cried;
+"do say that you can't spare me! I don't want to go across to that
+horrid old dungeon of a place."
+
+"Do as you like," said Mrs. Bunting sullenly. "I'm fair tired of
+you both! There'll come a day, Daisy, when you'll know, like me,
+that money is the main thing that matters in this world; and when
+your Aunt Margaret's left her savings to somebody else just because
+you wouldn't spend a few days with her this Christmas, then you'll
+know what it's like to go without--you'll know what a fool you
+were, and that nothing can't alter it any more!"
+
+And then, with victory actually in her grasp, poor Daisy saw it
+snatched from her.
+
+"Ellen is right," Bunting said heavily. "Money does matter--a
+terrible deal--though I never thought to hear Ellen say 'twas the
+only thing that mattered. But 'twould be foolish--very, very
+foolish, my girl, to offend your Aunt Margaret. It'll only be
+two days after all--two days isn't a very long time."
+
+But Daisy did not hear her father's last words. She had already
+rushed from the room, and gone down to the kitchen to hide her
+childish tears of disappointment--the childish tears which came
+because she was beginning to be a woman, with a woman's natural
+instinct for building her own human nest.
+
+Aunt Margaret was not one to tolerate the comings of any strange
+young man, and she had a peculiar dislike to the police.
+
+"Who'd ever have thought she'd have minded as much as that!"
+Bunting looked across at Ellen deprecatingly; already his heart
+was misgiving him.
+
+"It's plain enough why she's become so fond of us all of a sudden,"
+said Mrs. Bunting sarcastically. And as her husband stared at her
+uncomprehendingly, she added, in a tantalising tone, "as plain as
+the nose on your face, my man."
+
+"What d'you mean?" he said. "I daresay I'm a bit slow, Ellen, but
+I really don't know what you'd be at?"
+
+"Don't you remember telling me before Daisy came here that Joe
+Chandler had become sweet on her last summer? I thought it only
+foolishness then, but I've come round to your view--that's all."
+
+Bunting nodded his head slowly. Yes, Joe had got into the way of
+coming very often, and there had been the expedition to that gruesome
+Scotland Yard museum, but somehow he, Bunting, had been so interested
+in the Avenger murders that he hadn't thought of Joe in any other
+connection--not this time, at any rate.
+
+"And do you think Daisy likes him?" There was an unwonted tone of
+excitement, of tenderness, in Bunting's voice.
+
+His wife looked over at him; and a thin smile, not an unkindly
+smile by any means, lit up her pale face. "I've never been one
+to prophesy," she answered deliberately. "But this I don't mind
+telling you, Bunting--Daisy'll have plenty o' time to get tired
+of Joe Chandler before they two are dead. Mark my words!"
+
+"Well, she might do worse," said Bunting ruminatingly. "He's as
+steady as God makes them, and he's already earning thirty-two
+shillings a week. But I wonder how Old Aunt'd like the notion?
+I don't see her parting with Daisy before she must."
+
+"I wouldn't let no old aunt interfere with me about such a thing
+as that!" cried Mrs. Bunting. "No, not for millions of gold!"
+And Bunting looked at her in silent wonder. Ellen was singing a
+very different tune now to what she'd sung a few minutes ago, when
+she was so keen about the girl going to Belgrave Square.
+
+"If she still seems upset while she's having her dinner," said his
+wife suddenly, "well, you just wait till I've gone out for something,
+and then you just say to her, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'
+--just that, and nothing more! She'll take it from you. And I
+shouldn't be surprised if it comforted her quite a lot."
+
+"For the matter of that, there's no reason why Joe Chandler shouldn't
+go over and see her there," said Bunting hesitatingly.
+
+"Oh, yes, there is," said Mrs. Bunting, smiling shrewdly. "Plenty of
+reason. Daisy'll be a very foolish girl if she allows her aunt to
+know any of her secrets. I've only seen that woman once, but I know
+exactly the sort Margaret is. She's just waiting for Old Aunt to
+drop off and then she'll want to have Daisy herself--to wait on
+her, like. She'd turn quite nasty if she thought there was a young
+fellow what stood in her way."
+
+She glanced at the dock, the pretty little eight-day clock which
+had been a wedding present from a kind friend of her last mistress.
+It had mysteriously disappeared during their time of trouble, and
+had as mysteriously reappeared three or four days after Mr. Sleuth's
+arrival.
+
+"I've time to go out with that telegram," she said briskly--somehow
+she felt better, different to what she had done the last few days--
+"and then it'll be done. It's no good having more words about it,
+and I expect we should have plenty more words if I wait till the
+child comes upstairs again."
+
+She did not speak unkindly, and Bunting looked at her rather
+wonderingly. Ellen very seldom spoke of Daisy as "the child"
+--in fact, he could only remember her having done so once before,
+and that was a long time ago. They had been talking over their
+future life together, and she had said, very solemnly, "Bunting,
+I promise I will do my duty--as much as lies in my power, that
+is--by the child."
+
+But Ellen had not had much opportunity of doing her duty by Daisy.
+As not infrequently happens with the duties that we are willing to
+do, that particular duty had been taken over by someone else who
+had no mind to let it go.
+
+"What shall I do if Mr. Sleuth rings?" asked Bunting, rather
+nervously. It was the first time since the lodger had come to them
+that Ellen had offered to go out in the morning.
+
+She hesitated. In her anxiety to have the matter of Daisy settled,
+she had forgotten Mr. Sleuth. Strange that she should have done so
+--strange, and, to herself, very comfortable and pleasant.
+
+"Oh, well, you can just go up and knock at the door and say I'll be
+back in a few minutes--that I had to go out with a message. He's
+quite a reasonable gentleman." She went into the back room to put
+on her bonnet and thick jacket for it was very cold--getting colder
+every minute.
+
+As she stood, buttoning her gloves--she wouldn't have gone out
+untidy for the world--Bunting suddenly came across to her. "Give
+us a kiss, old girl," he said. And his wife turned up her face.
+
+"One 'ud think it was catching!" she said, but there was a lilt in
+her voice.
+
+"So it is," Bunting briefly answered. "Didn't that old cook get
+married just after us? She'd never 'a thought of it if it hadn't
+been for you!"
+
+But once she was out, walking along the damp, uneven pavement, Mr.
+Sleuth revenged himself for his landlady's temporary forgetfulness.
+
+During the last two days the lodger had been queer, odder than usual,
+unlike himself, or, rather, very much as he had been some ten days
+ago, just before that double murder had taken place.
+
+The night before, while Daisy was telling all about the dreadful
+place to which Joe Chandler had taken her and her father, Mrs.
+Bunting had heard Mr. Sleuth moving about overhead, restlessly
+walking up and down his sitting-room. And later, when she took up
+his supper, she had listened a moment outside the door, while he
+read aloud some of the texts his soul delighted in--terrible texts
+telling of the grim joys attendant on revenge.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was so absorbed in her thoughts, so possessed with the
+curious personality of her lodger, that she did not look where she
+was going, and suddenly a young woman bumped up against her.
+
+She started violently and looked round, dazed, as the young person
+muttered a word of apology;--then she again fell into deep thought.
+
+It was a good thing Daisy was going away for a few days; it made the
+problem of Mr. Sleuth and his queer ways less disturbing. She,
+Ellen, was sorry she had spoken so sharp-like to the girl, but after
+all it wasn't wonderful that she had been snappy. This last night
+she had hardly slept at all. Instead, she had lain awake listening
+--and there is nothing so tiring as to lie awake listening for a
+sound that never comes.
+
+The house had remained so still you could have heard a pin drop. Mr.
+Sleuth, lying snug in his nice warm bed upstairs, had not stirred.
+Had he stirred his landlady was bound to have heard him, for his bed
+was, as we know, just above hers. No, during those long hours of
+darkness Daisy's light, regular breathing was all that had fallen on
+Mrs. Bunting's ears.
+
+And then her mind switched off Mr. Sleuth. She made a determined
+effort to expel him, to toss him, as it were, out of her thoughts.
+
+It seemed strange that The Avenger had stayed his hand, for, as Joe
+had said only last evening, it was full time that he should again
+turn that awful, mysterious searchlight of his on himself. Mrs.
+Bunting always visioned The Avenger as a black shadow in the centre
+a bright blinding light--but the shadow had no form or definite
+substance. Sometimes he looked like one thing, sometimes like
+another . . .
+
+Mrs. Bunting had now come to the corner which led up the street
+where there was a Post Office. But instead of turning sharp to the
+left she stopped short for a minute.
+
+There had suddenly come over her a feeling of horrible self-rebuke
+and even self-loathing. It was dreadful that she, of all women,
+should have longed to hear that another murder had been committed
+last night!
+
+Yet such was the shameful fact. She had listened all through
+breakfast hoping to hear the dread news being shouted outside; yes,
+and more or less during the long discussion which had followed on
+the receipt of Margaret's letter she had been hoping--hoping
+against hope--that those dreadful triumphant shouts of the
+newspaper-sellers still might come echoing down the Marylebone Road.
+And yet hypocrite that she was, she had reproved Bunting when he
+had expressed, not disappointment exactly--but, well, surprise,
+that nothing had happened last night.
+
+Now her mind switched off to Joe Chandler. Strange to think how
+afraid she had been of that young man! She was no longer afraid of
+him, or hardly at all. He was dotty--that's what was the matter
+with him, dotty with love for rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed little Daisy.
+Anything might now go on, right under Joe Chandler's very nose--but,
+bless you, he'd never see it! Last summer, when this affair, this
+nonsense of young Chandler and Daisy had begun, she had had very
+little patience with it all. In fact, the memory of the way Joe
+had gone on then, the tiresome way he would be always dropping in,
+had been one reason (though not the most important reason of all)
+why she had felt so terribly put about at the idea of the girl
+coming again. But now? Well, now she had become quite tolerant,
+quite kindly--at any rate as far as Joe Chandler was concerned.
+
+She wondered why.
+
+Still, 'twouldn't do Joe a bit of harm not to see the girl for a
+couple of days. In fact 'twould be a very good thing, for then he'd
+think of Daisy--think of her to the exclusion of all else. Absence
+does make the heart grow fonder--at first, at any rate. Mrs.
+Bunting was well aware of that. During the long course of hers
+and Bunting's mild courting, they'd been separated for about three
+months, and it was that three months which had made up her mind for
+her. She had got so used to Bunting that she couldn't do without
+him, and she had felt--oddest fact of all--acutely, miserably
+jealous. But she hadn't let him know that--no fear!
+
+Of course, Joe mustn't neglect his job--that would never do. But
+what a good thing it was, after all, that he wasn't like some of
+those detective chaps that are written about in stories--the sort
+of chaps that know everything, see everything, guess everything
+--even where there isn't anything to see, or know, or guess!
+
+Why, to take only one little fact--Joe Chandler had never shown
+the slightest curiosity about their lodger. . . .
+
+Mrs. Bunting pulled herself together with a start, and hurried
+quickly on. Bunting would begin to wonder what had happened to her.
+
+She went into the Post Office and handed the form to the young woman
+without a word. Margaret, a sensible woman, who was accustomed to
+manage other people's affairs, had even written out the words: "Will
+be with you to tea.--DAISY."
+
+It was a comfort to have the thing settled once for all. If anything
+horrible was going to happen in the next two or three days--it was
+just as well Daisy shouldn't be at home. Not that there was any real
+danger that anything would happen,--Mrs. Bunting felt sure of that.
+
+By this time she was out in the street again, and she began mentally
+counting up the number of murders The Avenger had committed. Nine,
+or was it ten? Surely by now The Avenger must be avenged? Surely by
+now, if--as that writer in the newspaper had suggested--he was a
+quiet, blameless gentleman living in the West End, whatever vengeance
+he had to wreak, must be satisfied?
+
+She began hurrying homewards; it wouldn't do for the lodger to ring
+before she had got back. Bunting would never know how to manage Mr.
+Sleuth, especially if Mr. Sleuth was in one of his queer moods.
+
+******
+
+Mrs. Bunting put the key into the front door lock and passed into
+the house. Then her heart stood still with fear and terror. There
+came the sound of voices--of voices she thought she did not know--
+in the sitting-room.
+
+She opened the door, and then drew a long breath. It was only Joe
+Chandler--Joe, Daisy, and Bunting, talking together. They stopped
+rather guiltily as she came in, but not before she had heard
+Chandler utter the words: "That don't mean nothing! I'll just run
+out and send another saying you won't come, Miss Daisy."
+
+And then the strangest smile came over Mrs. Bunting's face. There
+had fallen on her ear the still distant, but unmistakable, shouts
+which betokened that something had happened last night--something
+which made it worth while for the newspaper-sellers to come crying
+down the Marylebone Road.
+
+"Well?" she said a little breathlessly. "Well, Joe? I suppose
+you've brought us news? I suppose there's been another?"
+
+He looked at her, surprised. "No, that there hasn't, Mrs. Bunting
+--not as far as I know, that is. Oh, you're thinking of those
+newspaper chaps? They've got to cry out something," he grinned.
+"You wouldn't 'a thought folk was so bloodthirsty. They're just
+shouting out that there's been an arrest; but we don't take no
+stock of that. It's a Scotchman what gave himself up last night
+at Dorking. He'd been drinking, and was a-pitying of himself.
+Why, since this business began, there's been about twenty arrests,
+but they've all come to nothing."
+
+"Why, Ellen, you looks quite sad, quite disappointed," said Bunting
+jokingly. "Come to think of it, it's high time The Avenger was at
+work again." He laughed as he made his grim joke. Then turned to
+young Chandler: "Well, you'll be glad when its all over, my lad."
+
+"Glad in a way," said Chandler unwillingly. "But one 'ud have liked
+to have caught him. One doesn't like to know such a creature's at
+large, now, does one?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting had taken off her bonnet and jacket. "I must just go
+and see about Mr. Sleuth's breakfast," she said in a weary,
+dispirited voice, and left them there.
+
+She felt disappointed, and very, very depressed. As to the plot
+which had been hatching when she came in, that had no chance of
+success; Bunting would never dare let Daisy send out another
+telegram contradicting the first. Besides, Daisy's stepmother
+shrewdly suspected that by now the girl herself wouldn't care to
+do such a thing. Daisy had plenty of sense tucked away somewhere
+in her pretty little head. If it ever became her fate to live as
+a married woman in London, it would be best to stay on the right
+side of Aunt Margaret.
+
+And when she came into her kitchen the stepmother's heart became
+very soft, for Daisy had got everything beautifully ready. In fact,
+there was nothing to do but to boil Mr. Sleuth's two eggs. Feeling
+suddenly more cheerful than she had felt of late, Mrs. Bunting took
+the tray upstairs.
+
+"As it was rather late, I didn't wait for you to ring, sir," she
+said.
+
+And the lodger looked up from the table where, as usual, he was
+studying with painful, almost agonising intentness, the Book.
+"Quite right, Mrs. Bunting--quite right! I have been pondering
+over the command, 'Work while it is yet light.'"
+
+"Yes, sir?" she said, and a queer, cold feeling stole over her
+heart. "Yes, sir?"
+
+"'The spirit is willing, but the flesh--the flesh is weak,'" said
+Mr. Sleuth, with a heavy sigh.
+
+"You studies too hard, and too long--that's what's ailing you, sir,"
+said Mr. Sleuth's landlady suddenly.
+
+******
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went down again she found that a great deal had
+been settled in her absence; among other things, that Joe Chandler
+was going to escort Miss Daisy across to Belgrave Square. He
+could carry Daisy's modest bag, and if they wanted to ride instead
+of walk, why, they could take the bus from Baker Street Station
+to Victoria--that would land them very near Belgrave Square.
+
+But Daisy seemed quite willing to walk; she hadn't had a walk, she
+declared, for a long, long time--and then she blushed rosy red,
+and even her stepmother had to admit to herself that Daisy was very
+nice looking, not at all the sort of girl who ought to be allowed to
+go about the London streets by herself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Daisy's father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door,
+watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness.
+
+A yellow pall of fog had suddenly descended on London, and Joe had
+come a full half-hour before they expected him, explaining, rather
+lamely, that it was the fog which had brought him so soon.
+
+"If we was to have waited much longer, perhaps, 'twouldn't have been
+possible to walk a yard," he explained, and they had accepted,
+silently, his explanation.
+
+"I hope it's quite safe sending her off like that?" Bunting looked
+deprecatingly at his wife. She had already told him more than once
+that he was too fussy about Daisy, that about his daughter he was
+like an old hen with her last chicken.
+
+"She's safer than she would be, with you or me. She couldn't have
+a smarter young fellow to look after her."
+
+"It'll be awful thick at Hyde Park Corner," said Bunting. "It's
+always worse there than anywhere else. If I was Joe I'd 'a taken
+her by the Underground Railway to Victoria--that 'ud been the best
+way, considering the weather 'tis."
+
+"They don't think anything of the weather, bless you!" said his
+wife. "They'll walk and walk as long as there's a glimmer left for
+'em to steer by. Daisy's just been pining to have a walk with that
+young chap. I wonder you didn't notice how disappointed they both
+were when you was so set on going along with them to that horrid
+place."
+
+"D'you really mean that, Ellen?" Bunting looked upset. "I understood
+Joe to say he liked my company."
+
+"Oh, did you?" said Mrs. Bunting dryly. "I expect he liked it just
+about as much as we liked the company of that old cook who would go
+out with us when we was courting. It always was a wonder to me how
+the woman could force herself upon two people who didn't want her."
+
+"But I'm Daisy's father; and an old friend of Chandler," said Bunting
+remonstratingly. "I'm quite different from that cook. She was
+nothing to us, and we was nothing to her."
+
+"She'd have liked to be something to you, I make no doubt," observed
+his Ellen, shaking her head, and her husband smiled, a little
+foolishly.
+
+By this time they were back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and
+a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs.
+Bunting. It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit.
+The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and
+she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very
+unseemly and silly curiosity concerning the lodger. "You might
+just let me have one peep at him, Ellen?" she had pleaded, only
+that morning. But Ellen had shaken her head. "No, that I won't!
+He's a very quiet gentleman; but he knows exactly what he likes,
+and he don't like anyone but me waiting on him. Why, even your
+father's hardly seen him."
+
+But that, naturally, had only increased Daisy's desire to view Mr.
+Sleuth.
+
+There was another reason why Mrs. Bunting was glad that her
+stepdaughter had gone away for two days. During her absence young
+Chandler was far less likely to haunt them in the way he had taken
+to doing lately, the more so that, in spite of what she had said to
+her husband, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that Daisy would ask Joe
+Chandler to call at Belgrave Square. 'Twouldn't be human nature
+--at any rate, not girlish human nature--not to do so, even if
+Joe's coming did anger Aunt Margaret.
+
+Yes, it was pretty safe that with Daisy away they, the Buntings,
+would be rid of that young chap for a bit, and that would be a
+good thing.
+
+When Daisy wasn't there to occupy the whole of his attention, Mrs.
+Bunting felt queerly afraid of Chandler. After all, he was a
+detective--it was his job to be always nosing about, trying to
+find out things. And, though she couldn't fairly say to herself
+that he had done much of that sort of thing in her house, he might
+start doing it any minute. And then--then--where would she, and
+--and Mr. Sleuth, be?
+
+She thought of the bottle of red ink--of the leather bag which
+must be hidden somewhere--and her heart almost stopped beating.
+Those were the sort of things which, in the stories Bunting was
+so fond of reading, always led to the detection of famous
+criminals. . . .
+
+Mr. Sleuth's bell for tea rang that afternoon far earlier than
+usual. The fog had probably misled him, and made him think it
+later than it was.
+
+When she went up, "I would like a cup of tea now, and just one
+piece of bread-and-butter," the lodger said wearily. "I don't
+feel like having anything else this afternoon."
+
+"It's a horrible day," Mrs. Bunting observed, in a cheerier voice
+than usual. "No wonder you don't feel hungry, sir. And then it
+isn't so very long since you had your dinner, is it?"
+
+"No," he said absently. "No, it isn't, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+She went down, made the tea, and brought it up again. And then,
+as she came into the room, she uttered an exclamation of sharp
+dismay.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was dressed for going out. He was wearing his long
+Inverness cloak, and his queer old high hat lay on the table,
+ready for him to put on.
+
+"You're never going out this afternoon, sir?" she asked falteringly.
+"Why, the fog's awful; you can't see a yard ahead of you!"
+
+Unknown to herself, Mrs. Bunting's voice had risen almost to a
+scream. She moved back, still holding the tray, and stood between
+the door and her lodger, as if she meant to bar his way--to erect
+between Mr. Sleuth and the dark, foggy world outside a living
+barrier.
+
+"The weather never affects me at all," he said sullenly; and he
+looked at her with so wild and pleading a look in his eyes that,
+slowly, reluctantly, she moved aside. As she did so she noticed
+for the first time that Mr. Sleuth held something in his right
+hand. It was the key of the chiffonnier cupboard. He had been
+on his way there when her coming in had disturbed him.
+
+"It's very kind of you to be so concerned about me," he stammered,
+"but--but, Mrs. Bunting, you must excuse me if I say that I do
+not welcome such solicitude. I prefer to be left alone. I--I
+cannot stay in your house if I feel that my comings and goings are
+watched--spied upon."
+
+She pulled herself together. "No one spies upon you, sir," she
+said, with considerable dignity. "I've done my best to satisfy
+you--"
+
+"You have--you have!" he spoke in a distressed, apologetic tone.
+"But you spoke just now as if you were trying to prevent my doing
+what I wish to do--indeed, what I have to do. For years I have
+been misunderstood--persecuted"--he waited a moment, then in
+a hollow voice added the one word, "tortured! Do not tell me that
+you are going to add yourself to the number of my tormentors, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She stared at him helplessly. "Don't you be afraid I'll ever be
+that, sir. I only spoke as I did because--well, sir, because I
+thought it really wasn't safe for a gentleman to go out this
+afternoon. Why, there's hardly anyone about, though we're so near
+Christmas."
+
+He walked across to the window and looked out. "The fog is clearing
+somewhat; Mrs. Bunting," but there was no relief in his voice, rather
+was there disappointment and dread.
+
+Plucking up courage, she followed him. Yes, Mr. Sleuth was right.
+The fog was lifting--rolling off in that sudden, mysterious way in
+which local fogs sometimes do lift in London.
+
+He turned sharply from the window. "Our conversation has made me
+forget an important thing, Mrs. Bunting. I should be glad if you
+would just leave out a glass of milk and some bread-and-butter for
+me this evening. I shall not require supper when I come in, for
+after my walk I shall probably go straight upstairs to carry through
+a very difficult experiment."
+
+"Very good, sir." And then Mrs. Bunting left the lodger.
+
+But when she found herself downstairs in the fog-laden hall, for it
+had drifted in as she and her husband had stood at the door seeing
+Daisy off, instead of going in to Bunting she did a very odd thing
+--a thing she had never thought of doing in her life before. She
+pressed her hot forehead against the cool bit of looking-glass let
+into the hat-and-umbrella stand. "I don't know what to do!" she
+moaned to herself, and then, "I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"
+
+But though she felt that her secret suspense and trouble was becoming
+intolerable, the one way in which she could have ended her misery
+never occurred to Mrs. Bunting.
+
+In the long history of crime it has very, very seldom happened that
+a woman has betrayed one who has taken refuge with her. The
+timorous and cautious woman has not infrequently hunted a human
+being fleeing from his pursuer from her door, but she has not
+revealed the fact that he was ever there. In fact, it may almost
+be said that such betrayal has never taken place unless the betrayer
+has been actuated by love of gain, or by a longing for revenge. So
+far, perhaps because she is subject rather than citizen, her duty
+as a component part of civilised society weighs but lightly on
+woman's shoulders.
+
+And then--and then, in a sort of way, Mrs. Bunting had become
+attached to Mr. Sleuth. A wan smile would sometimes light up his
+sad face when he saw her come in with one of his meals, and when
+this happened Mrs. Bunting felt pleased--pleased and vaguely
+touched. In between those--those dreadful events outside, which
+filled her with such suspicion, such anguish and such suspense,
+she never felt any fear, only pity, for Mr. Sleuth.
+
+Often and often, when lying wide awake at night, she turned over
+the strange problem in her mind. After all, the lodger must have
+lived somewhere during his forty-odd years of life. She did not
+even know if Mr. Sleuth had any brothers or sisters; friends she
+knew he had none. But, however odd and eccentric he was, he had
+evidently, or so she supposed, led a quiet, undistinguished kind
+of life, till--till now.
+
+What had made him alter all of a sudden--if, that is, he had
+altered? That was what Mrs. Bunting was always debating fitfully
+with herself; and, what was more, and very terribly, to the point,
+having altered, why should he not in time go back to what he
+evidently had been--that is, a blameless, quiet gentleman?
+
+If only he would! If only he would!
+
+As she stood in the hall, cooling her hot forehead, all these
+thoughts, these hopes and fears, jostled at lightning speed through
+her brain.
+
+She remembered what young Chandler had said the other day--that
+there had never been, in the history of the world, so strange a
+murderer as The Avenger had proved himself to be.
+
+She and Bunting, aye, and little Daisy too, had hung, fascinated,
+on Joe's words, as he had told them of other famous series of
+murders which had taken place in the past, not only in England but
+abroad--especially abroad.
+
+One woman, whom all the people round her believed to be a kind,
+respectable soul, had poisoned no fewer than fifteen people in order
+to get their insurance money. Then there had been the terrible tale
+of an apparently respectable, contented innkeeper and his wife, who,
+living at the entrance to a wood, killed all those humble travellers
+who took shelter under their roof, simply for their clothes, and any
+valuables they possessed. But in all those stories the murderer or
+murderers always had a very strong motive, the motive being, in
+almost every case, a wicked lust for gold.
+
+At last, after having passed her handkerchief over her forehead, she
+went into the room where Bunting was sitting smoking his pipe.
+
+"The fog's lifting a bit," she said in an ill-assured voice. "I hope
+that by this time Daisy and that Joe Chandler are right out of it."
+
+But the other shook his head silently. "No such luck!" he said
+briefly. "You don't know what it's like in Hyde Park, Ellen. I
+expect 'twill soon be just as heavy here as 'twas half an hour ago!"
+
+She wandered over to the window, and pulled the curtain back.
+"Quite a lot of people have come out, anyway," she observed.
+
+"There's a fine Christmas show in the Edgware Road. I was thinking
+of asking if you wouldn't like to go along there with me."
+
+"No," she said dully. "I'm quite content to stay at home."
+
+She was listening--listening for the sounds which would betoken
+that the lodger was coming downstairs.
+
+At last she heard the cautious, stuffless tread of his rubber-soled
+shoes shuffling along the hall. But Bunting only woke to the fact
+when the front door shut to.
+
+"That's never Mr. Sleuth going out?" He turned on his wife,
+startled. "Why, the poor gentleman'll come to harm--that he will!
+One has to be wide awake on an evening like this. I hope he hasn't
+taken any of his money out with him."
+
+"'Tisn't the first time Mr. Sleuth's been out in a fog," said Mrs.
+Bunting sombrely.
+
+Somehow she couldn't help uttering these over-true words. And then
+she turned, eager and half frightened, to see how Bunting had taken
+what she said.
+
+But he looked quite placid, as if he had hardly heard her. "We
+don't get the good old fogs we used to get--not what people used
+to call 'London particulars.' I expect the lodger feels like Mrs.
+Crowley--I've often told you about her, Ellen?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting nodded.
+
+Mrs. Crowley had been one of Bunting's ladies, one of those he had
+liked best--a cheerful, jolly lady, who used often to give her
+servants what she called a treat. It was seldom the kind of treat
+they would have chosen for themselves, but still they appreciated
+her kind thought.
+
+"Mrs. Crowley used to say," went on Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic
+way, "that she never minded how bad the weather was in London, so
+long as it was London and not the country. Mr. Crowley, he liked
+the country best, but Mrs. Crowley always felt dull-like there.
+Fog never kept her from going out--no, that it didn't. She wasn't
+a bit afraid. But--" he turned round and looked at his wife--
+"I am a bit surprised at Mr. Sleuth. I should have thought him a
+timid kind of gentleman--"
+
+He waited a moment, and she felt forced to answer him.
+
+"I wouldn't exactly call him timid," she said, in a low voice, "but
+he is very quiet, certainly. That's why he dislikes going out when
+there are a lot of people bustling about the streets. I don't
+suppose he'll be out long."
+
+She hoped with all her soul that Mr. Sleuth would be in very soon
+--that he would be daunted by the now increasing gloom.
+
+Somehow she did not feel she could sit still for very long. She
+got up, and went over to the farthest window.
+
+The fog had lifted, certainly. She could see the lamp-lights on
+the other side of the Marylebone Road, glimmering redly; and
+shadowy figures were hurrying past, mostly making their way towards
+the Edgware Road, to see the Christmas shops.
+
+At last to his wife's relief, Bunting got up too. He went over to
+the cupboard where he kept his little store of books, and took one
+out.
+
+"I think I'll read a bit," he said. "Seems a long time since I've
+looked at a book. The papers was so jolly interesting for a bit,
+but now there's nothing in 'em."
+
+His wife remained silent. She knew what he meant. A good many days
+had gone by since the last two Avenger murders, and the papers had
+very little to say about them that they hadn't said in different
+language a dozen times before.
+
+She went into her bedroom and came back with a bit of plain sewing.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was fond of sewing, and Bunting liked to see her so
+engaged. Since Mr. Sleuth had come to be their lodger she had not
+had much time for that sort of work.
+
+It was funny how quiet the house was without either Daisy, or--or
+the lodger, in it.
+
+At last she let her needle remain idle, and the bit of cambric
+slipped down on her knee, while she listened, longingly, for Mr.
+Sleuth's return home.
+
+And as the minutes sped by she fell to wondering with a painful
+wonder if she would ever see her lodger again, for, from what she
+knew of Mr. Sleuth, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that if he got into any
+kind of--well, trouble outside, he would never betray where he
+had lived during the last few weeks.
+
+No, in such a case the lodger would disappear in as sudden a way
+as he had come. And Bunting would never suspect, would never know,
+until, perhaps--God, what a horrible thought--a picture published
+in some newspaper might bring a certain dreadful fact to Bunting's
+knowledge.
+
+But if that happened--if that unthinkably awful thing came to pass,
+she made up her mind, here and now, never to say anything. She also
+would pretend to be amazed, shocked, unutterably horrified at the
+astounding revelation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"There he is at last, and I'm glad of it, Ellen. 'Tain't a night
+you would wish a dog to be out in."
+
+Bunting's voice was full of relief, but he did not turn round and
+look at his wife as he spoke; instead, he continued to read the
+evening paper he held in his hand.
+
+He was still close to the fire, sitting back comfortably in his
+nice arm-chair. He looked very well--well and ruddy. Mrs. Bunting
+stared across at him with a touch of sharp envy, nay, more, of
+resentment. And this was very curious, for she was, in her own dry
+way, very fond of Bunting.
+
+"You needn't feel so nervous about him; Mr. Sleuth can look out for
+himself all right."
+
+Bunting laid the paper he had been reading down on his knee. "I
+can't think why he wanted to go out in such weather," he said
+impatiently.
+
+"Well, it's none of your business, Bunting, now, is it?"
+
+"No, that's true enough. Still, 'twould be a very bad thing for us
+if anything happened to him. This lodger's the first bit of luck
+we've had for a terrible long time, Ellen."
+
+Mrs. Bunting moved a little impatiently in her high chair. She
+remained silent for a moment. What Bunting had said was too obvious
+to be worth answering. Also she was listening, following in
+imagination her lodger's quick, singularly quiet progress--
+"stealthy" she called it to herself--through the fog-filled,
+lamp-lit hall. Yes, now he was going up the staircase. What
+was that Bunting was saying?
+
+"It isn't safe for decent folk to be out in such weather--no, that
+it ain't, not unless they have something to do that won't wait till
+to-morrow." The speaker was looking straight into his wife's narrow,
+colourless face. Bunting was an obstinate man, and liked to prove
+himself right. "I've a good mind to speak to him about it, that
+I have! He ought to be told that it isn't safe--not for the sort
+of man he is--to be wandering about the streets at night. I read
+you out the accidents in Lloyd's--shocking, they were, and all
+brought about by the fog! And then, that horrid monster 'ull soon
+be at his work again--"
+
+"Monster?" repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.
+
+She was trying to hear the lodger's footsteps overhead. She was
+very curious to know whether he had gone into his nice sitting-room,
+or straight upstairs, to that cold experiment-room, as he now always
+called it.
+
+But her husband went on as if he had not heard her, and she gave up
+trying to listen to what was going on above.
+
+"It wouldn't be very pleasant to run up against such a party as that
+in the fog, eh, Ellen?" He spoke as if the notion had a certain
+pleasant thrill in it after all.
+
+"What stuff you do talk!" said Mrs. Bunting sharply. And then she
+got up. Her husband's remarks had disturbed her. Why couldn't they
+talk of something pleasant when they did have a quiet bit of time
+together?
+
+Bunting looked down again at his paper, and she moved quietly about
+the room. Very soon it would be time for supper, and to-night she
+was going to cook her husband a nice piece of toasted cheese. That
+fortunate man, as she was fond of telling him, with mingled contempt
+and envy, had the digestion of an ostrich, and yet he was rather
+fanciful, as gentlemen's servants who have lived in good places
+often are.
+
+Yes, Bunting was very lucky in the matter of his digestion. Mrs.
+Bunting prided herself on having a nice mind, and she would never
+have allowed an unrefined word--such a word as "stomach," for
+instance, to say nothing of an even plainer term--to pass her
+lips, except, of course, to a doctor in a sick-room.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's landlady did not go down at once into her cold kitchen;
+instead, with a sudden furtive movement, she opened the door leading
+into her bedroom, and then, closing the door quietly, stepped back
+into the darkness, and stood motionless, listening.
+
+At first she heard nothing, but gradually there stole on her
+listening ears the sound of someone moving softly about in the
+room just overhead, that is, in Mr. Sleuth's bedroom. But, try as
+she might, it was impossible for her to guess what the lodger was
+doing.
+
+At last she heard him open the door leading out on the little
+landing. She could hear the stairs creaking. That meant, no doubt,
+that Mr. Sleuth would pass the rest of the evening in the cheerless
+room above. He hadn't spent any time up there for quite a long
+while--in fact, not for nearly ten days. 'Twas odd he chose to-night,
+when it was so foggy, to carry out an experiment.
+
+She groped her way to a chair and sat down. She felt very tired--
+strangely tired, as if she had gone through some great physical
+exertion.
+
+Yes, it was true that Mr. Sleuth had brought her and Bunting luck,
+and it was wrong, very wrong, of her ever to forget that.
+
+As she sat there she also reminded herself, and not for the first
+time, what the lodger's departure would mean. It would almost
+certainly mean ruin; just as his staying meant all sorts of good
+things, of which physical comfort was the least. If Mr. Sleuth
+stayed on with them, as he showed every intention of doing, it
+meant respectability, and, above all, security.
+
+Mrs. Bunting thought of Mr. Sleuth's money. He never received a
+letter, and yet he must have some kind of income--so much was
+clear. She supposed he went and drew his money, in sovereigns, out
+of a bank as he required it.
+
+Her mind swung round, consciously, deliberately, away from Mr.
+Sleuth.
+
+The Avenger? What a strange name! Again she assured herself that
+there would come a time when The Avenger, whoever he was, must feel
+satiated; when he would feel himself to be, so to speak, avenged.
+
+To go back to Mr. Sleuth; it was lucky that the lodger seemed so
+pleased, not only with the rooms, but with his landlord and landlady
+--indeed, there was no real reason why Mr. Sleuth should ever wish
+to leave such nice lodgings.
+
+******
+
+Mrs. Bunting suddenly stood up. She made a strong effort, and shook
+off her awful sense of apprehension and unease. Feeling for the
+handle of the door giving into the passage she turned it, and then,
+with light, firm steps, she went down into the kitchen.
+
+When they had first taken the house, the basement had been made by
+her care, if not into a pleasant, then, at any rate, into a very
+clean place. She had had it whitewashed, and against the still
+white walls the gas stove loomed up, a great square of black iron
+and bright steel. It was a large gas-stove, the kind for which one
+pays four shillings a quarter rent to the gas company, and here, in
+the kitchen, there was no foolish shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
+Mrs. Bunting was too shrewd a woman to have anything to do with that
+kind of business. There was a proper gas-meter, and she paid for
+what she consumed after she had consumed it.
+
+Putting her candle down on the well-scrubbed wooden table, she
+turned up the gas-jet, and blew out the candle.
+
+Then, lighting one of the gas-rings, she put a frying-pan on the
+stove, and once more her mind reverted, as if in spite of herself,
+to Mr. Sleuth. Never had there been a more confiding or trusting
+gentleman than the lodger, and yet in some ways he was so secret,
+so--so peculiar.
+
+She thought of the bag--that bag which had rumbled about so
+queerly in the chiffonnier. Something seemed to tell her that
+tonight the lodger had taken that bag out with him.
+
+And then she thrust away the thought of the bag almost violently
+from her mind, and went back to the more agreeable thought of Mr.
+Sleuth's income, and of how little trouble he gave. Of course,
+the lodger was eccentric, otherwise he wouldn't be their lodger
+at all--he would be living in quite a different sort of way with
+some of his relations, or with a friend in his own class.
+
+While these thoughts galloped disconnectedly through her mind,
+Mrs. Bunting went on with her cooking, preparing the cheese, cutting
+it up into little shreds, carefully measuring out the butter, doing
+everything, as was always her way, with a certain delicate and
+cleanly precision.
+
+And then, while in the middle of toasting the bread on which was to
+be poured the melted cheese, she suddenly heard sounds which startled
+her, made her feel uncomfortable.
+
+Shuffling, hesitating steps were creaking down the house.
+
+She looked up and listened.
+
+Surely the lodger was not going out again into the cold and foggy
+night--going out, as he had done the other evening, for a second
+time? But no; the sounds she heard, the sounds of now familiar
+footsteps, did not continue down the passage leading to the front
+door.
+
+Instead--Why, what was this she heard now? She began to listen
+so intently that the bread she was holding at the end of the
+toasting-fork grew quite black. With a start she became aware
+that this was so, and she frowned, vexed with herself. That came
+of not attending to one's work.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was evidently about to do what he had never yet done.
+He was coming down into the kitchen.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the thudding sounds, treading heavily on the
+kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Bunting's heart began to beat as if in
+response. She put out the flame of the gas-ring, unheedful of the
+fact that the cheese would stiffen and spoil in the cold air.
+
+Then she turned and faced the door.
+
+There came a fumbling at the handle, and a moment later the door
+opened, and revealed, as she had at once known and feared it would
+do, the lodger.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked even odder than usual. He was clad in a plaid
+dressing-gown, which she had never seen him wear before, though
+she knew that he had purchased it not long after his arrival. In
+his hand was a lighted candle.
+
+When he saw the kitchen all lighted up, and the woman standing in
+it, the lodger looked inexplicably taken aback, almost aghast.
+
+"Yes, sir? What can I do for you, sir? I hope you didn't ring, sir?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting held her ground in front of the stove. Mr. Sleuth had
+no business to come like this into her kitchen, and she intended to
+let him know that such was her view.
+
+"No, I--I didn't ring," he stammered awkwardly. "The truth is, I
+didn't know you were here, Mrs. Bunting. Please excuse my costume.
+My gas-stove has gone wrong, or, rather, that shilling-in-the-slot
+arrangement has done so. So I came down to see if you had a
+gas-stove. I am going to ask you to allow me to use it to-night for
+an important experiment I wish to make."
+
+Mrs. Bunting's heart was beating quickly--quickly. She felt
+horribly troubled, unnaturally so. Why couldn't Mr. Sleuth's
+experiment wait till the morning? She stared at him dubiously, but
+there was that in his face that made her at once afraid and pitiful.
+It was a wild, eager, imploring look.
+
+"Oh, certainly, sir; but you will find it very cold down here."
+
+"It seems most pleasantly warm," he observed, his voice full of
+relief, "warm and cosy, after my cold room upstairs."
+
+Warm and cosy? Mrs. Bunting stared at him in amazement. Nay, even
+that cheerless room at the top of the house must be far warmer and
+more cosy than this cold underground kitchen could possibly be.
+
+"I'll make you a fire, sir. We never use the grate, but it's in
+perfect order, for the first thing I did after I came into the house
+was to have the chimney swept. It was terribly dirty. It might
+have set the house on fire." Mrs. Bunting's housewifely instincts
+were roused. "For the matter of that, you ought to have a fire in
+your bedroom this cold night."
+
+"By no means--I would prefer not. I certainly do not want a fire
+there. I dislike an open fire, Mrs. Bunting. I thought I had told
+you as much."
+
+Mr. Sleuth frowned. He stood there, a strange-looking figure, his
+candle still alight, just inside the kitchen door.
+
+"I shan't be very long, sir. Just about a quarter of an hour. You
+could come down then. I'll have everything quite tidy for you. Is
+there anything I can do to help you?"
+
+"I do not require the use of your kitchen yet--thank you all the
+same, Mrs. Bunting. I shall come down later--altogether later--
+after you and your husband have gone to bed. But I should be much
+obliged if you would see that the gas people come to-morrow and
+put my stove in order. It might be done while I am out. That the
+shilling-in-the-slot machine should go wrong is very unpleasant.
+It has upset me greatly."
+
+"Perhaps Bunting could put it right for you, sir. For the matter
+of that, I could ask him to go up now."
+
+"No, no, I don't want anything of that sort done to-night. Besides,
+he couldn't put it right. I am something of an expert, Mrs. Bunting,
+and I have done all I could. The cause of the trouble is quite
+simple. The machine is choked up with shillings; a very foolish
+plan, so I always felt it to be."
+
+Mr. Sleuth spoke pettishly, with far more heat than he was wont to
+speak, but Mrs. Bunting sympathised with him in this matter. She
+had always suspected that those slot machines were as dishonest as
+if they were human. It was dreadful, the way they swallowed up
+the shillings! She had had one once, so she knew.
+
+And as if he were divining her thoughts, Mr. Sleuth walked forward
+and stared at the stove. "Then you haven't got a slot machine?" he
+said wonderingly. "I'm very glad of that, for I expect my experiment
+will take some time. But, of course, I shall pay you something for
+the use of the stove, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I wouldn't think of charging you anything for that.
+We don't use our stove very much, you know, sir. I'm never in the
+kitchen a minute longer than I can help this cold weather."
+
+Mrs. Bunting was beginning to feel better. When she was actually
+in Mr. Sleuth's presence her morbid fears would be lulled, perhaps
+because his manner almost invariably was gentle and very quiet.
+But still there came over her an eerie feeling, as, with him
+preceding her, they made a slow progress to the ground floor.
+
+Once there, the lodger courteously bade his landlady good-night,
+and proceeded upstairs to his own apartments.
+
+Mrs. Bunting returned to the kitchen. Again she lighted the stove;
+but she felt unnerved, afraid of she knew not what. As she was
+cooking the cheese, she tried to concentrate her mind on what she
+was doing, and on the whole she succeeded. But another part of her
+mind seemed to be working independently, asking her insistent
+questions.
+
+The place seemed to her alive with alien presences, and once she
+caught herself listening--which was absurd, for, of course, she
+could not hope to hear what Mr. Sleuth was doing two, if not three,
+flights upstairs. She wondered in what the lodger's experiments
+consisted. It was odd that she had never been able to discover what
+it was he really did with that big gas-stove. All she knew was
+that he used a very high degree of heat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The Buntings went to bed early that night. But Mrs. Bunting made
+up her mind to keep awake. She was set upon knowing at what hour
+of the night the lodger would come down into her kitchen to carry
+through his experiment, and, above all, she was anxious to know
+how long he would stay there.
+
+But she had had a long and a very anxious day, and presently she
+fell asleep.
+
+The church clock hard by struck two, and, suddenly Mrs. Bunting
+awoke. She felt put out, sharply annoyed with herself. How could
+she have dropped off like that? Mr. Sleuth must have been down
+and up again hours ago!
+
+Then, gradually, she became aware that there was a faint acrid
+odour in the room. Elusive, intangible, it yet seemed to encompass
+her and the snoring man by her side, almost as a vapour might have
+done.
+
+Mrs. Bunting sat up in bed and sniffed; and then, in spite of the
+cold, she quietly crept out of her nice, warm bedclothes, and
+crawled along to the bottom of the bed. When there, Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady did a very curious thing; she leaned over the brass rail
+and put her face close to the hinge of the door giving into the
+hall. Yes, it was from here that this strange, horrible odor was
+coming; the smell must be very strong in the passage.
+
+As, shivering, she crept back under the bedclothes, she longed to
+give her sleeping husband a good shake, and in fancy she heard
+herself saying, "Bunting, get up! There's something strange and
+dreadful going on downstairs which we ought to know about."
+
+But as she lay there, by her husband's side, listening with painful
+intentness for the slightest sound, she knew very well that she
+would do nothing of the sort.
+
+What if the lodger did make a certain amount of mess--a certain
+amount of smell--in her nice clean kitchen? Was he not--was he
+not an almost perfect lodger? If they did anything to upset him,
+where could they ever hope to get another like him?
+
+Three o'clock struck before Mrs. Bunting heard slow, heavy steps
+creaking up the kitchen stairs. But Mr. Sleuth did not go straight
+up to his own quarters, as she had expected him to do. Instead, he
+went to the front door, and, opening it, put on the chain. Then he
+came past her door, and she thought--but could not be sure--that
+he sat down on the stairs.
+
+At the end of ten minutes or so she heard him go down the passage
+again. Very softly he closed the front door. By then she had
+divined why the lodger had behaved in this funny fashion. He wanted
+to get the strong, acrid smell of burning--was it of burning wool?
+--out of the house.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting, lying there in the darkness, listening to the
+lodger creeping upstairs, felt as if she herself would never get
+rid of the horrible odour.
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt herself to be all smell.
+
+At last the unhappy woman fell into a deep, troubled sleep; and
+then she dreamed a most terrible and unnatural dream. Hoarse
+voices seemed to be shouting in her ear: "The Avenger close here!
+The Avenger close here!" "'Orrible murder off the Edgware Road!"
+"The Avenger at his work again!"
+
+And even in her dream Mrs. Bunting felt angered--angered and
+impatient. She knew so well why she was being disturbed by this
+horrid nightmare! It was because of Bunting--Bunting, who could
+think and talk of nothing else than those frightful murders, in
+which only morbid and vulgar-minded people took any interest.
+
+Why, even now, in her dream, she could hear her husband speaking
+to her about it:
+
+"Ellen"--so she heard Bunting murmur in her ear--"Ellen, my dear,
+I'm just going to get up to get a paper. It's after seven o'clock."
+
+The shouting--nay, worse, the sound of tramping, hurrying feet
+smote on her shrinking ears. Pushing back her hair off her forehead
+with both hands, she sat up and listened.
+
+It had been no nightmare, then, but something infinitely worse--
+reality.
+
+Why couldn't Bunting have lain quiet abed for awhile longer, and
+let his poor wife go on dreaming? The most awful dream would have
+been easier to bear than this awakening.
+
+She heard her husband go to the front door, and, as he bought the
+paper, exchange a few excited words with the newspaper-seller. Then
+he came back. There was a pause, and she heard him lighting the
+gas-ring in the sitting-room.
+
+Bunting always made his wife a cup of tea in the morning. He had
+promised to do this when they first married, and he had never yet
+broken his word. It was a very little thing and a very usual thing,
+no doubt, for a kind husband to do, but this morning the knowledge
+that he was doing it brought tears to Mrs. Bunting's pale blue eyes.
+This morning he seemed to be rather longer than usual over the job.
+
+When, at last, he came in with the little tray, Bunting found his
+wife lying with her face to the wall.
+
+"Here's your tea, Ellen," he said, and there was a thrill of eager,
+nay happy, excitement in his voice.
+
+She turned herself round and sat up. "Well?" she asked. "Well?
+Why don't you tell me about it?"
+
+"I thought you was asleep," he stammered out. "I thought, Ellen,
+you never heard nothing."
+
+"How could I have slept through all that din? Of course I heard.
+Why don't you tell me?"
+
+"I've hardly had time to glance at the paper myself," he said slowly.
+
+"You was reading it just now," she said severely, "for I heard the
+rustling. You begun reading it before you lit the gas-ring. Don't
+tell me! What was that they was shouting about the Edgware Road?"
+
+"Well," said Bunting, "as you do know, I may as well tell you. The
+Avenger's moving West--that's what he's doing. Last time 'twas
+King's Cross--now 'tis the Edgware Road. I said he'd come our way,
+and he has come our way!"
+
+"You just go and get me that paper," she commanded. "I wants to
+see for myself."
+
+Bunting went into the next room; then he came back and handed her
+silently the odd-looking, thin little sheet.
+
+"Why, whatever's this?" she asked. "This ain't our paper!"
+
+"'Course not," he answered, a trifle crossly. "It's a special early
+edition of the Sun, just because of The Avenger. Here's the bit
+about it"--he showed her the exact spot. But she would have found
+it, even by the comparatively bad light of the gas-jet now flaring
+over the dressing-table, for the news was printed in large, clear
+characters:--
+
+"Once more the murder fiend who chooses to call himself The Avenger
+has escaped detection. While the whole attention of the police,
+and of the great army of amateur detectives who are taking an
+interest in this strange series of atrocious crimes, were
+concentrating their attention round the East End and King's Cross,
+he moved swiftly and silently Westward. And, choosing a time when
+the Edgware Road is at its busiest and most thronged, did another
+human being to death with lightning-like quickness and savagery.
+
+"Within fifty yards of the deserted warehouse yard where he had
+lured his victim to destruction were passing up and down scores of
+happy, busy people, intent on their Christmas shopping. Into that
+cheerful throng he must have plunged within a moment of committing
+his atrocious crime. And it was only owing to the merest accident
+that the body was discovered as soon as it was--that is, just
+after midnight.
+
+"Dr. Dowtray, who was called to the spot at once, is of opinion that
+the woman had been dead at least three hours, if not four. It was at
+first thought--we were going to say, hoped--that this murder had
+nothing to do with the series which is now puzzling and horrifying
+the whole of the civilised world. But no--pinned on the edge of the
+dead woman's dress was the usual now familiar triangular piece of
+grey paper--the grimmest visiting card ever designed by the wit of
+man! And this time The Avenger has surpassed himself as regards his
+audacity and daring--so cold in its maniacal fanaticism and abhorrent
+wickedness."
+
+All the time that Mrs. Bunting was reading with slow, painful
+intentness, her husband was looking at her, longing, yet afraid, to
+burst out with a new idea which he was burning to confide even to his
+Ellen's unsympathetic ears.
+
+At last, when she had quite finished, she looked up defiantly.
+
+"Haven't you anything better to do than to stare at me like that?"
+she said irritably. "Murder or no murder, I've got to get up! Go
+away--do!"
+
+And Bunting went off into the next room.
+
+After he had gone, his wife lay back and closed her eyes. She tried
+to think of nothing. Nay, more--so strong, so determined was her
+will that for a few moments she actually did think of nothing. She
+felt terribly tired and weak, brain and body both quiescent, as does
+a person who is recovering from a long, wearing illness.
+
+Presently detached, puerile thoughts drifted across the surface of
+her mind like little clouds across a summer sky. She wondered if
+those horrid newspaper men were allowed to shout in Belgrave Square;
+she wondered if, in that case, Margaret, who was so unlike her
+brother-in-law, would get up and buy a paper. But no. Margaret
+was not one to leave her nice warm bed for such a silly reason as
+that.
+
+Was it to-morrow Daisy was coming back? Yes--to-morrow, not
+to-day. Well, that was a comfort, at any rate. What amusing things
+Daisy would be able to tell about her visit to Margaret! The girl
+had an excellent gift of mimicry. And Margaret, with her precise,
+funny ways, her perpetual talk about "the family," lent herself to
+the cruel gift.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting's mind--her poor, weak, tired mind--wandered
+off to young Chandler. A funny thing love was, when you came to
+think of it--which she, Ellen Bunting, didn't often do. There was
+Joe, a likely young fellow, seeing a lot of young women, and pretty
+young women, too,--quite as pretty as Daisy, and ten times more
+artful--and yet there! He passed them all by, had done so ever
+since last summer, though you might be sure that they, artful minxes,
+by no manner of means passed him by,--without giving them a thought!
+As Daisy wasn't here, he would probably keep away to-day. There
+was comfort in that thought, too.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful
+turgid flood. If Joe did come in, she must nerve herself to hear
+all that--that talk there'd be about The Avenger between him and
+Bunting.
+
+Slowly she dragged herself out of bed, feeling exactly as if she
+had just recovered from an illness which had left her very weak,
+very, very tired in body and soul.
+
+She stood for a moment listening--listening, and shivering, for
+it was very cold. Considering how early it still was, there
+seemed a lot of coming and going in the Marylebone Road. She could
+hear the unaccustomed sounds through her closed door and the tightly
+fastened windows of the sitting-room. There must be a regular
+crowd of men and women, on foot and in cabs, hurrying to the scene
+of The Avenger's last extraordinary crime.
+
+She heard the sudden thud made by their usual morning paper falling
+from the letter-box on to the floor of the hall, and a moment later
+came the sound of Bunting quickly, quietly going out and getting it.
+She visualised him coming back, and sitting down with a sigh of
+satisfaction by the newly-lit fire.
+
+Languidly she began dressing herself to the accompaniment of distant
+tramping and of noise of passing traffic, which increased in volume
+and in sound as the moments slipped by.
+
+******
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went down into her kitchen everything looked just
+as she had left it, and there was no trace of the acrid smell she
+had expected to find there. Instead, the cavernous, whitewashed
+room was full of fog, but she noticed that, though the shutters were
+bolted and barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had
+been widely opened to the air. She had left them shut.
+
+Making a "spill" out of a twist of newspaper--she had been taught
+the art as a girl by one of her old mistresses--she stooped and
+flung open the oven-door of her gas-stove. Yes, it was as she had
+expected, a fierce heat had been generated there since she had last
+used the oven, and through to the stone floor below had fallen a
+mass of black, gluey soot.
+
+Mrs. Bunting took the ham and eggs that she had bought the previous
+day for her own and Bunting's breakfast upstairs, and broiled them
+over the gas-ring in their sitting-room. Her husband watched her in
+surprised silence. She had never done such a thing before.
+
+"I couldn't stay down there," she said; "it was so cold and foggy.
+I thought I'd make breakfast up here, just for to-day."
+
+"Yes," he said kindly; "that's quite right, Ellen. I think you've
+done quite right, my dear."
+
+But, when it came to the point, his wife could not eat any of the
+nice breakfast she had got ready; she only had another cup of tea.
+
+"I'm afraid you're ill, Ellen?" Bunting asked solicitously.
+
+"No," she said shortly; "I'm not ill at all. Don't be silly! The
+thought of that horrible thing happening so close by has upset me,
+and put me off my food. Just hark to them now!"
+
+Through their closed windows penetrated the sound of scurrying feet
+and loud, ribald laughter. What a crowd; nay, what a mob, must be
+hastening busily to and from the spot where there was now nothing
+to be seen!
+
+Mrs. Bunting made her husband lock the front gate. "I don't want
+any of those ghouls in here!" she exclaimed angrily. And then,
+"What a lot of idle people there are in the world!" she said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Bunting began moving about the room restlessly. He would go to the
+window; stand there awhile staring out at the people hurrying past;
+then, coming back to the fireplace, sit down.
+
+But he could not stay long quiet. After a glance at his paper, up
+he would rise from his chair, and go to the window again.
+
+"I wish you'd stay still," his wife said at last. And then, a few
+minutes later, "Hadn't you better put your hat and coat on and go
+out?" she exclaimed.
+
+And Bunting, with a rather shamed expression, did put on his hat
+and coat and go out.
+
+As he did so he told himself that, after all, he was but human; it
+was natural that he should be thrilled and excited by the dreadful,
+extraordinary thing which had just happened close by. Ellen wasn't
+reasonable about such things. How queer and disagreeable she had
+been that very morning--angry with him because he had gone out
+to hear what all the row was about, and even more angry when he had
+come back and said nothing, because he thought it would annoy her
+to hear about it!
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Bunting forced herself to go down again into the
+kitchen, and as she went through into the low, whitewashed place,
+a tremor of fear, of quick terror, came over her. She turned and
+did what she had never in her life done before, and what she had
+never heard of anyone else doing in a kitchen. She bolted the door.
+
+But, having done this, finding herself at last alone, shut off from
+everybody, she was still beset by a strange, uncanny dread. She
+felt as if she were locked in with an invisible presence, which
+mocked and jeered, reproached and threatened her, by turns.
+
+Why had she allowed, nay encouraged, Daisy to go away for two days?
+Daisy, at any rate, was company--kind, young, unsuspecting company.
+With Daisy she could be her old sharp self. It was such a comfort
+to be with someone to whom she not only need, but ought to, say
+nothing. When with Bunting she was pursued by a sick feeling of
+guilt, of shame. She was the man's wedded wife--in his stolid way
+he was very kind to her, and yet she was keeping from him something
+he certainly had a right to know.
+
+Not for worlds, however, would she have told Bunting of her dreadful
+suspicion--nay, of her almost certainty.
+
+At last she went across to the door and unlocked it. Then she went
+upstairs and turned out her bedroom. That made her feel a little
+better.
+
+She longed for Bunting to return, and yet in a way she was relieved
+by his absence. She would have liked to feel him near by, and yet
+she welcomed anything that took her husband out of the house.
+
+And as Mrs. Bunting swept and dusted, trying to put her whole mind
+into what she was doing, she was asking herself all the time what
+was going on upstairs.
+
+What a good rest the lodger was having! But there, that was only
+natural. Mr. Sleuth, as she well knew, had been up a long time last
+night, or rather this morning.
+
+******
+
+Suddenly, the drawing-room bell rang. But Mr. Sleuth's landlady did
+not go up, as she generally did, before getting ready the simple meal
+which was the lodger's luncheon and breakfast combined. Instead, she
+went downstairs again and hurriedly prepared the lodger's food.
+
+Then, very slowly, with her heart beating queerly, she walked up, and
+just outside the sitting-room--for she felt sure that Mr. Sleuth had
+got up, that he was there already, waiting for her--she rested the
+tray on the top of the banisters and listened. For a few moments she
+heard nothing; then through the door came the high, quavering voice
+with which she had become so familiar:
+
+"'She saith to him, stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in
+secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there,
+and that her guests are in the depths of hell.'"
+
+There was a long pause. Mrs. Bunting could hear the leaves of
+her Bible being turned over, eagerly, busily; and then again Mr.
+Sleuth broke out, this time in a softer voice:
+
+"'She hath cast down many wounded from her; yea, many strong men
+have been slain by her.'" And in a softer, lower, plaintive tone
+came the words: "'I applied my heart to know, and to search, and
+to seek out wisdom and the reason of things; and to know the
+wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness.'"
+
+And as she stood there listening, a feeling of keen distress, of
+spiritual oppression, came over Mrs. Bunting. For the first time
+in her life she visioned the infinite mystery, the sadness and
+strangeness, of human life.
+
+Poor Mr. Sleuth--poor unhappy, distraught Mr. Sleuth! An
+overwhelming pity blotted out for a moment the fear, aye, and the
+loathing, she had been feeling for her lodger.
+
+She knocked at the door, and then she took up her tray.
+
+"Come in, Mrs. Bunting." Mr. Sleuth's voice sounded feebler, more
+toneless than usual.
+
+She turned the handle of the door and walked in. The lodger was
+not sitting in his usual place; he had taken the little round table
+on which his candle generally rested when he read in bed, out of
+his bedroom, and placed it over by the drawing-room window. On it
+were placed, open, the Bible and the Concordance. But as his
+landlady came in, Mr. Sleuth hastily closed the Bible, and began
+staring dreamily out of the window, down at the sordid, hurrying
+crowd of men and women which now swept along the Marylebone Road.
+
+"There seem a great many people out today," he observed, without
+looking round.
+
+"Yes, sir, there do."
+
+Mrs. Bunting began busying herself with laying the cloth and
+putting out the breakfast-lunch, and as she did so she was seized
+with a mortal, instinctive terror of the man sitting there.
+
+At last Mr. Sleuth got up and turned round. She forced herself to
+look at him. How tired, how worn, he looked, and--how strange!
+
+Walking towards the table on which lay his meal, he rubbed his hands
+together with a nervous gesture--it was a gesture he only made when
+something had pleased, nay, satisfied him. Mrs. Bunting, looking at
+him, remembered that he had rubbed his hands together thus when he
+had first seen the room upstairs, and realised that it contained a
+large gas-stove and a convenient sink.
+
+What Mr. Sleuth was doing now also reminded her in an odd way of a
+play she had once seen--a play to which a young man had taken her
+when she was a girl, unnumbered years ago, and which had thrilled
+and fascinated her. "Out, out, damned spot!" that was what the tall,
+fierce, beautiful lady who had played the part of a queen had said,
+twisting her hands together just as the lodger was doing now.
+
+"It's a fine day," said Mr. Sleuth, sitting down and unfolding his
+napkin. "The fog has cleared. I do not know if you will agree with
+me, Mrs. Bunting, but I always feel brighter when the sun is shining,
+as it is now, at any rate, trying to shine." He looked at her
+inquiringly, but Mrs. Bunting could not speak. She only nodded.
+However, that did not affect Mr. Sleuth adversely.
+
+He had acquired a great liking and respect for this well-balanced,
+taciturn woman. She was the first woman for whom he had experienced
+any such feeling for many years past.
+
+He looked down at the still covered dish, and shook his head. "I
+don't feel as if I could eat very much to-day," he said plaintively.
+And then he suddenly took a half-sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket.
+
+Already Mrs. Bunting had noticed that it was not the same waistcoat
+Mr. Sleuth had been wearing the day before.
+
+"Mrs. Bunting, may I ask you to come here?"
+
+And after a moment of hesitation his landlady obeyed him.
+
+"Will you please accept this little gift for the use you kindly
+allowed me to make of your kitchen last night?" he said quietly.
+"I tried to make as little mess as I could, Mrs. Bunting, but--
+well, the truth is I was carrying out a very elaborate experiment."
+
+Mrs. Bunting held out her hand, she hesitated, and then she took
+the coin. The fingers which for a moment brushed lightly against
+her palm were icy cold--cold and clammy. Mr. Sleuth was evidently
+not well.
+
+As she walked down the stairs, the winter sun, a scarlet ball
+hanging in the smoky sky, glinted in on Mr. Sleuth's landlady, and
+threw blood-red gleams, or so it seemed to her, on to the piece of
+gold she was holding in her hand.
+
+******
+
+The day went by, as other days had gone by in that quiet household,
+but, of course, there was far greater animation outside the little
+house than was usually the case.
+
+Perhaps because the sun was shining for the first time for some
+days, the whole of London seemed to be making holiday in that part
+of the town.
+
+When Bunting at last came back, his wife listened silently while he
+told her of the extraordinary excitement reigning everywhere. And
+then, after he had been talking a long while, she suddenly shot a
+strange look at him.
+
+"I suppose you went to see the place?" she said.
+
+And guiltily he acknowledged that he had done so.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, there wasn't anything much to see--not now. But, oh, Ellen,
+the daring of him! Why, Ellen, if the poor soul had had time to cry
+out--which they don't believe she had--it's impossible someone
+wouldn't 'a heard her. They say that if he goes on doing it like
+that--in the afternoon, like--he never will be caught. He must
+have just got mixed up with all the other people within ten seconds
+of what he'd done!"
+
+During the afternoon Bunting bought papers recklessly--in fact, he
+must have spent the best part of six-pence. But in spite of all the
+supposed and suggested clues, there was nothing--nothing at all new
+to read, less, in fact than ever before.
+
+The police, it was clear, were quite at a loss, and Mrs. Bunting
+began to feel curiously better, less tired, less ill, less--less
+terrified than she had felt through the morning.
+
+And then something happened which broke with dramatic suddenness the
+quietude of the day.
+
+They had had their tea, and Bunting was reading the last of the
+papers he had run out to buy, when suddenly there came a loud,
+thundering, double knock at the door.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. "Why, whoever can that be?" she
+said.
+
+But as Bunting got up she added quickly, "You just sit down again.
+I'll go myself. Sounds like someone after lodgings. I'll soon send
+them to the right-about!"
+
+And then she left the room, but not before there had come another
+loud double knock.
+
+Mrs. Bunting opened the front door. In a moment she saw that the
+person who stood there was a stranger to her. He was a big, dark
+man, with fierce, black moustaches. And somehow--she could not
+have told you why--he suggested a policeman to Mrs. Bunting's mind.
+
+This notion of hers was confirmed by the very first words he uttered.
+For, "I'm here to execute a warrant!" he exclaimed in a theatrical,
+hollow tone.
+
+With a weak cry of protest Mrs. Bunting suddenly threw out her arms
+as if to bar the way; she turned deadly white--but then, in an
+instant the supposed stranger's laugh rang out, with loud, jovial,
+familiar sound!
+
+"There now, Mrs. Bunting! I never thought I'd take you in as well
+as all that!"
+
+It was Joe Chandler--Joe Chandler dressed up, as she knew he
+sometimes, not very often, did dress up in the course of his work.
+
+Mrs. Bunting began laughing--laughing helplessly, hysterically,
+just as she had done on the morning of Daisy's arrival, when the
+newspaper-sellers had come shouting down the Marylebone Road.
+
+"What's all this about?" Bunting came out
+
+Young Chandler ruefully shut the front door. "I didn't mean to
+upset her like this," he said, looking foolish; "'twas just my silly
+nonsense, Mr. Bunting." And together they helped her into the
+sitting-room.
+
+But, once there, poor Mrs. Bunting went on worse than ever; she
+threw her black apron over her face, and began to sob hysterically.
+
+"I made sure she'd know who I was when I spoke," went on the young
+fellow apologetically. "But, there now, I have upset her. I am
+sorry!"
+
+"It don't matter!" she exclaimed, throwing the apron off her face,
+but the tears were still streaming from her eyes as she sobbed and
+laughed by turns. "Don't matter one little bit, Joe! 'Twas stupid
+of me to be so taken aback. But, there, that murder that's happened
+close by, it's just upset me--upset me altogether to-day."
+
+"Enough to upset anyone--that was," acknowledged the young man
+ruefully. "I've only come in for a minute, like. I haven't no
+right to come when I'm on duty like this--"
+
+Joe Chandler was looking longingly at what remains of the meal were
+still on the table.
+
+"You can take a minute just to have a bite and a sup," said Bunting
+hospitably; "and then you can tell us any news there is, Joe. We're
+right in the middle of everything now, ain't we?" He spoke with
+evident enjoyment, almost pride, in the gruesome fact.
+
+Joe nodded. Already his mouth was full of bread-and-butter. He
+waited a moment, and then: "Well I have got one piece of news--not
+that I suppose it'll interest you very much."
+
+They both looked at him--Mrs. Bunting suddenly calm, though her
+breast still heaved from time to time.
+
+"Our Boss has resigned!" said Joe Chandler slowly, impressively.
+
+"No! Not the Commissioner o' Police?" exclaimed Bunting.
+
+"Yes, he has. He just can't bear what's said about us any longer
+--and I don't wonder! He done his best, and so's we all. The
+public have just gone daft--in the West End, that is, to-day. As
+for the papers, well, they're something cruel--that's what they
+are. And the ridiculous ideas they print! You'd never believe the
+things they asks us to do--and quite serious-like."
+
+"What d'you mean?" questioned Mrs. Bunting. She really wanted to
+know.
+
+"Well, the Courier declares that there ought to be a house-to-house
+investigation--all over London. Just think of it! Everybody to
+let the police go all over their house, from garret to kitchen,
+just to see if The Avenger isn't concealed there. Dotty, I calls
+it! Why, 'twould take us months and months just to do that one
+job in a town like London."
+
+"I'd like to see them dare come into my house!" said Mrs. Bunting
+angrily.
+
+"It's all along of them blarsted papers that The Avenger went to
+work a different way this time," said Chandler slowly.
+
+Bunting had pushed a tin of sardines towards his guest, and was
+eagerly listening. "How d'you mean?" he asked. "I don't take
+your meaning, Joe."
+
+"Well, you see, it's this way. The newspapers was always saying
+how extraordinary it was that The Avenger chose such a peculiar
+time to do his deeds--I mean, the time when no one's about the
+streets. Now, doesn't it stand to reason that the fellow, reading
+all that, and seeing the sense of it, said to himself, 'I'll go on
+another tack this time'? Just listen to this!" He pulled a strip
+of paper, part of a column cut from a newspaper, out of his pocket:
+
+
+"'AN EX-LORD MAYOR OF LONDON ON THE AVENGER
+
+
+"'Will the murderer be caught? Yes,' replied Sir John, 'he will
+certainly be caught--probably when he commits his next crime. A
+whole army of bloodhounds, metaphorical and literal, will be on his
+track the moment he draws blood again. With the whole community
+against him, he cannot escape, especially when it be remembered that
+he chooses the quietest hour in the twenty-four to commit his crimes.
+
+"'Londoners are now in such a state of nerves--if I may use the
+expression, in such a state of funk--that every passer-by, however
+innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his
+avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one and
+three in the morning.'
+
+"I'd like to gag that ex-Lord Mayor!" concluded Joe Chandler
+wrathfully.
+
+Just then the lodger's bell rang.
+
+"Let me go up, my dear," said Bunting.
+
+His wife still looked pale and shaken by the fright she had had.
+
+"No, no," she said hastily. "You stop down here, and talk to Joe.
+I'll look after Mr. Sleuth. He may be wanting his supper just a
+bit earlier than usual to-day."
+
+Slowly, painfully, again feeling as if her legs were made of cotton
+wool, she dragged herself up to the first floor, knocked at the door,
+and then went in.
+
+"You did ring, sir?" she said, in her quiet, respectful way.
+
+And Mr. Sleuth looked up.
+
+She thought--but, as she reminded herself afterwards, it might have
+been just her idea, and nothing else--that for the first time the
+lodger looked frightened--frightened and cowed.
+
+"I heard a noise downstairs," he said fretfully, "and I wanted to
+know what it was all about. As I told you, Mrs. Bunting, when I
+first took these rooms, quiet is essential to me."
+
+"It was just a friend of ours, sir. I'm sorry you were disturbed.
+Would you like the knocker taken off to-morrow? Bunting'll be
+pleased to do it if you don't like to hear the sound of the knocks."
+
+"Oh, no, I wouldn't put you to such trouble as that." Mr. Sleuth
+looked quite relieved. "Just a friend of yours, was it, Mrs.
+Bunting? He made a great deal of noise."
+
+"Just a young fellow," she said apologetically. "The son of one of
+Bunting's old friends. He often comes here, sir; but he never did
+give such a great big double knock as that before. I'll speak to
+him about it."
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. Bunting. I would really prefer you did nothing of
+the kind. It was just a passing annoyance--nothing more!"
+
+She waited a moment. How strange that Mr. Sleuth said nothing of
+the hoarse cries which had made of the road outside a perfect Bedlam
+every hour or two throughout that day. But no, Mr. Sleuth made no
+allusion to what might well have disturbed any quiet gentleman at
+his reading.
+
+"I thought maybe you'd like to have supper a little earlier to-night,
+sir?"
+
+"Just when you like, Mrs. Bunting--just when it's convenient. I
+do not wish to put you out in any way."
+
+She felt herself dismissed, and going out quietly, closed the door.
+
+As she did so, she heard the front door banging to. She sighed
+--Joe Chandler was really a very noisy young fellow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mrs. Bunting slept well the night following that during which the
+lodger had been engaged in making his mysterious experiments in her
+kitchen. She was so tired, so utterly exhausted, that sleep came
+to her the moment she laid her head upon her pillow.
+
+Perhaps that was why she rose so early the next morning. Hardly
+giving herself time to swallow the tea Bunting had made and brought
+her, she got up and dressed.
+
+She had suddenly come to the conclusion that the hall and staircase
+required a thorough "doing down," and she did not even wait till
+they had eaten their breakfast before beginning her labours. It
+made Bunting feel quite uncomfortable. As he sat by the fire reading
+his morning paper--the paper which was again of such absorbing
+interest--he called out, "There's no need for so much hurry, Ellen.
+Daisy'll be back to-day. Why don't you wait till she's come home to
+help you?"
+
+But from the hall where she was busy dusting, sweeping, polishing,
+his wife's voice came back: "Girls ain't no good at this sort of
+work. Don't you worry about me. I feel as if I'd enjoy doing an
+extra bit of cleaning to-day. I don't like to feel as anyone could
+come in and see my place dirty."
+
+"No fear of that!" Bunting chuckled. And then a new thought struck
+him. "Ain't you afraid of waking the lodger?" he called out.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth slept most of yesterday, and all last night," she
+answered quickly. "As it is, I study him over-much; it's a long,
+long time since I've done this staircase down."
+
+All the time she was engaged in doing the hall, Mrs. Bunting left
+the sitting-room door wide open.
+
+That was a queer thing of her to do, but Bunting didn't like to get
+up and shut her out, as it were. Still, try as he would, he couldn't
+read with any comfort while all that noise was going on. He had
+never known Ellen make such a lot of noise before. Once or twice he
+looked up and frowned rather crossly.
+
+There came a sudden silence, and he was startled to see that. Ellen
+was standing in the doorway, staring at him, doing nothing.
+
+"Come in," he said, "do! Ain't you finished yet?"
+
+"I was only resting a minute," she said. "You don't tell me nothing.
+I'd like to know if there's anything--I mean anything new--in the
+paper this morning."
+
+She spoke in a muffled voice, almost as if she were ashamed of her
+unusual curiosity; and her look of fatigue, of pallor, made Bunting
+suddenly uneasy. "Come in--do!" he repeated sharply. "You've
+done quite enough--and before breakfast, too. 'Tain't necessary.
+Come in and shut that door."
+
+He spoke authoritatively, and his wife, for a wonder, obeyed him.
+
+She came in, and did what she had never done before--brought the
+broom with her, and put it up against the wall in the corner.
+
+Then she sat down.
+
+"I think I'll make breakfast up here," she said. "I--I feel cold,
+Bunting." And her husband stared at her surprised, for drops of
+perspiration were glistening on her forehead.
+
+He got up. "All right. I'll go down and bring the eggs up. Don't
+you worry. For the matter of that, I can cook them downstairs if
+you like."
+
+"No," she said obstinately. "I'd rather do my own work. You just
+bring them up here--that'll be all right. To-morrow morning we'll
+have Daisy to help see to things."
+
+"Come over here and sit down comfortable in my chair," he suggested
+kindly. "You never do take any bit of rest, Ellen. I never see'd
+such a woman!"
+
+And again she got up and meekly obeyed him, walking across the room
+with languid steps.
+
+He watched her, anxiously, uncomfortably.
+
+She took up the newspaper he had just laid down, and Bunting took
+two steps towards her.
+
+"I'll show you the most interesting bit" he said eagerly. "It's
+the piece headed, 'Our Special Investigator.' You see, they've
+started a special investigator of their own, and he's got hold of
+a lot of little facts the police seem to have overlooked. The man
+who writes all that--I mean the Special Investigator--was a
+famous 'tec in his time, and he's just come back out of his
+retirement o' purpose to do this bit of work for the paper. You
+read what he says--I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he ends by
+getting that reward! One can see he just loves the work of
+tracking people down."
+
+"There's nothing to be proud of in such a job," said his wife
+listlessly.
+
+"He'll have something to be proud of if he catches The Avenger!"
+cried Bunting. He was too keen about this affair to be put off
+by Ellen's contradictory remarks. "You just notice that bit about
+the rubber soles. Now, no one's thought o' that. I'll just tell
+Chandler--he don't seem to me to be half awake, that young man
+don't."
+
+"He's quite wide awake enough without you saying things to him!
+How about those eggs, Bunting? I feel quite ready for my breakfast
+even if you don't--"
+
+Mrs. Bunting now spoke in what her husband sometimes secretly
+described to himself as "Ellen's snarling voice."
+
+He turned away and left the room, feeling oddly troubled. There
+was something queer about her, and he couldn't make it out. He
+didn't mind it when she spoke sharply and nastily to him. He was
+used to that. But now she was so up and down; so different from
+what she used to be! In old days she had always been the same, but
+now a man never knew where to have her.
+
+And as he went downstairs he pondered uneasily over his wife's
+changed ways and manner.
+
+Take the question of his easy chair. A very small matter, no doubt,
+but he had never known Ellen sit in that chair--no, not even once,
+for a minute, since it had been purchased by her as a present for him.
+
+They had been so happy, so happy, and so--so restful, during that
+first week after Mr. Sleuth had come to them. Perhaps it was the
+sudden, dramatic change from agonising anxiety to peace and security
+which had been too much for Ellen--yes, that was what was the matter
+with her, that and the universal excitement about these Avenger
+murders, which were shaking the nerves of all London. Even Bunting,
+unobservant as he was, had come to realise that his wife took a
+morbid interest in these terrible happenings. And it was the more
+queer of her to do so that at first she refused to discuss them, and
+said openly that she was utterly uninterested in murder or crime of
+any sort.
+
+He, Bunting, had always had a mild pleasure in such things. In his
+time he had been a great reader of detective tales, and even now he
+thought there was no pleasanter reading. It was that which had first
+drawn him to Joe Chandler, and made him welcome the young chap as
+cordially as he had done when they first came to London.
+
+But though Ellen had tolerated, she had never encouraged, that sort
+of talk between the two men. More than once she had exclaimed
+reproachfully: "To hear you two, one would think there was no nice,
+respectable, quiet people left in the world!"
+
+But now all that was changed. She was as keen as anyone could be
+to hear the latest details of an Avenger crime. True, she took her
+own view of any theory suggested. But there! Ellen always had had
+her own notions about everything under the sun. Ellen was a woman
+who thought for herself--a clever woman, not an everyday woman by
+any manner of means.
+
+While these thoughts were going disconnectedly through his mind,
+Bunting was breaking four eggs into a basin. He was going to give
+Ellen a nice little surprise--to cook an omelette as a French chef
+had once taught him to do, years and years ago. He didn't know how
+she would take his doing such a thing after what she had said; but
+never mind, she would enjoy the omelette when done. Ellen hadn't
+been eating her food properly of late.
+
+And when he went up again, his wife, to his relief, and, it must be
+admitted, to his surprise, took it very well. She had not even
+noticed how long he had been downstairs, for she had been reading
+with intense, painful care the column that the great daily paper
+they took in had allotted to the one-time famous detective.
+
+According to this Special Investigator's own account he had
+discovered all sorts of things that had escaped the eye of the
+police and of the official detectives. For instance, owing, he
+admitted, to a fortunate chance, he had been at the place where
+the two last murders had been committed very soon after the double
+crime had been discovered--in fact within half an hour, and he
+had found, or so he felt sure, on the slippery, wet pavement
+imprints of the murderer's right foot.
+
+The paper reproduced the impression of a half-worn rubber sole.
+At the same time, he also admitted--for the Special Investigator
+was very honest, and he had a good bit of space to fill in the
+enterprising paper which had engaged him to probe the awful
+mystery--that there were thousands of rubber soles being worn in
+London. . . .
+
+And when she came to that statement Mrs. Bunting looked up, and
+there came a wan smile over her thin, closely-shut lips. It was
+quite true--that about rubber soles; there were thousands of
+rubber soles being worn just now. She felt grateful to the Special
+Investigator for having stated the fact so clearly.
+
+The column ended up with the words:
+
+"And to-day will take place the inquest on the double crime of ten
+days ago. To my mind it would be well if a preliminary public
+inquiry could be held at once. Say, on the very day the discovery
+of a fresh murder is made. In that way alone would it be possible
+to weigh and sift the evidence offered by members of the general
+public. For when a week or more has elapsed, and these same people
+have been examined and cross-examined in private by the police,
+their impressions have had time to become blurred and hopelessly
+confused. On that last occasion but one there seems no doubt
+that several people, at any rate two women and one man, actually
+saw the murderer hurrying from the scene of his atrocious double
+crime--this being so, to-day's investigation may be of the highest
+value and importance. To-morrow I hope to give an account of
+the impression made on me by the inquest, and by any statements
+made during its course."
+
+Even when her husband had come in with the tray Mrs. Bunting had
+gone on reading, only lifting up her eyes for a moment. At last he
+said rather crossly, "Put down that paper, Ellen, this minute! The
+omelette I've cooked for you will be just like leather if you don't
+eat it."
+
+But once his wife had eaten her breakfast--and, to Bunting's
+mortification, she left more than half the nice omelette untouched
+--she took the paper up again. She turned over the big sheets,
+until she found, at the foot of one of the ten columns devoted to
+The Avenger and his crimes, the information she wanted, and then
+uttered an exclamation under her breath.
+
+What Mrs. Bunting had been looking for--what at last she had found
+--was the time and place of the inquest which was to be held that
+day. The hour named was a rather odd time--two o'clock in the
+afternoon, but, from Mrs. Bunting's point of view, it was most
+convenient.
+
+By two o'clock, nay, by half-past one, the lodger would have had
+his lunch; by hurrying matters a little she and Bunting would have
+had their dinner, and--and Daisy wasn't coming home till tea-time.
+
+She got up out of her husband's chair. "I think you're right," she
+said, in a quick, hoarse tone. "I mean about me seeing a doctor,
+Bunting. I think I will go and see a doctor this very afternoon."
+
+"Wouldn't you like me to go with you?" he asked.
+
+"No, that I wouldn't. In fact I wouldn't go at all you was to go
+with me."
+
+"All right," he said vexedly. "Please yourself, my dear; you know
+best."
+
+"I should think I did know best where my own health is concerned."
+
+Even Bunting was incensed by this lack of gratitude. "'Twas I said,
+long ago, you ought to go and see the doctor; 'twas you said you
+wouldn't!" he exclaimed pugnaciously.
+
+"Well, I've never said you was never right, have I? At any rate,
+I'm going."
+
+"Have you a pain anywhere?" He stared at her with a look of real
+solicitude on his fat, phlegmatic face.
+
+Somehow Ellen didn't look right, standing there opposite him. Her
+shoulders seemed to have shrunk; even her cheeks had fallen in a
+little. She had never looked so bad--not even when they had been
+half starving, and dreadfully, dreadfully worked.
+
+"Yes," she said briefly, "I've a pain in my head, at the back of
+my neck. It doesn't often leave me; it gets worse when anything
+upsets me, like I was upset last night by Joe Chandler."
+
+"He was a silly ass to come and do a thing like that!" said Bunting
+crossly. "I'd a good mind to tell him so, too. But I must say,
+Ellen, I wonder he took you in--he didn't me!"
+
+"Well, you had no chance he should--you knew who it was," she said
+slowly.
+
+And Bunting remained silent, for Ellen was right. Joe Chandler had
+already spoken when he, Bunting, came out into the hall, and saw
+their cleverly disguised visitor.
+
+"Those big black moustaches," he went on complainingly, "and that
+black wig--why, 'twas too ridic'lous--that's what I call it!"
+
+"Not to anyone who didn't know Joe," she said sharply.
+
+"Well, I don't know. He didn't look like a real man--nohow. If
+he's a wise lad, he won't let our Daisy ever see him looking like
+that!" and Bunting laughed, a comfortable laugh.
+
+He had thought a good deal about Daisy and young Chandler the last
+two days, and, on the whole, he was well pleased.  It was a dull,
+unnatural life the girl was leading with Old Aunt. And Joe was
+earning good money. They wouldn't have long to wait, these two
+young people, as a beau and his girl often have to wait, as he,
+Bunting, and Daisy's mother had had to do, for ever so long before
+they could be married. No, there was no reason why they shouldn't
+be spliced quite soon--if so the fancy took them. And Bunting
+had very little doubt that so the fancy would take Joe, at any rate.
+
+But there was plenty of time. Daisy wouldn't be eighteen till the
+week after next. They might wait till she was twenty. By that
+time Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might have come into quite
+a tidy little bit of money.
+
+"What are you smiling at?" said his wife sharply.
+
+And he shook himself. "I--smiling? At nothing that I knows of."
+Then he waited a moment. "Well, if you will know, Ellen, I was
+just thinking of Daisy and that young chap Joe Chandler. He is
+gone on her, ain't he?"
+
+"Gone?" And then Mrs. Bunting laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly
+laugh. "Gone, Bunting?" she repeated. "Why, he's out o' sight
+--right, out of sight!"
+
+Then hesitatingly, and looking narrowly at her husband, she went on,
+twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke:--
+"I suppose he'll be going over this afternoon to fetch her? Or--or
+d'you think he'll have to be at that inquest, Bunting?"
+
+"Inquest? What inquest?" He looked at her puzzled.
+
+"Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by King's
+Cross."
+
+"Oh, no; he'd have no call to be at the inquest. For the matter o'
+that, I know he's going over to fetch Daisy. He said so last night
+--just when you went up to the lodger."
+
+"That's just as well." Mrs. Bunting spoke with considerable
+satisfaction. "Otherwise I suppose you'd ha' had to go. I wouldn't
+like the house left--not with us out of it. Mr. Sleuth would be
+upset if there came a ring at the door."
+
+"Oh, I won't leave the house, don't you be afraid, Ellen--not while
+you're out."
+
+"Not even if I'm out a good while, Bunting."
+
+"No fear. Of course, you'll be a long time if it's your idea to see
+that doctor at Ealing?"
+
+He looked at her questioningly, and Mrs. Bunting nodded. Somehow
+nodding didn't seem as bad as speaking a lie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Any ordeal is far less terrifying, far easier to meet with courage,
+when it is repeated, than is even a milder experience which is
+entirely novel.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had already attended an inquest, in the character of a
+witness, and it was one of the few happenings of her life which was
+sharply etched against the somewhat blurred screen of her memory.
+
+In a country house where the then Ellen Green had been staying for
+a fortnight with her elderly mistress, there had occurred one of
+those sudden, pitiful tragedies which occasionally destroy the
+serenity, the apparent decorum, of a large, respectable household.
+
+The under-housemaid, a pretty, happy-natured girl, had drowned
+herself for love of the footman, who had given his sweetheart cause
+for bitter jealousy. The girl had chosen to speak of her troubles
+to the strange lady's maid rather than to her own fellow-servants,
+and it was during the conversation the two women had had together
+that the girl had threatened to take her own life.
+
+As Mrs. Bunting put on her outdoor clothes, preparatory to going
+out, she recalled very clearly all the details of that dreadful
+affair, and of the part she herself had unwillingly played in it.
+
+She visualised the country inn where the inquest on that poor,
+unfortunate creature had been held.
+
+The butler had escorted her from the Hall, for he also was to give
+evidence, and as they came up there had been a look of cheerful
+animation about the inn yard; people coming and going, many women
+as well as men, village folk, among whom the dead girl's fate had
+aroused a great deal of interest, and the kind of horror which those
+who live on a dull countryside welcome rather than avoid.
+
+Everyone there had been particularly nice and polite to her, to
+Ellen Green; there had been a time of waiting in a room upstairs in
+the old inn, and the witnesses had been accommodated, not only with
+chairs, but with cake and wine.
+
+She remembered how she had dreaded being a witness, how she had
+felt as if she would like to run away from her nice, easy place,
+rather than have to get up and tell the little that she knew of the
+sad business.
+
+But it had not been so very dreadful after all. The coroner had
+been a kindly-spoken gentleman; in fact he had complimented her on
+the clear, sensible way she had given her evidence concerning the
+exact words the unhappy girl had used.
+
+One thing Ellen Green had said, in answer to a question put by
+an inquisitive juryman, had raised a laugh in the crowded,
+low-ceilinged room. "Ought not Miss Ellen Green," so the man had
+asked, "to have told someone of the girl's threat? If she had done
+so, might not the girl have been prevented from throwing herself
+into the lake?" And she, the witness, had answered, with some
+asperity--for by that time the coroner's kind manner had put her
+at her ease--that she had not attached any importance to what the
+girl had threatened to do, never believing that any young woman
+could be so silly as to drown herself for love!
+
+******
+
+Vaguely Mrs. Bunting supposed that the inquest at which she was
+going to be present this afternoon would be like that country
+inquest of long ago.
+
+It had been no mere perfunctory inquiry; she remembered very well
+how little by little that pleasant-spoken gentleman, the coroner,
+had got the whole truth out--the story, that is, of how that
+horrid footman, whom she, Ellen Green, had disliked from the first
+minute she had set eyes on him, had taken up with another young
+woman. It had been supposed that this fact would not be elicited
+by the coroner; but it had been, quietly, remorselessly; more, the
+dead girl's letters had been read out--piteous, queerly expressed
+letters, full of wild love and bitter, threatening jealousy. And
+the jury had censured the young man most severely; she remembered
+the look on his face when the people, shrinking back, had made a
+passage for him to slink out of the crowded room.
+
+Come to think of it now, it was strange she had never told Bunting
+that long-ago tale. It had occurred years before she knew him, and
+somehow nothing had ever happened to make her tell him about it.
+
+She wondered whether Bunting had ever been to an inquest. She longed
+to ask him. But if she asked him now, this minute, he might guess
+where she was thinking of going.
+
+And then, while still moving about her bedroom, she shook her head
+--no, no, Bunting would never guess such a thing; he would never,
+never suspect her of telling him a lie.
+
+Stop--had she told a lie? She did mean to go to the doctor after
+the inquest was finished--if there was time, that is. She wondered
+uneasily how long such an inquiry was likely to last. In this case,
+as so very little had been discovered, the proceedings would surely
+be very formal--formal and therefore short.
+
+She herself had one quite definite object--that of hearing the
+evidence of those who believed they had seen the murderer leaving
+the spot where his victims lay weltering in their still flowing
+blood. She was filled with a painful, secret, and, yes, eager
+curiosity to hear how those who were so positive about the matter
+would describe the appearance of The Avenger. After all, a lot of
+people must have seen him, for, as Bunting had said only the day
+before to young Chandler, The Avenger was not a ghost; he was a
+living man with some kind of hiding-place where he was known, and
+where he spent his time between his awful crimes.
+
+As she came back to the sitting-room, her extreme pallor struck her
+husband.
+
+"Why, Ellen," he said, "it is time you went to the doctor. You
+looks just as if you was going to a funeral. I'll come along with
+you as far as the station. You're going by train, ain't you? Not
+by bus, eh? It's a very long way to Ealing, you know."
+
+"There you go! Breaking your solemn promise to me the very first
+minute!" But somehow she did not speak unkindly, only fretfully
+and sadly.
+
+And Bunting hung his head. "Why, to be sure I'd gone and clean
+forgot the lodger! But will you be all right, Ellen? Why not wait
+till to-morrow, and take Daisy with you?"
+
+"I like doing my own business in my own way, and not in someone
+else's way!" she snapped out; and then more gently, for Bunting
+really looked concerned, and she did feel very far from well, "I'll
+be all right, old man. Don't you worry about me!"
+
+As she turned to go across to the door, she drew the black shawl
+she had put over her long jacket more closely round her.
+
+She felt ashamed, deeply ashamed, of deceiving so kind a husband.
+And yet, what could she do? How could she share her dreadful burden
+with poor Bunting? Why, 'twould be enough to make a man go daft.
+Even she often felt as if she could stand it no longer--as if she
+would give the world to tell someone--anyone--what it was that she
+suspected, what deep in her heart she so feared to be the truth.
+
+But, unknown to herself, the fresh outside air, fog-laden though it
+was, soon began to do her good. She had gone out far too little the
+last few days, for she had had a nervous terror of leaving the house
+unprotected, as also a great unwillingness to allow Bunting to come
+into contact with the lodger.
+
+When she reached the Underground station she stopped short. There
+were two ways of getting to St. Pancras--she could go by bus, or
+she could go by train. She decided on the latter. But before
+turning into the station her eyes strayed over the bills of the
+early afternoon papers lying on the ground.
+
+Two words,
+
+  THE AVENGER,
+
+stared up at her in varying type.
+
+Drawing her black shawl yet a little closer about her shoulders,
+Mrs. Bunting looked down at the placards. She did not feel inclined
+to buy a paper, as many of the people round her were doing. Her eyes
+were smarting, even now, from their unaccustomed following of the
+close print in the paper Bunting took in.
+
+Slowly she turned, at last, into the Underground station.
+
+And now a piece of extraordinary good fortune befell Mrs. Bunting.
+
+The third-class carriage in which she took her place happened to be
+empty, save for the presence of a police inspector. And once they
+were well away she summoned up courage, and asked him the question
+she knew she would have to ask of someone within the next few minutes.
+
+"Can you tell me," she said, in a low voice, "where death inquests
+are held"--she moistened her lips, waited a moment, and then
+concluded--"in the neighbourhood of King's Cross?"
+
+The man turned and, looked at her attentively. She did not look at
+all the sort of Londoner who goes to an inquest--there are many
+such--just for the fun of the thing. Approvingly, for he was a
+widower, he noted her neat black coat and skirt; and the plain
+Princess bonnet which framed her pale, refined face.
+
+"I'm going to the Coroner's Court myself." he said good-naturedly.
+"So you can come along of me. You see there's that big Avenger
+inquest going on to-day, so I think they'll have had to make other
+arrangements for--hum, hum--ordinary cases." And as she looked
+at him dumbly, he went on, "There'll be a mighty crowd of people at
+The Avenger inquest--a lot of ticket folk to be accommodated, to
+say nothing of the public."
+
+"That's the inquest I'm going to," faltered Mrs. Bunting. She could
+scarcely get the words out. She realised with acute discomfort,
+yes, and shame, how strange, how untoward, was that which she was
+going to do. Fancy a respectable woman wanting to attend a murder
+inquest!
+
+During the last few days all her perceptions had become sharpened
+by suspense and fear. She realised now, as she looked into the
+stolid face of her unknown friend, how she herself would have
+regarded any woman who wanted to attend such an inquiry from a
+simple, morbid feeling of curiosity. And yet--and yet that was
+just what she was about to do herself.
+
+"I've got a reason for wanting to go there," she murmured. It was
+a comfort to unburden herself this little way even to a stranger.
+
+"Ah!" he said reflectively. "A--a relative connected with one of
+the two victims' husbands, I presume?"
+
+And Mrs. Bunting bent her head.
+
+"Going to give evidence?" he asked casually, and then he turned and
+looked at Mrs. Bunting with far more attention than he had yet done.
+
+"Oh, no!" There was a world of horror, of fear in the speaker's voice.
+
+And the inspector felt concerned and sorry. "Hadn't seen her for
+quite a long time, I suppose?"
+
+"Never had, seen her. I'm from the country." Something impelled
+Mrs. Bunting to say these words. But she hastily corrected herself,
+"At least, I was."
+
+"Will he be there?"
+
+She looked at him dumbly; not in the least knowing to whom he was
+alluding.
+
+"I mean the husband," went on the inspector hastily. "I felt sorry
+for the last poor chap--I mean the husband of the last one--he
+seemed so awfully miserable. You see, she'd been a good wife and a
+good mother till she took to the drink."
+
+"It always is so," breathed out Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"Aye." He waited a moment. "D'you know anyone about the court?" he
+asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, don't you worry. I'll take you in along o' me. You'd never
+get in by yourself."
+
+They got out; and oh, the comfort of being in some one's charge, of
+having a determined man in uniform to look after one! And yet even
+now there was to Mrs. Bunting something dream-like, unsubstantial
+about the whole business.
+
+"If he knew--if he only knew what I know!" she kept saying over
+and over again to herself as she walked lightly by the big, burly
+form of the police inspector.
+
+"'Tisn't far--not three minutes," he said suddenly. "Am I walking
+too quick for you, ma'am?"'
+
+"No, not at all. I'm a quick walker."
+
+And then suddenly they turned a corner and came on a mass of people,
+a densely packed crowd of men and women, staring at a mean-looking
+little door sunk into a high wall.
+
+"Better take my arm," the inspector suggested. "Make way there!
+Make way!" he cried authoritatively; and he swept her through the
+serried ranks which parted at the sound of his voice, at the sight
+of his uniform.
+
+"Lucky you met me," he said, smiling. "You'd never have got
+through alone. And 'tain't a nice crowd, not by any manner of
+means."
+
+The small door opened just a little way, and they found themselves
+on a narrow stone-flagged path, leading into a square yard. A few
+men were out there, smoking.
+
+Before preceding her into the building which rose at the back of
+the yard, Mrs. Bunting's kind new friend took out his watch.
+"There's another twenty minutes before they'll begin," he said.
+"There's the mortuary"--he pointed with his thumb to a low room
+built out to the right of the court. "Would you like to go in and
+see them?" he whispered.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried, in a tone of extreme horror. And he looked
+down at her with sympathy, and with increased respect. She was a
+nice, respectable woman, she was. She had not come here imbued
+with any morbid, horrible curiosity, but because she thought it
+her duty to do so. He suspected her of being sister-in-law to
+one of The Avenger's victims.
+
+They walked through into a big room or hall, now full of men
+talking in subdued yet eager, animated tones.
+
+"I think you'd better sit down here," he said considerately, and,
+leading her to one of the benches that stood out from the whitewashed
+walls--"unless you'd rather be with the witnesses, that is."
+
+But again she said, "Oh, no!" And then, with an effort, "Oughtn't
+I to go into the court now, if it's likely to be so full?"
+
+"Don't you worry," he said kindly. "I'll see you get a proper place.
+I must leave you now for a minute, but I'll come back in good time
+and look after you."
+
+She raised the thick veil she had pulled down over her face while
+they were going through that sinister, wolfish-looking crowd outside,
+and looked about her.
+
+Many of the gentlemen--they mostly wore tall hats and good overcoats
+--standing round and about her looked vaguely familiar. She picked
+out one at once. He was a famous journalist, whose shrewd, animated
+face was familiar to her owing to the fact that it was widely
+advertised in connection with a preparation for the hair--the
+preparation which in happier, more prosperous days Bunting had had
+great faith in, and used, or so he always said, with great benefit to
+himself. This gentleman was the centre of an eager circle; half a
+dozen men were talking to him, listening deferentially when he spoke,
+and each of these men, so Mrs. Bunting realised, was a Somebody.
+
+How strange, how amazing, to reflect that from all parts of London,
+from their doubtless important avocations, one unseen, mysterious
+beckoner had brought all these men here together, to this sordid
+place, on this bitterly cold, dreary day. Here they were, all
+thinking of, talking of, evoking one unknown, mysterious personality
+--that of the shadowy and yet terribly real human being who chose
+to call himself The Avenger. And somewhere, not so very far away
+from them all The Avenger was keeping these clever, astute, highly
+trained minds--aye, and bodies, too--at bay.
+
+Even Mrs. Bunting, sitting here unnoticed, realised the irony of her
+presence among them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that she had been sitting there a long
+time--it was really about a quarter of an hour--when her official
+friend came back.
+
+"Better come along now," he whispered; "it'll begin soon."
+
+She followed him out into a passage, up a row of steep stone steps,
+and so into the Coroner's Court.
+
+The court was big, well-lighted room, in some ways not unlike a
+chapel, the more so that a kind of gallery ran half-way round, a
+gallery evidently set aside for the general public, for it was now
+crammed to its utmost capacity.
+
+Mrs. Bunting glanced timidly towards the serried row of faces. Had
+it not been for her good fortune in meeting the man she was now
+following, it was there that she would have had to try and make her
+way. And she would have failed. Those people had rushed in the
+moment the doors were opened, pushing, fighting their way in a way
+she could never have pushed or fought.
+
+There were just a few women among them, set, determined-looking
+women, belonging to every class, but made one by their love of
+sensation and their power of forcing their way in where they wanted
+to be. But the women were few; the great majority of those standing
+there were men--men who were also representative of every class of
+Londoner.
+
+The centre of the court was like an arena; it was sunk two or three
+steps below the surrounding gallery. Just now it was comparatively
+clear of people, save for the benches on which sat the men who were
+to compose the jury. Some way from these men, huddled together in
+a kind of big pew, stood seven people--three women and four men.
+
+"D'you see the witnesses?" whispered the inspector, pointing these
+out to her. He supposed her to know one of them with familiar
+knowledge, but, if that were so, she made no sign.
+
+Between the windows, facing the whole room, was a kind of little
+platform, on which stood a desk and an arm-chair. Mrs. Bunting
+guessed rightly that it was there the coroner would sit. And to
+the left of the platform was the witness-stand, also raised
+considerably above the jury.
+
+Amazingly different, and far, far more grim and awe-inspiring than
+the scene of the inquest which had taken place so long ago, on that
+bright April day, in the village inn. There the coroner had sat on
+the same level as the jury, and the witnesses had simply stepped
+forward one by one, and taken their place before him.
+
+Looking round her fearfully, Mrs. Bunting thought she would surely
+die if ever she were exposed to the ordeal of standing in that
+curious box-like stand, and she stared across at the bench where sat
+the seven witnesses with a feeling of sincere pity in her heart.
+
+But even she soon realised that her pity was wasted. Each woman
+witness looked eager, excited, and animated; well pleased to be the
+centre of attention and attraction to the general public. It was
+plain each was enjoying her part of important, if humble, actress
+in the thrilling drama which was now absorbing the attention of all
+London--it might almost be said of the whole world.
+
+Looking at these women, Mrs. Bunting wondered vaguely which was
+which. Was it that rather draggle-tailed-looking young person who
+had certainly, or almost certainly, seen The Avenger within ten
+seconds of the double crime being committed? The woman who, aroused
+by one of his victims' cry of terror, had rushed to her window and
+seen the murderer's shadowy form pass swiftly by in the fog?
+
+Yet another woman, so Mrs. Bunting now remembered, had given a most
+circumstantial account of what The Avenger looked like, for he, it
+was supposed, had actually brushed by her as he passed.
+
+Those two women now before her had been interrogated and
+cross-examined again and again, not only by the police, but by
+representatives of every newspaper in London. It was from what they
+had both said--unluckily their accounts materially differed--that
+that official description of The Avenger had been worked up--that
+which described him as being a good-looking, respectable young fellow
+of twenty-eight, carrying a newspaper parcel.
+
+As for the third woman, she was doubtless an acquaintance, a boon
+companion of the dead.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked away from the witnesses, and focused her gaze
+on another unfamiliar sight. Specially prominent, running indeed
+through the whole length of the shut-in space, that is, from the
+coroner's high dais right across to the opening in the wooden barrier,
+was an ink-splashed table at which, when she had first taken her
+place, there had been sitting three men busily sketching; but now
+every seat at the table was occupied by tired, intelligent-looking
+men, each with a notebook, or with some loose sheets of paper,
+before him.
+
+"Them's the reporters," whispered her friend. "They don't like
+coming till the last minute, for they has to be the last to go.
+At an ordinary inquest there are only two--maybe three--attending,
+but now every paper in the kingdom has pretty well applied for a
+pass to that reporters' table."
+
+He looked consideringly down into the well of the court. "Now let
+me see what I can do for you--"
+
+Then he beckoned to the coroner's officer: "Perhaps you could put
+this lady just over there, in a corner by herself? Related to a
+relation of the deceased, but doesn't want to be--" He whispered
+a word or two, and the other nodded sympathetically, and looked at
+Mrs. Bunting with interest. "I'll put her just here," he muttered.
+"There's no one coming there to-day. You see, there are only seven
+witnesses--sometimes we have a lot more than that."
+
+And he kindly put her on a now empty bench opposite to where the
+seven witnesses stood and sat with their eager, set faces, ready
+--aye, more than ready--to play their part.
+
+For a moment every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but
+soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised
+that she had nothing to do with the case. She was evidently there
+as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a "friend at
+court," and so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having to
+stand in the crowd.
+
+But she was not long left in isolation. Very soon some of the
+important-looking gentlemen she had seen downstairs came into the
+court, and were ushered over to her seat while two or three among
+them, including the famous writer whose face was so familiar that
+it almost seemed to Mrs. Bunting like that of a kindly acquaintance,
+were accommodated at the reporters' table.
+
+"Gentlemen, the Coroner."
+
+The jury stood up, shuffling their feet, and then sat down again;
+over the spectators there fell a sudden silence.
+
+And then what immediately followed recalled to Mrs. Bunting, for the
+first time, that informal little country inquest of long ago.
+
+First came the "Oyez! Oyez!" the old Norman-French summons to all
+whose business it is to attend a solemn inquiry into the death
+--sudden, unexplained, terrible--of a fellow-being.
+
+The jury--there were fourteen of them--all stood up again. They
+raised their hands and solemnly chanted together the curious words
+of their oath.
+
+Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences 'twixt the coroner
+and his officer.
+
+Yes, everything was in order. The jury had viewed the bodies--he
+quickly corrected himself--the body, for, technically speaking, the
+inquest just about to be held only concerned one body.
+
+And then, amid a silence so absolute that the slightest rustle could
+be heard through the court, the coroner--a clever-looking gentleman,
+though not so old as Mrs. Bunting thought he ought to have been to
+occupy so important a position on so important a day--gave a little
+history, as it were, of the terrible and mysterious Avenger crimes.
+
+He spoke very clearly, warming to his work as he went on.
+
+He told them that he had been present at the inquest held on one of
+The Avenger's former victims. "I only went through professional
+curiosity," he threw in by way of parenthesis, "little thinking,
+gentlemen, that the inquest on one of these unhappy creatures would
+ever be held in my court."
+
+On and on, he went, though he had, in truth, but little to say, and
+though that little was known to every one of his listeners.
+
+Mrs. Bunting heard one of the older gentlemen sitting near her
+whisper to another: "Drawing it out all he can; that's what he's
+doing. Having the time of his life, evidently!" And then the other
+whispered back, so low that she could only just catch the words,
+"Aye, aye. But he's a good chap--I knew his father; we were at
+school together. Takes his job very seriously, you know--he does
+to-day, at any rate."
+
+******
+
+She was listening intently, waiting for a word, a sentence, which
+would relieve her hidden terrors, or, on the other hand, confirm
+them. But the word, the sentence, was never uttered.
+
+And yet, at the very end of his long peroration, the coroner did
+throw out a hint which might mean anything--or nothing.
+
+"I am glad to say that we hope to obtain such evidence to-day as
+will in time lead to the apprehension of the miscreant who has
+committed, and is still committing, these terrible crimes."
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared uneasily up into the coroner's firm,
+determined-looking face. What did he mean by that? Was there any
+new evidence--evidence of which Joe Chandler, for instance, was
+ignorant? And, as if in answer to the unspoken question, her heart
+gave a sudden leap, for a big, burly man had taken his place in the
+witness-box--a policeman who had not been sitting with the other
+witnesses.
+
+But soon her uneasy terror became stilled. This witness was simply
+the constable who had found the first body. In quick, business-like
+tones he described exactly what had happened to him on that cold,
+foggy morning ten days ago. He was shown a plan, and he marked it
+slowly, carefully, with a thick finger. That was the exact place
+--no, he was making a mistake--that was the place where the other
+body had lain. He explained apologetically that he had got rather
+mixed up between the two bodies--that of Johanna Cobbett and Sophy
+Hurtle.
+
+And then the coroner intervened authoritatively: "For the purpose
+of this inquiry," he said, "we must, I think, for a moment consider
+the two murders together."
+
+After that, the witness went on far more comfortably; and as he
+proceeded, in a quick monotone, the full and deadly horror of
+The Avenger's acts came over Mrs. Bunting in a great seething flood
+of sick fear and--and, yes, remorse.
+
+Up to now she had given very little thought--if, indeed, any thought
+--to the drink-sodden victims of The Avenger. It was he who had
+filled her thoughts,--he and those who were trying to track him down.
+But now? Now she felt sick and sorry she had come here to-day. She
+wondered if she would ever be able to get the vision the policeman's
+words had conjured up out of her mind--out of her memory.
+
+And then there came an eager stir of excitement and of attention
+throughout the whole court, for the policeman had stepped down out of
+the witness-box, and one of the women witnesses was being conducted to
+his place.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked with interest and sympathy at the woman,
+remembering how she herself had trembled with fear, trembled as that
+poor, bedraggled, common-looking person was trembling now. The woman
+had looked so cheerful, so--so well pleased with herself till a
+minute ago, but now she had become very pale, and she looked round
+her as a hunted animal might have done.
+
+But the coroner was very kind, very soothing and gentle in his
+manner, just as that other coroner had been when dealing with Ellen
+Green at the inquest on that poor drowned girl.
+
+After the witness had repeated in a toneless voice the solemn words
+of the oath, she began to be taken, step by step, though her story.
+At once Mrs. Bunting realised that this was the woman who claimed
+to have seen The Avenger from her bedroom window. Gaining confidence,
+as she went on, the witness described how she had heard a long-drawn,
+stifled screech, and, aroused from deep sleep, had instinctively
+jumped out of bed and rushed to her window.
+
+The coroner looked down at something lying on his desk. "Let me
+see! Here is the plan. Yes--I think I understand that the house
+in which you are lodging exactly faces the alley where the two crimes
+were committed?"
+
+And there arose a quick, futile discussion. The house did not face
+the alley, but the window of the witness's bedroom faced the alley.
+
+"A distinction without a difference," said the coroner testily.
+"And now tell us as clearly and quickly as you can what you saw when
+you looked out."
+
+There fell a dead silence on the crowded court. And then the woman
+broke out, speaking more volubly and firmly than she had yet done.
+"I saw 'im!" she cried. "I shall never forget it--no, not till my
+dying day!" And she looked round defiantly.
+
+Mrs. Bunting suddenly remembered a chat one of the newspaper men had
+had with a person who slept under this woman's room. That person
+had unkindly said she felt sure that Lizzie Cole had not got up that
+night--that she had made up the whole story. She, the speaker, slept
+lightly, and that night had been tending a sick child. Accordingly,
+she would have heard if there had been either the scream described
+by Lizzie Cole, or the sound of Lizzie Cole jumping out of bed.
+
+"We quite understand that you think you saw the"--the coroner
+hesitated--"the individual who had just perpetrated these terrible
+crimes. But what we want to have from you is a description of him.
+In spite of the foggy atmosphere about which all are agreed, you
+say you saw him distinctly, walking along for some yards below your
+window. Now, please, try and tell us what he was like."
+
+The woman began twisting and untwisting the corner of a coloured
+handkerchief she held in her hand.
+
+"Let us begin at the beginning," said the coroner patiently. "What
+sort of a hat was this man wearing when you saw him hurrying from
+the passage?"
+
+"It was just a black 'at" said the witness at last, in a husky,
+rather anxious tone.
+
+"Yes--just a black hat. And a coat--were you able to see what
+sort of a coat he was wearing?"
+
+"'E 'adn't got no coat" she said decidedly. "No coat at all! I
+remembers that very perticulerly. I thought it queer, as it was
+so cold--everybody as can wears some sort o' coat this weather!"
+
+A juryman who had been looking at a strip of newspaper, and
+apparently not attending at all to what the witness was saying, here
+jumped up and put out his hand.
+
+"Yes?" the coroner turned to him.
+
+"I just want to say that this 'ere witness--if her name is Lizzie
+Cole, began by saying The Avenger was wearing a coat--a big, heavy
+coat. I've got it here, in this bit of paper."
+
+"I never said so!" cried the woman passionately. "I was made to
+say all those things by the young man what came to me from the
+Evening Sun. Just put in what 'e liked in 'is paper, 'e did--not
+what I said at all!"
+
+At this there was some laughter, quickly suppressed.
+
+"In future," said the coroner severely, addressing the juryman, who
+had now sat down again, "you must ask any question you wish to ask
+through your foreman, and please wait till I have concluded my
+examination of the witness."
+
+But this interruption, this--this accusation, had utterly upset
+the witness. She began contradicting herself hopelessly. The man
+she had seen hurrying by in the semi-darkness below was tall--no,
+he was short. He was thin--no, he was a stoutish young man. And
+as to whether he was carrying anything, there was quite an
+acrimonious discussion.
+
+Most positively, most confidently, the witness declared that she had
+seen a newspaper parcel under his arm; it had bulged out at the back
+--so she declared. But it was proved, very gently and firmly, that
+she had said nothing of the kind to the gentleman from Scotland Yard
+who had taken down her first account--in fact, to him she had
+declared confidently that the man had carried nothing--nothing at
+all; that she had seen his arms swinging up and down.
+
+One fact--if fact it could be called--the coroner did elicit.
+Lizzie Cole suddenly volunteered the statement that as he had passed
+her window he had looked up at her. This was quite a new statement.
+
+"He looked up at you?" repeated the coroner. "You said nothing of
+that in your examination."
+
+"I said nothink because I was scared--nigh scared to death!"
+
+"If you could really see his countenance, for we know the night was
+dark and foggy, will you please tell me what he was like?"
+
+But the coroner was speaking casually, his hand straying over his
+desk; not a creature in that court now believed the woman's story.
+
+"Dark!" she answered dramatically. "Dark, almost black! If you can
+take my meaning, with a sort of nigger look."
+
+And then there was a titter. Even the jury smiled. And sharply the
+coroner bade Lizzie Cole stand down.
+
+Far more credence was given to the evidence of the next witness.
+
+This was an older, quieter-looking woman, decently dressed in black.
+Being the wife of a night watchman whose work lay in a big warehouse
+situated about a hundred yards from the alley or passage where the
+crimes had taken place, she had gone out to take her husband some
+food he always had at one in the morning. And a man had passed her,
+breathing hard and walking very quickly. Her attention had been
+drawn to him because she very seldom met anyone at that hour, and
+because he had such an odd, peculiar look and manner.
+
+Mrs. Bunting, listening attentively, realised that it was very much
+from what this witness had said that the official description of The
+Avenger had been composed--that description which had brought such
+comfort to her, Ellen Bunting's, soul.
+
+This witness spoke quietly, confidently, and her account of the
+newspaper parcel the man was carrying was perfectly clear and
+positive.
+
+"It was a neat parcel," she said, "done up with string."
+
+She had thought it an odd thing for a respectably dressed young man
+to carry such a parcel--that was what had made her notice it. But
+when pressed, she had to admit that it had been a very foggy night
+--so foggy that she herself had been afraid of losing her way,
+though every step was familiar.
+
+When the third woman went into the box, and with sighs and tears
+told of her acquaintance with one of the deceased, with Johanna
+Cobbett, there was a stir of sympathetic attention. But she had
+nothing to say throwing any light on the investigation, save that
+she admitted reluctantly that "Anny" would have been such a nice,
+respectable young woman if it hadn't been for the drink.
+
+Her examination was shortened as much as possible; and so was that
+of the next witness, the husband of Johanna Cobbett. He was a very
+respectable-looking man, a foreman in a big business house at Croydon.
+He seemed to feel his position most acutely. He hadn't seen his
+wife for two years; he hadn't had news of her for six months. Before
+she took to drink she had been an admirable wife, and--and yes,
+mother.
+
+Yet another painful few minutes, to anyone who had a heart, or
+imagination to understand, was spent when the father of the murdered
+woman was in the box. He had had later news of his unfortunate
+daughter than her husband had had, but of course he could throw no
+light at all on her murder or murderer.
+
+A barman, who had served both the women with drink just before the
+public-house closed for the night, was handled rather roughly. He
+had stepped with a jaunty air into the box, and came out of it
+looking cast down, uneasy.
+
+And then there took place a very dramatic, because an utterly
+unexpected, incident. It was one of which the evening papers made
+the utmost much to Mrs. Bunting's indignation. But neither coroner
+nor jury--and they, after all, were the people who mattered--
+thought a great deal of it.
+
+There had come a pause in the proceedings. All seven witnesses had
+been heard, and a gentleman near Mrs. Bunting whispered, "They are
+now going to call Dr. Gaunt. He's been in every big murder case for
+the last thirty years. He's sure to have something interesting to
+say. It was really to hear him I came."
+
+But before Dr. Gaunt had time even to get up from the seat with
+which he had been accommodated close to the coroner, there came a
+stir among the general public, or, rather, among those spectators
+who stood near the low wooden door which separated the official
+part of the court from the gallery.
+
+The coroner's officer, with an apologetic air, approached the
+coroner, and handed him up an envelope. And again in an instant,
+there fell absolute silence on the court.
+
+Looking rather annoyed, the coroner opened the envelope. He glanced
+down the sheet of notepaper it contained. Then he looked up.
+
+"Mr.--" then he glanced down again. "Mr.--ah--Mr.--is it Cannot?"
+he said doubtfully, "may come forward."
+
+There ran a titter though the spectators, and the coroner frowned.
+
+A neat, jaunty-looking old gentleman, in a nice fur-lined overcoat,
+with a fresh, red face and white side-whiskers, was conducted from
+the place where he had been standing among the general public, to
+the witness-box.
+
+"This is somewhat out of order, Mr.--er--Cannot," said the
+coroner severely. "You should have sent me this note before the
+proceedings began. This gentleman," he said, addressing the jury,
+"informs me that he has something of the utmost importance to
+reveal in connection with our investigation."
+
+"I have remained silent--I have locked what I knew within my own
+breast"--began Mr. Cannot in a quavering voice, "because I am so
+afraid of the Press! I knew if I said anything, even to the police,
+that my house would be besieged by reporters and newspaper men. . . .
+I have a delicate wife, Mr. Coroner. Such a state of things--the
+state of things I imagine--might cause her death--indeed, I hope
+she will never read a report of these proceedings. Fortunately, she
+has an excellent trained nurse--"
+
+"You will now take the oath," said the coroner sharply. He already
+regretted having allowed this absurd person to have his say.
+
+Mr. Cannot took the oath with a gravity and decorum which had been
+lacking in most of those who had preceded him.
+
+"I will address myself to the jury," he began.
+
+"You will do nothing of the sort," broke in the coroner. "Now,
+please attend to me. You assert in your letter that you know who
+is the--the--"
+
+"The Avenger," put in Mr. Cannot promptly.
+
+"The perpetrator of these crimes. You further declare that you met
+him on the very night he committed the murder we are now
+investigating?"
+
+"I do so declare," said Mr. Cannot confidently. "Though in the best
+of health myself,"--he beamed round the court, a now amused,
+attentive court--"it is my fate to be surrounded by sick people, to
+have only ailing friends. I have to trouble you with my private
+affairs, Mr. Coroner, in order to explain why I happened to be out
+at so undue an hour as one o'clock in the morning--"
+
+Again a titter ran through the court. Even the jury broke into
+broad smiles.
+
+"Yes," went on the witness solemnly, "I was with a sick friend--in
+fact, I may say a dying friend, for since then he has passed away.
+I will not reveal my exact dwelling-place; you, sir, have it on my
+notepaper. It is not necessary to reveal it, but you will understand
+me when I say that in order to come home I had to pass through a
+portion of the Regent's Park; and it was there--to be exact, about
+the middle of Prince's Terrace--when a very peculiar-looking
+individual stopped and accosted me."
+
+Mrs. Bunting's hand shot up to her breast. A feeling of deadly fear
+took possession of her.
+
+"I mustn't faint," she said to herself hurriedly. "I mustn't faint!
+Whatever's the matter with me?" She took out her bottle of
+smelling-salts, and gave it a good, long sniff.
+
+"He was a grim, gaunt man, was this stranger, Mr. Coroner, with a
+very odd-looking face. I should say an educated man--in common
+parlance, a gentleman. What drew my special attention to him was
+that he was talking aloud to himself--in fact, he seemed to be
+repeating poetry. I give you my word, I had no thought of The
+Avenger, no thought at all. To tell you the truth, I thought this
+gentleman was a poor escaped lunatic, a man who'd got away from his
+keeper. The Regent's Park, sir, as I need hardly tell you, is a
+most quiet and soothing neighbourhood--"
+
+And then a member of the general public gave a loud guffaw.
+
+"I appeal to you; sir," the old gentleman suddenly cried out "to
+protect me from this unseemly levity! I have not come here with
+any other object than that of doing my duty as a citizen!"
+
+"I must ask you to keep to what is strictly relevant," said the
+coroner stiffly. "Time is going on, and I have another important
+witness to call--a medical witness. Kindly tell me, as shortly as
+possible, what made you suppose that this stranger could possibly
+be--" with an effort he brought out for the first time since the
+proceedings began, the words, "The Avenger?"
+
+"I am coming to that!" said Mr. Cannot hastily. "I am coming to
+that! Bear with me a little longer, Mr. Coroner. It was a foggy
+night, but not as foggy as it became later. And just when we were
+passing one another, I and this man, who was talking aloud to
+himself--he, instead of going on, stopped and turned towards
+me. That made me feel queer and uncomfortable, the more so that
+there was a very wild, mad look on his face. I said to him, as
+soothingly as possible, 'A very foggy night, sir.' And he said,
+'Yes--yes, it is a foggy night, a night fit for the commission of
+dark and salutary deeds.' A very strange phrase, sir, that--'dark
+and salutary deeds.'" He looked at the coroner expectantly--
+
+"Well? Well, Mr. Cannot? Was that all? Did you see this person
+go off in the direction of--of King's Cross, for instance?"
+
+"No." Mr. Cannot reluctantly shook his head. "No, I must honestly
+say I did not. He walked along a certain way by my side, and then
+he crossed the road and was lost in the fog."
+
+"That will do," said the coroner. He spoke more kindly. "I thank
+you, Mr. Cannot, for coming here and giving us what you evidently
+consider important information."
+
+Mr. Cannot bowed, a funny, little, old-fashioned bow, and again some
+of those present tittered rather foolishly.
+
+As he was stepping down from the witness-box, he turned and looked
+up at the coroner, opening his lips as he did so. There was a
+murmur of talking going on, but Mrs. Bunting, at any rate, heard
+quite distinctly what it was that he said:
+
+"One thing I have forgotten, sir, which may be of importance. The
+man carried a bag--a rather light-coloured leather bag, in his left
+hand. It was such a bag, sir, as might well contain a long-handled
+knife."
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked at the reporters' table. She remembered suddenly
+that she had told Bunting about the disappearance of Mr. Sleuth's bag.
+And then a feeling of intense thankfulness came over her; not a
+single reporter at the long, ink-stained table had put down that last
+remark of Mr. Cannot. In fact, not one of them had heard it.
+
+Again the last witness put up his hand to command attention. And
+then silence did fall on the court.
+
+"One word more," he said in a quavering voice. "May I ask to be
+accommodated with a seat for the rest of the proceedings? I see
+there is some room left on the witnesses' bench." And, without
+waiting for permission, he nimbly stepped across and sat down.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. Her friend, the inspector, was
+bending over her.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to come along now," he said urgently.--"I
+don't suppose you want to hear the medical evidence. It's always
+painful for a female to hear that. And there'll be an awful rush
+when the inquest's over. I could get you away quietly now."
+
+She rose, and, pulling her veil down over her pale face, followed
+him obediently.
+
+Down the stone staircase they went, and through the big, now empty,
+room downstairs.
+
+"I'll let you out the back way," he said. "I expect you're tired,
+ma'am, and will like to get home to a cup o' tea."
+
+"I don't know how to thank you!" There were tears in her eyes.
+She was trembling with excitement and emotion. "You have been good
+to me."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," he said a little awkwardly. "I expect you
+went though a pretty bad time, didn't you?"
+
+"Will they be having that old gentleman again?" she spoke in a
+whisper, and looked up at him with a pleading, agonised look.
+
+"Good Lord, no! Crazy old fool! We're troubled with a lot of
+those sort of people, you know, ma'am, and they often do have funny
+names, too. You see, that sort is busy all their lives in the City,
+or what not; then they retires when they gets about sixty, and
+they're fit to hang themselves with dulness. Why, there's hundreds
+of lunies of the sort to be met in London. You can't go about at
+night and not meet 'em. Plenty of 'em!"
+
+"Then you don't think there was anything in what he said?" she
+ventured.
+
+"In what that old gent said? Goodness--no!" he laughed
+good-naturedly. "But I'll tell you what I do think. If it wasn't
+for the time that had gone by, I should believe that the second
+witness had seen that crafty devil--" he lowered his voice. "But,
+there, Dr. Gaunt declares most positively--so did two other medical
+gentlemen--that the poor creatures had been dead hours when they
+was found. Medical gentlemen are always very positive about their
+evidence. They have to be--otherwise who'd believe 'em? If we'd
+time I could tell you of a case in which--well, 'twas all because
+of Dr. Gaunt that the murderer escaped. We all knew perfectly well
+the man we caught did it, but he was able to prove an alibi as to
+the time Dr. Gaunt said the poor soul was killed."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+It was not late even now, for the inquest had begun very punctually,
+but Mrs. Bunting felt that no power on earth should force her to go
+to Ealing. She felt quite tired out and as if she could think of
+nothing.
+
+Pacing along very slowly, as if she were an old, old woman, she
+began listlessly turning her steps towards home. Somehow she felt
+that it would do her more good to stay out in the air than take the
+train. Also she would thus put off the moment--the moment to which
+she looked forward with dread and dislike--when she would have to
+invent a circumstantial story as to what she had said to the doctor,
+and what the doctor had said to her.
+
+Like most men and women of his class, Bunting took a great interest
+in other people's ailments, the more interest that he was himself so
+remarkably healthy. He would feel quite injured if Ellen didn't
+tell him everything that had happened; everything, that is, that the
+doctor had told her.
+
+As she walked swiftly along, at every corner, or so it seemed to her,
+and outside every public-house, stood eager boys selling the latest
+edition of the afternoon papers to equally eager buyers. "Avenger
+Inquest?" they shouted exultantly. "All the latest evidence!" At
+one place, where there were a row of contents-bills pinned to the
+pavement by stones, she stopped and looked down. "Opening of the
+Avenger Inquest. What is he really like? Full description." On yet
+another ran the ironic query: "Avenger Inquest. Do you know him?"
+
+And as that facetious question stared up at her in huge print, Mrs.
+Bunting turned sick--so sick and faint that she did what she had
+never done before in her life--she pushed her way into a
+public-house, and, putting two pennies down on the counter, asked
+for, and received, a glass of cold water.
+
+As she walked along the now gas-lit streets, she found her mind
+dwelling persistently--not on the inquest at which she had been
+present, not even on The Avenger, but on his victims.
+
+Shudderingly, she visualised the two cold bodies lying in the
+mortuary. She seemed also to see that third body, which, though
+cold, must yet be warmer than the other two, for at this time
+yesterday The Avenger's last victim had been alive, poor soul--
+alive and, according to a companion of hers whom the papers had
+already interviewed, particularly merry and bright.
+
+Hitherto Mrs. Bunting had been spared in any real sense a vision of
+The Avenger's victims. Now they haunted her, and she wondered
+wearily if this fresh horror was to be added to the terrible fear
+which encompassed her night and day.
+
+As she came within sight of home, her spirit suddenly lightened.
+The narrow, drab-coloured little house, flanked each side by others
+exactly like it in every single particular, save that their front
+yards were not so well kept, looked as if it could, aye, and would,
+keep any secret closely hidden.
+
+For a moment, at any rate, The Avenger's victims receded from her
+mind. She thought of them no more. All her thoughts were
+concentrated on Bunting--Bunting and Mr. Sleuth. She wondered what
+had happened during her absence--whether the lodger had rung his
+bell, and, if so, how he had got on with Bunting, and Bunting with
+him?
+
+She walked up the little flagged path wearily, and yet with a
+pleasant feeling of home-coming. And then she saw that Bunting must
+have been watching for her behind the now closely drawn curtains,
+for before she could either knock or ring he had opened the door.
+
+"I was getting quite anxious about you," he exclaimed. "Come in,
+Ellen, quick! You must be fair perished a day like now--and you
+out so little as you are. Well? I hope you found the doctor all
+right?" He looked at her with affectionate anxiety.
+
+And then there came a sudden, happy thought to Mrs. Bunting. "No,"
+she said slowly, "Doctor Evans wasn't in. I waited, and waited, and
+waited, but he never came in at all. 'Twas my own fault," she added
+quickly. Even at such a moment as this she told herself that though
+she had, in a sort of way, a kind of right to lie to her husband,
+she had no sight to slander the doctor who had been so kind to her
+years ago. "I ought to have sent him a card yesterday night," she
+said. "Of course, I was a fool to go all that way, just on chance
+of finding a doctor in. It stands to reason they've got to go out
+to people at all times of day."
+
+"I hope they gave you a cup of tea?" he said.
+
+And again she hesitated, debating a point with herself: if the
+doctor had a decent sort of servant, of course, she, Ellen Bunting,
+would have been offered a cup of tea, especially if she explained
+she'd known him a long time.
+
+She compromised. "I was offered some," she said, in a weak, tired
+voice. "But there, Bunting, I didn't feel as if I wanted it. I'd
+be very grateful for a cup now--if you'd just make it for me over
+the ring."
+
+"'Course I will," he said eagerly. "You just come in and sit down,
+my dear. Don't trouble to take your things off now--wait till
+you've had tea."
+
+And she obeyed him. "Where's Daisy?" she asked suddenly. "I thought
+the girl would be back by the time I got home."
+
+"She ain't coming home to-day"--there was an odd, sly, smiling look
+on Bunting's face.
+
+"Did she send a telegram?" asked Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"No. Young Chandler's just come in and told me. He's been over
+there and,--would you believe it, Ellen?--he's managed to make
+friends with Margaret. Wonderful what love will do, ain't it? He
+went over there just to help Daisy carry her bag back, you know,
+and then Margaret told him that her lady had sent her some money
+to go to the play, and she actually asked Joe to go with them this
+evening--she and Daisy--to the pantomime. Did you ever hear o'
+such a thing?"
+
+"Very nice for them, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bunting absently. But
+she was pleased--pleased to have her mind taken off herself. "Then
+when is that girl coming home?" she asked patiently.
+
+"Well, it appears that Chandler's got to-morrow morning off too--
+this evening and to-morrow morning. He'll be on duty all night,
+but he proposes to go over and bring Daisy back in time for early
+dinner. Will that suit you, Ellen?"
+
+"Yes. That'll be all right," she said. "I don't grudge the girl
+her bit of pleasure. One's only young once. By the way, did the
+lodger ring while I was out?"
+
+Bunting turned round from the gas-ring, which he was watching to
+see the kettle boil. "No," he said. "Come to think of it, it's
+rather a funny thing, but the truth is, Ellen, I never gave Mr.
+Sleuth a thought. You see, Chandler came in and was telling me all
+about Margaret, laughing-like, and then something else happened
+while you was out, Ellen."
+
+"Something else happened?" she said in a startled voice. Getting
+up from her chair she came towards her husband: "What happened?
+Who came?"
+
+"Just a message for me, asking if I could go to-night to wait at a
+young lady's birthday party. In Hanover Terrace it is. A waiter
+--one of them nasty Swiss fellows as works for nothing--fell out
+just at the last minute and so they had to send for me."
+
+His honest face shone with triumph. The man who had taken over his
+old friend's business in Baker Street had hitherto behaved very
+badly to Bunting, and that though Bunting had been on the books for
+ever so long, and had always given every satisfaction. But this new
+man had never employed him--no, not once.
+
+"I hope you didn't make yourself too cheap?" said his wife jealously.
+
+"No, that I didn't! I hum'd and haw'd a lot; and I could see the
+fellow was quite worried--in fact, at the end he offered me
+half-a-crown more. So I graciously consented!"
+
+Husband and wife laughed more merrily than they had done for a long
+time.
+
+"You won't mind being alone, here? I don't count the lodger--he's
+no good--" Bunting looked at her anxiously. He was only prompted
+to ask the question because lately Ellen had been so queer, so
+unlike herself. Otherwise it never would have occurred to him that
+she could be afraid of being alone in the house. She had often been
+so in the days when he got more jobs.
+
+She stared at him, a little suspiciously. "I be afraid?" she echoed.
+"Certainly not. Why should I be? I've never been afraid before.
+What d'you exactly mean by that, Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. I only thought you might feel funny-like, all alone
+on this ground floor. You was so upset yesterday when that young
+fool Chandler came, dressed up, to the door."
+
+"I shouldn't have been frightened if he'd just been an ordinary
+stranger," she said shortly. "He said something silly to me--just
+in keeping with his character-like, and it upset me. Besides, I
+feel better now."
+
+As she was sipping gratefully her cup of tea, there came a noise
+outside, the shouts of newspaper-sellers.
+
+"I'll just run out," said Bunting apologetically, "and see what
+happened at that inquest to-day. Besides, they may have a clue
+about the horrible affair last night. Chandler was full of it--
+when he wasn't talking about Daisy and Margaret, that is. He's
+on to-night, luckily not till twelve o'clock; plenty of time to
+escort the two of 'em back after the play. Besides, he said
+he'll put them into a cab and blow the expense, if the panto'
+goes on too long for him to take 'em home."
+
+"On to-night?" repeated Mrs. Bunting. "Whatever for?"
+
+"Well, you see, The Avenger's always done 'em in couples, so to
+speak. They've got an idea that he'll have a try again to-night.
+However, even so, Joe's only on from midnight till five o'clock.
+Then he'll go and turn in a bit before going off to fetch Daisy,
+Fine thing to be young, ain't it, Ellen?"
+
+"I can't believe that he'd go out on such a night as this!"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Bunting, staring at her. Ellen had spoken
+so oddly, as if to herself, and in so fierce and passionate a tone.
+
+"What do I mean?" she repeated--and a great fear clutched at her
+heart. What had she said? She had been thinking aloud.
+
+"Why, by saying he won't go out. Of course, he has to go out.
+Besides, he'll have been to the play as it is. 'Twould be a pretty
+thing if the police didn't go out, just because it was cold!"
+
+"I--I was thinking of The Avenger," said Mrs. Bunting. She looked
+at her husband fixedly. Somehow she had felt impelled to utter
+those true words.
+
+"He don't take no heed of heat nor cold," said Bunting sombrely.
+"I take it the man's dead to all human feeling--saving, of
+course, revenge."
+
+"So that's your idea about him, is it?" She looked across at her
+husband. Somehow this dangerous, this perilous conversation between
+them attracted her strangely. She felt as if she must go on with it.
+"D'you think he was the man that woman said she saw? That young
+man what passed her with a newspaper parcel?"
+
+"Let me see," he said slowly. "I thought that 'twas from the bedroom
+window a woman saw him?"
+
+"No, no. I mean the other woman, what was taking her husband's
+breakfast to him in the warehouse. She was far the most
+respectable-looking woman of the two," said Mrs. Bunting impatiently.
+
+And then, seeing her husband's look of utter, blank astonishment,
+she felt a thrill of unreasoning terror. She must have gone suddenly
+mad to have said what she did! Hurriedly she got up from her chair.
+"There, now," she said; "here I am gossiping all about nothing when
+I ought to be seeing about the lodger's supper. It was someone in
+the train talked to me about that person as thinks she saw The
+Avenger."
+
+Without waiting for an answer, she went into her bedroom, lit the
+gas, and shut the door. A moment later she heard Bunting go out to
+buy the paper they had both forgotten during their dangerous
+discussion.
+
+As she slowly, languidly took off her nice, warm coat and shawl,
+Mrs. Bunting found herself shivering. It was dreadfully cold, quite
+unnaturally cold even for the time of year.
+
+She looked longingly towards the fireplace. It was now concealed
+by the washhand-stand, but how pleasant it would be to drag that
+stand aside and light a bit of fire, especially as Bunting was going
+to be out to-night. He would have to put on his dress clothes, and
+she didn't like his dressing in the sitting-room. It didn't suit
+her ideas that he should do so. How if she did light the fire here,
+in their bedroom? It would be nice for her to have bit of fire to
+cheer her up after he had gone.
+
+Mrs. Bunting knew only too well that she would have very little
+sleep the coming night. She looked over, with shuddering distaste,
+at her nice, soft bed. There she would lie, on that couch of little
+ease, listening--listening. . . .
+
+She went down to the kitchen. Everything was ready for Mr. Sleuth's
+supper, for she had made all her preparations before going out so
+as not to have to hurry back before it suited her to do so.
+
+Leaning the tray for a moment on the top of the banisters, she
+listened. Even in that nice warm drawing-room, and with a good
+fire, how cold the lodger must feel sitting studying at the table!
+But unwonted sounds were coming through the door. Mr. Sleuth was
+moving restlessly about the room, not sitting reading, as was his
+wont at this time of the evening.
+
+She knocked, and then waited a moment.
+
+There came the sound of a sharp click, that of the key turning in
+the lock of the chiffonnier cupboard--or so Mr. Sleuth's landlady
+could have sworn.
+
+There was a pause--she knocked again.
+
+"Come in," said Mr. Sleuth loudly, and she opened the door and
+carried in the tray.
+
+"You are a little earlier than usual, are you not Mrs. Bunting?"
+he said, with a touch of irritation in his voice.
+
+"I don't think so, sir, but I've been out. Perhaps I lost count of
+the time. I thought you'd like your breakfast early, as you had
+dinner rather sooner than usual."
+
+"Breakfast? Did you say breakfast, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure! I meant supper." He looked at
+her fixedly. It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that there was a terrible
+questioning look in his dark, sunken eyes.
+
+"Aren't you well?" he said slowly. "You don't look well, Mrs.
+Bunting."
+
+"No, sir," she said. "I'm not well. I went over to see a doctor
+this afternoon, to Ealing, sir."
+
+"I hope he did you good, Mrs. Bunting"--the lodger's voice had
+become softer, kinder in quality.
+
+"It always does me good to see the doctor," said Mrs. Bunting
+evasively.
+
+And then a very odd smile lit up Mr. Sleuth's face. "Doctors are a
+maligned body of men," he said. "I'm glad to hear you speak well of
+them. They do their best, Mrs. Bunting. Being human they are liable
+to err, but I assure you they do their best."
+
+"That I'm sure they do, sir"--she spoke heartily, sincerely.
+Doctors had always treated her most kindly, and even generously.
+
+And then, having laid the cloth, and put the lodger's one hot dish
+upon it, she went towards the door. "Wouldn't you like me to bring
+up another scuttleful of coals, sir? it's bitterly cold--getting
+colder every minute. A fearful night to have to go out in--" she
+looked at him deprecatingly.
+
+And then Mr. Sleuth did something which startled her very much.
+Pushing his chair back, he jumped up and drew himself to his full
+height.
+
+"What d'you mean?" he stammered. "Why did you say that, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She stared at him, fascinated, affrighted. Again there came an
+awful questioning look over his face.
+
+"I was thinking of Bunting, sir. He's got a job to-night. He's
+going to act as waiter at a young lady's birthday party. I was
+thinking it's a pity he has to turn out, and in his thin clothes,
+too"--she brought out her words jerkily.
+
+Mr. Sleuth seemed somewhat reassured, and again he sat down. "Ah!"
+he said. "Dear me--I'm sorry to hear that! I hope your husband
+will not catch cold, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+And then she shut the door, and went downstairs.
+
+******
+
+Without telling Bunting what she meant to do, she dragged the heavy
+washhand-stand away from the chimneypiece, and lighted the fire.
+
+Then in some triumph she called Bunting in.
+
+"Time for you to dress," she cried out cheerfully, "and I've got a
+little bit of fire for you to dress by."
+
+As he exclaimed at her extravagance, "Well, 'twill be pleasant for
+me, too; keep me company-like while you're out; and make the room
+nice and warm when you come in. You'll be fair perished, even
+walking that short way," she said.
+
+And then, while her husband was dressing, Mrs. Bunting went upstairs
+and cleared away Mr. Sleuth's supper.
+
+The lodger said no word while she was so engaged--no word at all.
+
+He was sitting away from the table, rather an unusual thing for him
+to do, and staring into the fire, his hands on his knees.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked lonely, very, very lonely and forlorn. Somehow, a
+great rush of pity, as well as of horror, came over Mrs. Bunting's
+heart. He was such a--a--she searched for a word in her mind, but
+could only find the word "gentle"--he was such a nice, gentle
+gentleman, was Mr. Sleuth. Lately he had again taken to leaving his
+money about, as he had done the first day or two, and with some
+concern his landlady had seen that the store had diminished a good
+deal. A very simple calculation had made her realise that almost the
+whole of that missing money had come her way, or, at any rate, had
+passed through her hands.
+
+Mr. Sleuth never stinted himself as to food, or stinted them, his
+landlord and his landlady, as to what he had said he would pay.
+And Mrs. Bunting's conscience pricked her a little, for he hardly
+ever used that room upstairs--that room for which he had paid extra
+so generously. If Bunting got another job or two through that nasty
+man in Baker Street,--and now that the ice had been broken between
+them it was very probable that he would do so, for he was a very
+well-trained, experienced waiter--then she thought she would tell
+Mr. Sleuth that she no longer wanted him to pay as much as he was
+now doing.
+
+She looked anxiously, deprecatingly, at his long, bent back.
+
+"Good-night, sir," she said at last.
+
+Mr. Sleuth turned round. His face looked sad and worn.
+
+"I hope you'll sleep well, sir."
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I shall sleep well. But perhaps I shall take a
+little turn first. Such is my way, Mrs. Bunting; after I have been
+studying all day I require a little exercise."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't go out to-night," she said deprecatingly. "'Tisn't
+fit for anyone to be out in the bitter cold."
+
+"And yet--and yet"--he looked at her attentively--"there will
+probably be many people out in the streets to-night."
+
+"A many more than usual, I fear, sir."
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Sleuth quickly. "Is it not a strange thing,
+Mrs. Bunting, that people who have all day in which to amuse
+themselves should carry their revels far into the night?"
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking of revellers, sir; I was thinking"--she
+hesitated, then, with a gasping effort Mrs. Bunting brought out the
+words, "of the police."
+
+"The police?" He put up his right hand and stroked his chin two or
+three times with a nervous gesture. "But what is man--what is man's
+puny power or strength against that of God, or even of those over
+whose feet God has set a guard?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked at his landlady with a kind of triumph lighting up
+his face, and Mrs. Bunting felt a shuddering sense of relief. Then
+she had not offended her lodger? She had not made him angry by that,
+that--was it a hint she had meant to convey to him?
+
+"Very true, sir," she said respectfully. "But Providence means us
+to take care o' ourselves too." And then she closed the door behind
+her and went downstairs.
+
+But Mr. Sleuth's landlady did not go on, down to the kitchen. She
+came into her sitting-room, and, careless of what Bunting would think
+the next morning, put the tray with the remains of the lodger's meal on
+her table. Having done that, and having turned out the gas in the
+passage and the sitting-room, she went into her bedroom and closed the
+door.
+
+The fire was burning brightly and clearly. She told herself that
+she did not need any other light to undress by.
+
+What was it made the flames of the fire shoot up, shoot down, in
+that queer way? But watching it for awhile, she did at last doze
+off a bit.
+
+And then--and then Mrs. Bunting woke with a sudden thumping of her
+heart. Woke to see that the fire was almost out--woke to hear a
+quarter to twelve chime out--woke at last to the sound she had been
+listening for before she fell asleep--the sound of Mr. Sleuth,
+wearing his rubber-soled shoes, creeping downstairs, along the
+passage, and so out, very, very quietly by the front door.
+
+But once she was in bed Mrs. Bunting turned restless. She tossed
+this way and that, full of discomfort and unease. Perhaps it was
+the unaccustomed firelight dancing on the walls, making queer shadows
+all round her, which kept her so wide awake.
+
+She lay thinking and listening--listening and thinking. It even
+occurred to her to do the one thing that might have quieted her
+excited brain--to get a book, one of those detective stories of
+which Bunting had a slender store in the next room, and then,
+lighting the gas, to sit up and read.
+
+No, Mrs. Bunting had always been told it was very wrong to read in
+bed, and she was not in a mood just now to begin doing anything that
+she had been told was wrong. . . .
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+It was a very cold night--so cold, so windy, so snow-laden was the
+atmosphere, that everyone who could do so stayed indoors.
+
+Bunting, however, was now on his way home from what had proved a
+really pleasant job. A remarkable piece of luck had come his way
+this evening, all the more welcome because it was quite unexpected!
+The young lady at whose birthday party he had been present in
+capacity of waiter had come into a fortune that day, and she had had
+the gracious, the surprising thought of presenting each of the hired
+waiters with a sovereign!
+
+This gift, which had been accompanied by a few kind words, had gone
+to Bunting's heart. It had confirmed him in his Conservative
+principles; only gentlefolk ever behaved in that way; quiet,
+old-fashioned, respectable, gentlefolk, the sort of people of whom
+those nasty Radicals know nothing and care less!
+
+But the ex-butler was not as happy as he should have been.
+Slackening his footsteps, he began to think with puzzled concern of
+how queer his wife had seemed lately. Ellen had become so nervous,
+so "jumpy," that he didn't know what to make of her sometimes. She
+had never been really good-tempered--your capable, self-respecting
+woman seldom is--but she had never been like what she was now. And
+she didn't get better as the days went on; in fact she got worse.
+Of late she had been quite hysterical, and for no reason at all!
+Take that little practical joke of young Joe Chandler. Ellen knew
+quite well he often had to go about in some kind of disguise, and yet
+how she had gone on, quite foolish-like--not at all as one would
+have expected her to do.
+
+There was another queer thing about her which disturbed him in more
+senses than one. During the last three weeks or so Ellen had taken
+to talking in her sleep. "No, no, no!" she had cried out, only the
+night before. "It isn't true--I won't have it said--it's a lie!"
+And there had been a wail of horrible fear and revolt in her usually
+quiet, mincing voice.
+
+******
+
+Whew! it was cold; and he had stupidly forgotten his gloves.
+
+He put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and began walking
+more quickly.
+
+As he tramped steadily along, the ex-butler suddenly caught sight
+of his lodger walking along the opposite side of the solitary street
+--one of those short streets leading off the broad road which
+encircles Regent's Park.
+
+Well! This was a funny time o' night to be taking a stroll for
+pleasure, like!
+
+Glancing across, Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth's tall, thin figure
+was rather bowed, and that his head was bent toward the ground. His
+left arm was thrust into his long Inverness cape, and so was quite
+hidden, but the other side of the cape bulged out, as if the lodger
+were carrying a bag or parcel in the hand which hung down straight.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was walking rather quickly, and as he walked he talked
+aloud, which, as Bunting knew, is not unusual with gentlemen who live
+much alone. It was clear that he had not yet become aware of the
+proximity of his landlord.
+
+Bunting told himself that Ellen was right. Their lodger was
+certainly a most eccentric, peculiar person. Strange, was it not,
+that that odd, luny-like gentleman should have made all the
+difference to his, Bunting's, and Mrs. Bunting's happiness and
+comfort in life?
+
+Again glancing across at Mr. Sleuth, he reminded himself, not for
+the first time, of this perfect lodger's one fault--his odd dislike
+to meat, and to what Bunting vaguely called to himself, sensible food.
+
+But there, you can't have everything! The more so that the lodger
+was not one of those crazy vegetarians who won't eat eggs and cheese.
+No, he was reasonable in this, as in everything else connected with
+his dealings with the Buntings.
+
+As we know, Bunting saw far less of the lodger than did his wife.
+Indeed, he had been upstairs only three or four times since Mr.
+Sleuth had been with them, and when his landlord had had occasion
+to wait on him the lodger had remained silent. Indeed, their
+gentleman had made it very clear that he did not like either the
+husband or wife to come up to his rooms without being definitely
+asked to do so.
+
+Now, surely, would be a good opportunity for a little genial
+conversation? Bunting felt pleased to see his lodger; it increased
+his general comfortable sense of satisfaction.
+
+So it was that the butler, still an active man for his years,
+crossed over the road, and, stepping briskly forward, began trying
+to overtake Mr. Sleuth. But the more he hurried along, the more the
+other hastened, and that without ever turning round to see whose
+steps he could hear echoing behind him on the now freezing pavement.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's own footsteps were quite inaudible--an odd circumstance,
+when you came to think of it--as Bunting did think of it later,
+lying awake by Mrs. Bunting's side in the pitch darkness. What it
+meant of course, was that the lodger had rubber soles on his shoes.
+Now Bunting had never had a pair of rubber-soled shoes sent down to
+him to clean. He had always supposed the lodger had only one pair of
+outdoor boots.
+
+The two men--the pursued and the pursuer--at last turned into the
+Marylebone Road; they were now within a few hundred yards of home.
+Plucking up courage, Bunting called out, his voice echoing freshly
+on the still air:
+
+"Mr. Sleuth, sir? Mr. Sleuth!"
+
+The lodger stopped and turned round.
+
+He had been walking so quickly, and he was in so poor a physical
+condition, that the sweat was pouring down his face.
+
+"Ah! So it's you, Mr. Bunting? I heard footsteps behind me, and
+I hurried on. I wish I'd known that it was you; there are so many
+queer characters about at night in London."
+
+"Not on a night like this, sir. Only honest folk who have business
+out of doors would be out such a night as this. It is cold, sir!"
+
+And then into Bunting's slow and honest mind there suddenly crept
+the query as to what on earth Mr. Sleuth's own business out could be
+on this bitter night.
+
+"Cold?" the lodger repeated; he was panting a little, and his words
+came out sharp and quick through his thin lips. "I can't say that
+I find it cold, Mr. Bunting. When the snow falls, the air always
+becomes milder."
+
+"Yes, sir; but to-night there's such a sharp east wind. Why, it
+freezes the very marrow in one's bones! Still, there's nothing like
+walking in cold weather to make one warm, as you seem to have found,
+sir."
+
+Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth kept his distance in a rather strange
+way; he walked at the edge of the pavement, leaving the rest of it,
+on the wall side, to his landlord.
+
+"I lost my way," he said abruptly. "I've been over Primrose Hill to
+see a friend of mine, a man with whom I studied when I was a lad,
+and then, coming back, I lost my way."
+
+Now they had come right up to the little gate which opened on the
+shabby, paved court in front of the house--that gate which now was
+never locked.
+
+Mr. Sleuth, pushing suddenly forward, began walking up the flagged
+path, when, with a "By your leave, sir," the ex-butler, stepping
+aside, slipped in front of his lodger, in order to open the front
+door for him.
+
+As he passed by Mr. Sleuth, the back of Bunting's bare left hand
+brushed lightly against the long Inverness cape the lodger was
+wearing, and, to Bunting's surprise, the stretch of cloth against
+which his hand lay for a moment was not only damp, damp maybe from
+stray flakes of snow which had settled upon it, but wet--wet and
+gluey.
+
+Bunting thrust his left hand into his pocket; it was with the other
+that he placed the key in the lock of the door.
+
+The two men passed into the hall together.
+
+The house seemed blackly dark in comparison with the lighted-up
+road outside, and as he groped forward, closely followed by the
+lodger, there came over Bunting a sudden, reeling sensation of
+mortal terror, an instinctive, assailing knowledge of frightful
+immediate danger.
+
+A stuffless voice--the voice of his first wife, the long-dead
+girl to whom his mind so seldom reverted nowadays--uttered into
+his ear the words, "Take care!"
+
+And then the lodger spoke. His voice was harsh and grating,
+though not loud.
+
+"I'm afraid, Mr. Bunting, that you must have felt something dirty,
+foul, on my coat? It's too long a story to tell you now, but I
+brushed up against a dead animal, a creature to whose misery some
+thoughtful soul had put an end, lying across a bench on Primrose
+Hill."
+
+"No, sir, no. I didn't notice nothing. I scarcely touched you,
+sir."
+
+It seemed as if a power outside himself compelled Bunting to utter
+these lying words. "And now, sir, I'll be saying good-night to you,"
+he said.
+
+Stepping back he pressed with all the strength that was in him
+against the wall, and let the other pass him. There was a pause,
+and then--"Good-night," returned Mr. Sleuth, in a hollow voice.
+Bunting waited until the lodger had gone upstairs, and then,
+lighting the gas, he sat down there, in the hall. Mr. Sleuth's
+landlord felt very queer--queer and sick.
+
+He did not draw his left hand out of his pocket till he heard Mr.
+Sleuth shut the bedroom door upstairs. Then he held up his left
+hand and looked at it curiously; it was flecked, streaked with
+pale reddish blood.
+
+Taking off his boots, he crept into the room where his wife lay
+asleep. Stealthily he walked across to the wash-hand-stand, and
+dipped a hand into the water-jug.
+
+"Whatever are you doing? What on earth are you doing?" came a
+voice from the bed, and Bunting started guiltily.
+
+"I'm just washing my hands."
+
+"Indeed, you're doing nothing of the sort! I never heard of such
+a thing--putting your hand into the water in which I was going to
+wash my face to-morrow morning!"
+
+"I'm very sorry, Ellen," he said meekly; "I meant to throw it away.
+You don't suppose I would have let you wash in dirty water, do you?"
+
+She said no more, but, as he began undressing himself, Mrs. Bunting
+lay staring at him in a way that made her husband feel even more
+uncomfortable than he was already.
+
+At last he got into bed. He wanted to break the oppressive silence
+by telling Ellen about the sovereign the young lady had given him,
+but that sovereign now seemed to Bunting of no more account than if
+it had been a farthing he had picked up in the road outside.
+
+Once more his wife spoke, and he gave so great a start that it shook
+the bed.
+
+"I suppose that you don't know that you've left the light burning in
+the hall, wasting our good money?" she observed tartly.
+
+He got up painfully and opened the door into the passage. It was as
+she had said; the gas was flaring away, wasting their good money--or,
+rather, Mr. Sleuth's good money. Since he had come to be their lodger
+they had not had to touch their rent money.
+
+Bunting turned out the light and groped his way back to the room, and
+so to bed. Without speaking again to each other, both husband and
+wife lay awake till dawn.
+
+The next morning Mr. Sleuth's landlord awoke with a start; he felt
+curiously heavy about the limbs, and tired about the eyes.
+
+Drawing his watch from under his pillow, he saw that it was seven
+o'clock. Without waking his wife, he got out of bed and pulled the
+blind a little to one side. It was snowing heavily, and, as is the
+way when it snows, even in London, everything was strangely,
+curiously still. After he had dressed he went out into the passage.
+As he had at once dreaded and hoped, their newspaper was already
+lying on the mat. It was probably the sound of its being pushed
+through the letter-box which had waked him from his unrestful
+sleep.
+
+He picked the paper up and went into the sitting-room then,
+shutting the door behind him carefully, he spread the newspaper
+wide open on the table, and bent over it.
+
+As Bunting at last looked up and straightened himself, an expression
+of intense relief shone upon his stolid face. The item of news he
+had felt certain would be printed in big type on the middle sheet
+was not there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Feeling amazingly light-hearted, almost light-headed, Bunting lit
+the gas-ring to make his wife her morning cup of tea.
+
+While he was doing it, he suddenly heard her call out:
+
+"Bunting!" she cried weakly. "Bunting!" Quickly he hurried in
+response to her call. "Yes," he said. "What is it, my dear? I
+won't be a minute with your tea." And he smiled broadly, rather
+foolishly.
+
+She sat up and looked at him, a dazed expression on her face.
+
+"What are you grinning at?" she asked suspiciously.
+
+"I've had a wonderful piece of luck," he explained. "But you was
+so cross last night that I simply didn't dare tell you about it."
+
+"Well, tell me now," she said in a low voice.
+
+"I had a sovereign given me by the young lady. You see, it was her
+birthday party, Ellen, and she'd come into a nice bit of money, and
+she gave each of us waiters a sovereign."
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no comment. Instead, she lay back and closed her
+eyes.
+
+"What time d'you expect Daisy?" she asked languidly. "You didn't
+say what time Joe was going to fetch her, when we was talking about
+it yesterday."
+
+"Didn't I? Well, I expect they'll be in to dinner."
+
+"I wonder, how long that old aunt of hers expects us to keep her?"
+said Mrs. Bunting thoughtfully. All the cheer died out of Bunting's
+round face. He became sullen and angry. It would be a pretty thing
+if he couldn't have his own daughter for a bit--especially now that
+they were doing so well!
+
+"Daisy'll stay here just as long as she can," he said shortly.
+"It's too bad of you, Ellen, to talk like that! She helps you all
+she can; and she brisks us both up ever so much. Besides, 'twould
+be cruel--cruel to take the girl away just now, just as she and
+that young chap are making friends-like. One would suppose that
+even you would see the justice o' that!"
+
+But Mrs. Bunting made no answer.
+
+Bunting went off, back into the sitting-room. The water was boiling
+now, so he made the tea; and then, as he brought the little tray in,
+his heart softened. Ellen did look really ill--ill and wizened.
+He wondered if she had a pain about which she wasn't saying anything.
+She had never been one to grouse about herself.
+
+"The lodger and me came in together last night," he observed
+genially. "He's certainly a funny kind of gentleman. It wasn't
+the sort of night one would have chosen to go out for a walk, now
+was it? And yet he must 'a been out a long time if what he said
+was true."
+
+"I don't wonder a quiet gentleman like Mr. Sleuth hates the
+crowded streets," she said slowly. "They gets worse every day--
+that they do! But go along now; I want to get up."
+
+He went back into their sitting-room, and, having laid the fire
+and put a match to it, he sat down comfortably with his newspaper.
+
+Deep down in his heart Bunting looked back to this last night with
+a feeling of shame and self-rebuke. Whatever had made such horrible
+thoughts and suspicions as had possessed him suddenly come into his
+head? And just because of a trifling thing like that blood. No
+doubt Mr. Sleuth's nose had bled--that was what had happened;
+though, come to think of it, he had mentioned brushing up against
+a dead animal.
+
+Perhaps Ellen was right after all. It didn't do for one to be
+always thinking of dreadful subjects, of murders and such-like. It
+made one go dotty--that's what it did.
+
+And just as he was telling himself that, there came to the door a
+loud knock, the peculiar rat-tat-tat of a telegraph boy. But before
+he had time to get across the room, let alone to the front door,
+Ellen had rushed through the room, clad only in a petticoat and
+shawl.
+
+"I'll go," she cried breathlessly. "I'll go, Bunting; don't you
+trouble."
+
+He stared at her, surprised, and followed her into the hall.
+
+She put out a hand, and hiding herself behind the door, took the
+telegram from the invisible boy. "You needn't wait," she said.
+"If there's an answer we'll send it out ourselves." Then she tore
+the envelope open--"Oh!" she said with a gasp of relief. "It's
+only from Joe Chandler, to say he can't go over to fetch Daisy this
+morning. Then you'll have to go."
+
+She walked back into their sitting-room. "There!" she said.
+"There it is, Bunting. You just read it."
+
+"Am on duty this morning. Cannot fetch Miss Daisy as arranged.--
+Chandler."
+
+"I wonder why he's on duty?" said Bunting slowly, uncomfortably.
+"I thought Joe's hours was as regular as clockwork--that nothing
+could make any difference to them. However, there it is. I suppose
+it'll do all right if I start about eleven o'clock? It may have
+left off snowing by then. I don't feel like going out again just
+now. I'm pretty tired this morning."
+
+"You start about twelve," said his wife quickly.
+
+"That'll give plenty of time."
+
+The morning went on quietly, uneventfully. Bunting received a
+letter from Old Aunt saying Daisy must come back next Monday, a
+little under a week from now. Mr. Sleuth slept soundly, or, at
+any rate, he made no sign of being awake; and though Mrs. Bunting
+often, stopped to listen, while she was doing her room, there
+came no sounds at all from overhead.
+
+Scarcely aware that it was so, both Bunting and his wife felt more
+cheerful than they had done for a long time. They had quite a
+pleasant little chat when Mrs. Bunting came and sat down for a bit,
+before going down to prepare Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
+
+"Daisy will be surprised to see you--not to say disappointed!" she
+observed, and she could not help laughing a little to herself at
+the thought. And when, at eleven, Bunting got up to go, she made
+him stay on a little longer. "There's no such great hurry as that,"
+she said good-temperedly. "It'll do quite well if you're there by
+half-past twelve. I'll get dinner ready myself. Daisy needn't help
+with that. I expect Margaret has worked her pretty hard."
+
+But at last there came the moment when Bunting had to start, and
+his wife went with him to the front door. It was still snowing,
+less heavily, but still snowing. There were very few people coming
+and going, and only just a few cabs and carts dragging cautiously
+along through the slush.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was still in the kitchen when there came a ring and a
+knock at the door--a now very familiar ring and knock. "Joe thinks
+Daisy's home again by now!" she said, smiling to herself.
+
+Before the door was well open, she heard Chandler's voice. "Don't
+be scared this time, Mrs. Bunting!" But though not exactly scared,
+she did give a gasp of surprise. For there stood Joe, made up to
+represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection,
+with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his
+seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, and greenish-black pot hat.
+
+"I haven't a minute," he said a little breathlessly. "But I thought
+I'd just run in to know if Miss Daisy was safe home again. You got
+my telegram all right? I couldn't send no other kind of message."
+
+"She's not back yet. Her father hasn't been gone long after her."
+Then, struck by a look in his eyes, "Joe, what's the matter?" she
+asked quickly.
+
+There came a thrill of suspense in her voice, her face grew drawn,
+while what little colour there was in it receded, leaving it very
+pale.
+
+"Well," he said. "Well, Mrs. Bunting, I've no business to say
+anything about it--but I will tell you!"
+
+He walked in and shut the door of the sitting-room carefully behind
+him. "There's been another of 'em!" he whispered. "But this time
+no one is to know anything about it--not for the present, I mean,"
+he corrected himself hastily. "The Yard thinks we've got a clue--
+and a good clue, too, this time."
+
+"But where--and how?" faltered Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"Well, 'twas just a bit of luck being able to keep it dark for the
+present"--he still spoke in that stifled, hoarse whisper. "The
+poor soul was found dead on a bench on Primrose Hill. And just by
+chance 'twas one of our fellows saw the body first. He was on his
+way home, over Hampstead way. He knew where he'd be able to get an
+ambulance quick, and he made a very clever, secret job of it. I
+'spect he'll get promotion for that!"
+
+"What about the clue?" asked Mrs. Bunting, with dry lips. "You said
+there was a clue?"
+
+"Well, I don't rightly understand about the clue myself. All I
+knows is it's got something to do with a public-house, 'The Hammer
+and Tongs,' which isn't far off there. They feels sure The Avenger
+was in the bar just on closing-time."
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting sat down. She felt better now. It was natural
+the police should suspect a public-house loafer. "Then that's why you
+wasn't able to go and fetch Daisy, I suppose?"
+
+He nodded. "Mum's the word, Mrs. Bunting! It'll all be in the last
+editions of the evening newspapers--it can't be kep' out. There'd be
+too much of a row if 'twas!"
+
+"Are you going off to that public-house now?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I am. I've got a awk'ard job--to try and worm something out
+of the barmaid."
+
+"Something out of the barmaid?" repeated Mrs. Bunting nervously.
+"Why, whatever for?"
+
+He came and stood close to her. "They think 'twas a gentleman," he
+whispered.
+
+"A gentleman?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared at Chandler with a scared expression. "Whatever
+makes them think such a silly thing as that?"
+
+"Well, just before closing-time a very peculiar-looking gent, with a
+leather bag in his hand, went into the bar and asked for a glass of
+milk. And what d'you think he did? Paid for it with a sovereign!
+He wouldn't take no change--just made the girl a present of it!
+That's why the young woman what served him seems quite unwilling to
+give him away. She won't tell now what he was like. She doesn't
+know what he's wanted for, and we don't want her to know just yet.
+That's one reason why nothing's being said public about it. But
+there! I really must be going now. My time'll be up at three
+o'clock. I thought of coming in on the way back, and asking you for
+a cup o' tea, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Do," she said. "Do, Joe. You'll be welcome," but there was no
+welcome in her tired voice.
+
+She let him go alone to the door, and then she went down to her
+kitchen, and began cooking Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
+
+The lodger would be sure to ring soon; and then any minute Bunting
+and Daisy might be home, and they'd want something, too. Margaret
+always had breakfast even when "the family" were away, unnaturally
+early.
+
+As she bustled about Mrs. Bunting tried to empty her mind of all
+thought. But it is very difficult to do that when one is in a state
+of torturing uncertainty. She had not dared to ask Chandler what
+they supposed that man who had gone into the public-house was really
+like. It was fortunate, indeed, that the lodger and that inquisitive
+young chap had never met face to face.
+
+At last Mr. Sleuth's bell rang--a quiet little tinkle. But when
+she went up with his breakfast the lodger was not in his sitting-room.
+
+Supposing him to be still in his bedroom, Mrs. Bunting put the cloth
+on the table, and then she heard the sound of his footsteps coming
+down the stairs, and her quick ears detected the slight whirring
+sound which showed that the gas-stove was alight. Mr. Sleuth had
+already lit the stove; that meant that he would carry out some
+elaborate experiment this afternoon.
+
+"Still snowing?" he said doubtfully. "How very, very quiet and
+still London is when under snow, Mrs. Bunting. I have never known
+it quite as quiet as this morning. Not a sound, outside or in. A
+very pleasant change from the shouting which sometimes goes on in
+the Marylebone Road."
+
+"Yes," she said dully. "It's awful quiet to-day--too quiet to my
+thinking. 'Tain't natural-like."
+
+The outside gate swung to, making a noisy clatter in the still air.
+
+"Is that someone coming in here?" asked Mr. Sleuth, drawing a quick,
+hissing breath. "Perhaps you will oblige me by going to the window
+and telling me who it is, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+And his landlady obeyed him.
+
+"It's only Bunting, sir--Bunting and his daughter."
+
+"Oh! Is that all?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth hurried after her, and she shrank back a little. She
+had never been quite so near to the lodger before, save on that
+first day when she had been showing him her rooms.
+
+Side by side they stood, looking out of the window. And, as if
+aware that someone was standing there, Daisy turned her bright face
+up towards the window and smiled at her stepmother, and at the
+lodger, whose face she could only dimly discern.
+
+"A very sweet-looking young girl," said Mr. Sleuth thoughtfully.
+And then he quoted a little bit of poetry, and this took Mrs.
+Bunting very much aback.
+
+"Wordsworth," he murmured dreamily. "A poet too little read
+nowadays, Mrs. Bunting; but one with a beautiful feeling for nature,
+for youth, for innocence."
+
+"Indeed, sir?" Mrs. Bunting stepped back a little. "Your breakfast
+will be getting cold, sir, if you don't have it now."
+
+He went back to the table, obediently, and sat down as a child
+rebuked might have done.
+
+And then his landlady left him.
+
+"Well?" said Bunting cheerily. "Everything went off quite all right.
+And Daisy's a lucky girl--that she is! Her Aunt Margaret gave her
+five shillings."
+
+But Daisy did not look as pleased as her father thought she ought
+to do.
+
+"I hope nothing's happened to Mr. Chandler," she said a little
+disconsolately. "The very last words he said to me last night was
+that he'd be there at ten o'clock. I got quite fidgety as the time
+went on and he didn't come."
+
+"He's been here," said Mrs. Bunting slowly.
+
+"Been here?" cried her husband. "Then why on earth didn't he go and
+fetch Daisy, if he'd time to come here?"
+
+"He was on the way to his job," his wife answered. "You run along,
+child, downstairs. Now that you are here you can make yourself
+useful."
+
+And Daisy reluctantly obeyed. She wondered what it was her
+stepmother didn't want her to hear.
+
+"I've something to tell you, Bunting."
+
+"Yes?" He looked across uneasily. "Yes, Ellen?"
+
+"There's been another o' those murders. But the police don't want
+anyone to know about it--not yet. That's why Joe couldn't go over
+and fetch Daisy. They're all on duty again."
+
+Bunting put out his hand and clutched hold of the edge of the
+mantelpiece. He had gone very red, but his wife was far too much
+concerned with her own feelings and sensations to notice it.
+
+There was a long silence between them. Then he spoke, making a
+great effort to appear unconcerned.
+
+"And where did it happen?" he asked. "Close to the other one?"
+
+She hesitated, then: "I don't know. He didn't say. But hush!"
+she added quickly. "Here's Daisy! Don't let's talk of that horror
+in front of her-like. Besides, I promised Chandler I'd be mum."
+
+And he acquiesced.
+
+"You can be laying the cloth, child, while I go up and clear away
+the lodger's breakfast." Without waiting for an answer, she hurried
+upstairs.
+
+Mr. Sleuth had left the greater part of the nice lemon sole untouched.
+"I don't feel well to-day," he said fretfully. "And, Mrs. Bunting?
+I should be much obliged if your husband would lend me that paper I
+saw in his hand. I do not often care to look at the public prints,
+but I should like to do so now."
+
+She flew downstairs. "Bunting," she said a little breathlessly,
+"the lodger would like you just to lend him the Sun."
+
+Bunting handed it over to her. "I've read it through," he observed.
+"You can tell him that I don't want it back again."
+
+On her way up she glanced down at the pink sheet. Occupying a third
+of the space was an irregular drawing, and under it was written, in
+rather large characters:
+
+"We are glad to be able to present our readers with an authentic
+reproduction of the footprint of the half-worn rubber sole which
+was almost certainly worn by The Avenger when he committed his
+double murder ten days ago."
+
+She went into the sitting-room. To her relief it was empty.
+
+"Kindly put the paper down on the table," came Mr. Sleuth's muffled
+voice from the upper landing.
+
+She did so. "Yes, sir. And Bunting don't want the paper back
+again, sir. He says he's read it." And then she hurried out of
+the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+All afternoon it went on snowing; and the three of them sat there,
+listening and waiting--Bunting and his wife hardly knew for what;
+Daisy for the knock which would herald Joe Chandler.
+
+And about four there came the now familiar sound.
+
+Mrs. Bunting hurried out into the passage, and as she opened the
+front door she whispered, "We haven't said anything to Daisy yet.
+Young girls can't keep secrets."
+
+Chandler nodded comprehendingly. He now looked the low character
+he had assumed to the life, for he was blue with cold, disheartened,
+and tired out.
+
+Daisy gave a little cry of shocked surprise, of amusement, of
+welcome, when she saw how cleverly he was disguised.
+
+"I never!" she exclaimed. "What a difference it do make, to be
+sure! Why, you looks quite horrid, Mr. Chandler."
+
+And, somehow, that little speech of hers amused her father so much
+that he quite cheered up. Bunting had been very dull and quiet
+all that afternoon.
+
+"It won't take me ten minutes to make myself respectable again,"
+said the young man rather ruefully.
+
+His host and hostess, looking at him eagerly, furtively, both came
+to the conclusion that he had been unsuccessful--that he had failed,
+that is, in getting any information worth having. And though, in a
+sense, they all had a pleasant tea together, there was an air of
+constraint, even of discomfort, over the little party.
+
+Bunting felt it hard that he couldn't ask the questions that were
+trembling on his lips; he would have felt it hard any time during
+the last month to refrain from knowing anything Joe could tell him,
+but now it seemed almost intolerable to be in this queer kind of
+half suspense. There was one important fact he longed to know,
+and at last came his opportunity of doing so, for Joe Chandler rose
+to leave, and this time it was Bunting who followed him out into
+the hall.
+
+"Where did it happen?" he whispered. "Just tell me that, Joe?"
+
+"Primrose Hill," said the other briefly. "You'll know all about it
+in a minute or two, for it'll be all in the last editions of the
+evening papers. That's what's been arranged."
+
+"No arrest I suppose?"
+
+Chandler shook his head despondently. "No," he said, "I'm inclined
+to think the Yard was on a wrong tack altogether this time. But one
+can only do one's best. I don't know if Mrs. Bunting told you I'd
+got to question a barmaid about a man who was in her place just
+before closing-time. Well, she's said all she knew, and it's as
+clear as daylight to me that the eccentric old gent she talks about
+was only a harmless luny. He gave her a sovereign just because she
+told him she was a teetotaller!" He laughed ruefully.
+
+Even Bunting was diverted at the notion. "Well, that's a queer
+thing for a barmaid to be!" he exclaimed. "She's niece to the people
+what keeps the public," explained Chandler; and then he went out of
+the front door with a cheerful "So long!"
+
+When Bunting went back into the sitting-room Daisy had disappeared.
+She had gone downstairs with the tray. "Where's my girl?" he said
+irritably.
+
+"She's just taken the tray downstairs."
+
+He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called out sharply,
+"Daisy! Daisy, child! Are you down there?"
+
+"Yes, father," came her eager, happy voice.
+
+"Better come up out of that cold kitchen."
+
+He turned and came back to his wife. "Ellen, is the lodger in? I
+haven't heard him moving about. Now mind what I says, please! I
+don't want Daisy to be mixed up with him."
+
+"Mr. Sleuth don't seem very well to-day," answered Mrs. Bunting
+quietly. "'Tain't likely I should let Daisy have anything to do
+with him. Why, she's never even seen him. 'Tain't likely I should
+allow her to begin waiting on him now."
+
+But though she was surprised and a little irritated by the tone in
+which Bunting had spoken, no glimmer of the truth illumined her mind.
+So accustomed had she become to bearing alone the burden of her awful
+secret, that it would have required far more than a cross word or
+two, far more than the fact that Bunting looked ill and tired, for
+her to have come to suspect that her secret was now shared by another,
+and that other her husband.
+
+Again and again the poor soul had agonised and trembled at the
+thought of her house being invaded by the police, but that was only
+because she had always credited the police with supernatural powers
+of detection. That they should come to know the awful fact she kept
+hidden in her breast would have seemed to her, on the whole, a
+natural thing, but that Bunting should even dimly suspect it appeared
+beyond the range of possibility.
+
+And yet even Daisy noticed a change in her father. He sat cowering
+over the fire--saying nothing, doing nothing.
+
+"Why, father, ain't you well?" the girl asked more than once.
+
+And, looking up, he would answer, "Yes, I'm well enough, my girl,
+but I feels cold. It's awful cold. I never did feel anything like
+the cold we've got just now."
+
+    *    *    *
+
+At eight the now familiar shouts and cries began again outside.
+
+"The Avenger again!" "Another horrible crime!" "Extra speshul
+edition!"--such were the shouts, the exultant yells, hurled through
+the clear, cold air. They fell, like bombs into the quiet room.
+
+Both Bunting and his wife remained silent, but Daisy's cheeks grew
+pink with excitement, and her eye sparkled.
+
+"Hark, father! Hark, Ellen! D'you hear that?" she exclaimed
+childishly, and even clapped her hands. "I do wish Mr. Chandler
+had been here. He would 'a been startled!"
+
+"Don't, Daisy!" and Bunting frowned.
+
+Then, getting up, he stretched himself. "It's fair getting on my
+mind," he said, "these horrible things happening. I'd like to get
+right away from London, just as far as I could--that I would!"
+
+"Up to John-o'-Groat's?" said Daisy, laughing. And then, "Why,
+father, ain't you going out to get a paper?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose I must."
+
+Slowly he went out of the room, and, lingering a moment in the hall,
+he put on his greatcoat and hat. Then he opened the front door,
+and walked down the flagged path. Opening the iron gate, he stepped
+out on the pavement, then crossed the road to where the newspaper-boys
+now stood.
+
+The boy nearest to him only had the Sun--a late edition of the paper
+he had already read. It annoyed Bunting to give a penny for a
+ha'penny rag of which he already knew the main contents. But there
+was nothing else to do.
+
+Standing under a lamp-post, he opened out the newspaper. It was
+bitingly cold; that, perhaps, was why his hand shook as he looked
+down at the big headlines. For Bunting had been very unfair to the
+enterprise of the editor of his favourite evening paper. This
+special edition was full of new matter--new matter concerning
+The Avenger.
+
+First, in huge type right across the page, was the brief statement
+that The Avenger had now committed his ninth crime, and that he had
+chosen quite a new locality, namely, the lonely stretch of rising
+ground known to Londoners as Primrose Hill.
+
+"The police," so Bunting read, "are very reserved as to the
+circumstances which led to the finding of the body of The Avenger's
+latest victim. But we have reason to believe that they possess
+several really important clues, and that one of them is concerned
+with the half-worn rubber sole of which we are the first to reproduce
+an outline to-day. (See over page.)"
+
+And Bunting, turning the sheet round about, saw the irregular outline
+he had already seen in the early edition of the Sun, that purporting
+to be a facsimile of the imprint left by The Avenger's rubber sole.
+
+He stared down at the rough outline which took up so much of the
+space which should have been devoted to reading matter with a queer,
+sinking feeling of terrified alarm. Again and again criminals had
+been tracked by the marks their boots or shoes had made at or near
+the scenes of their misdoings.
+
+Practically the only job Bunting did in his own house of a menial
+kind was the cleaning of the boots and shoes. He had already
+visualised early this very afternoon the little row with which he
+dealt each morning--first came his wife's strong, serviceable
+boots, then his own two pairs, a good deal patched and mended, and
+next to his own Mr. Sleuth's strong, hardly worn, and expensive
+buttoned boots. Of late a dear little coquettish high-heeled pair
+of outdoor shoes with thin, paperlike soles, bought by Daisy for
+her trip to London, had ended the row. The girl had worn these
+thin shoes persistently, in defiance of Ellen's reproof and advice,
+and he, Bunting, had only once had to clean her more sensible
+country pair, and that only because the others had become wet though
+the day he and she had accompanied young Chandler to Scotland Yard.
+
+Slowly he returned across the road. Somehow the thought of going
+in again, of hearing his wife's sarcastic comments, of parrying
+Daisy's eager questions, had become intolerable. So he walked
+slowly, trying to put off the evil moment when he would have to tell
+them what was in his paper.
+
+The lamp under which he had stood reading was not exactly opposite
+the house. It was rather to the right of it. And when, having
+crossed over the roadway, he walked along the pavement towards his
+own gate, he heard odd, shuffling sounds coming from the inner side
+of the low wall which shut off his little courtyard from the pavement.
+
+Now, under ordinary circumstances Bunting would have rushed forward
+to drive out whoever was there. He and his wife had often had
+trouble, before the cold weather began, with vagrants seeking shelter
+there. But to-night he stayed outside, listening intently, sick
+with suspense and fear.
+
+Was it possible that their place was being watched--already? He
+thought it only too likely. Bunting, like Mrs. Bunting, credited
+the police with almost supernatural powers, especially since he
+had paid that visit to Scotland Yard.
+
+But to Bunting's amazement, and, yes, relief, it was his lodger who
+suddenly loomed up in the dim light.
+
+Mr. Sleuth must have been stooping down, for his tall, lank form
+had been quite concealed till he stepped forward from behind the
+low wall on to the flagged path leading to the front door.
+
+The lodger was carrying a brown paper parcel, and, as he walked
+along, the new boots he was wearing creaked, and the tap-tap of
+hard nail-studded heels rang out on the flat-stones of the narrow
+path.
+
+Bunting, still standing outside the gate, suddenly knew what it was
+his lodger had been doing on the other side of the low wall. Mr.
+Sleuth had evidently been out to buy himself another pair of new
+boots, and then he had gone inside the gate and had put them on,
+placing his old footgear in the paper in which the new pair had
+been wrapped.
+
+The ex-butler waited--waited quite a long time, not only until Mr.
+Sleuth had let himself into the house, but till the lodger had had
+time to get well away, upstairs.
+
+Then he also walked up the flagged pathway, and put his latchkey in
+the door. He lingered as long over the job of hanging his hat and
+coat up in the hall as he dared, in fact till his wife called out
+to him. Then he went in, and throwing the paper down on the table,
+he said sullenly: "There it is! You can see it all for yourself--
+not that there's very much to see," and groped his way to the fire.
+
+His wife looked at him in sharp alarm. "Whatever have you done to
+yourself?" she exclaimed. "You're ill--that's what it is, Bunting.
+You got a chill last night!"
+
+"I told you I'd got a chill," he muttered. "'Twasn't last night,
+though; 'twas going out this morning, coming back in the bus.
+Margaret keeps that housekeeper's room o' hers like a hothouse--
+that's what she does. 'Twas going out from there into the biting
+wind, that's what did for me. It must be awful to stand about in
+such weather; 'tis a wonder to me how that young fellow, Joe Chandler,
+can stand the life--being out in all weathers like he is."
+
+Bunting spoke at random, his one anxiety being to get away from what
+was in the paper, which now lay, neglected, on the table.
+
+"Those that keep out o' doors all day never do come to no harm,"
+said his wife testily. "But if you felt so bad, whatever was you
+out so long for, Bunting? I thought you'd gone away somewhere!
+D'you mean you only went to get the paper?"
+
+"I just stopped for a second to look at it under the lamp," he
+muttered apologetically.
+
+"That was a silly thing to do!"
+
+"Perhaps it was," he admitted meekly.
+
+Daisy had taken up the paper. "Well, they don't say much," she
+said disappointedly. "Hardly anything at all! But perhaps Mr.
+Chandler 'll be in soon again. If so, he'll tell us more about it."
+
+"A young girl like you oughtn't to want to know anything about
+murders," said her stepmother severely. "Joe won't think any the
+better of you for your inquisitiveness about such things. If I
+was you, Daisy, I shouldn't say nothing about it if he does come in
+--which I fair tell you I hope he won't. I've seen enough of that
+young chap to-day."
+
+"He didn't come in for long--not to-day," said Daisy, her lip
+trembling.
+
+"I can tell you one thing that'll surprise you, my dear"--Mrs.
+Bunting looked significantly at her stepdaughter. She also wanted
+to get away from that dread news--which yet was no news.
+
+"Yes?" said Daisy, rather defiantly. "What is it, Ellen?"
+
+"Maybe you'll be surprised to hear that Joe did come in this morning.
+He knew all about that affair then, but he particular asked that
+you shouldn't be told anything about it."
+
+"Never!" cried Daisy, much mortified.
+
+"Yes," went on her stepmother ruthlessly. "You just ask your father
+over there if it isn't true."
+
+"'Tain't a healthy thing to speak overmuch about such happenings,"
+said Bunting heavily.
+
+"If I was Joe," went on Mrs. Bunting, quickly pursuing her advantage,
+"I shouldn't want to talk about such horrid things when I comes in
+to have a quiet chat with friends. But the minute he comes in that
+poor young chap is set upon--mostly, I admit, by your father," she
+looked at her husband severely. "But you does your share, too,
+Daisy! You asks him this, you asks him that--he's fair puzzled
+sometimes. It don't do to be so inquisitive."
+
+******
+
+And perhaps because of this little sermon on Mrs. Bunting's part
+when young Chandler did come in again that evening, very little was
+said of the new Avenger murder.
+
+Bunting made no reference to it at all, and though Daisy said a
+word, it was but a word. And Joe Chandler thought he had never
+spent a pleasanter evening in his life--for it was he and Daisy
+who talked all the time, their elders remaining for the most part
+silent.
+
+Daisy told of all that she had done with Aunt Margaret. She
+described the long, dull hours and the queer jobs her aunt set her
+to do--the washing up of all the fine drawing-room china in a big
+basin lined with flannel, and how terrified she (Daisy) had been
+lest there should come even one teeny little chip to any of it.
+Then she went on to relate some of the funny things Aunt Margaret
+had told her about "the family."
+
+There came a really comic tale, which hugely interested and delighted
+Chandler. This was of how Aunt Margaret's lady had been taken in by
+an impostor--an impostor who had come up, just as she was stepping
+out of her carriage, and pretended to have a fit on the doorstep.
+Aunt Margaret's lady, being a soft one, had insisted on the man
+coming into the hall, where he had been given all kinds of
+restoratives. When the man had at last gone off, it was found that
+he had "wolfed" young master's best walking-stick, one with a fine
+tortoise-shell top to it. Thus had Aunt Margaret proved to her lady
+that the man had been shamming, and her lady had been very angry--
+near had a fit herself!
+
+"There's a lot of that about," said Chandler, laughing.
+"Incorrigible rogues and vagabonds--that's what those sort of people
+are!"
+
+And then he, in his turn, told an elaborate tale of an exceptionally
+clever swindler whom he himself had brought to book. He was very
+proud of that job, it had formed a white stone in his career as a
+detective. And even Mrs. Bunting was quite interested to hear about
+it.
+
+Chandler was still sitting there when Mr. Sleuth's bell rang. For
+awhile no one stirred; then Bunting looked questioningly at his wife.
+
+"Did you hear that?" he said. "I think, Ellen, that was the lodger's
+bell."
+
+She got up, without alacrity, and went upstairs.
+
+"I rang," said Mr. Sleuth weakly, "to tell you I don't require any
+supper to-night, Mrs. Bunting. Only a glass of milk, with a lump
+of sugar in it. That is all I require--nothing more. I feel very
+very far from well"--and he had a hunted, plaintive expression on
+his face. "And then I thought your husband would like his paper
+back again, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+Mrs. Bunting, looking at him fixedly, with a sad intensity of gaze
+of which she was quite unconscious, answered, "Oh, no, sir!
+Bunting don't require that paper now. He read it all through."
+Something impelled her to add, ruthlessly, "He's got another paper
+by now, sir. You may have heard them come shouting outside. Would
+you like me to bring you up that other paper, sir?"
+
+And Mr. Sleuth shook his head. "No," he said querulously. "I much
+regret now having asked for the one paper I did read, for it
+disturbed me, Mrs. Bunting. There was nothing of any value in it--
+there never is in any public print. I gave up reading newspapers
+years ago, and I much regret that I broke though my rule to-day."
+
+As if to indicate to her that he did not wish for any more
+conversation, the lodger then did what he had never done before in
+his landlady's presence. He went over to the fireplace and
+deliberately turned his back on her.
+
+She went down and brought up the glass of milk and the lump of
+sugar he had asked for.
+
+Now he was in his usual place, sitting at the table, studying the
+Book.
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went back to the others they were chatting
+merrily. She did not notice that the merriment was confined to the
+two young people.
+
+"Well?" said Daisy pertly. "How about the lodger, Ellen? Is he
+all right?"
+
+"Yes," she said stiffly. "Of course he is!"
+
+"He must feel pretty dull sitting up there all by himself--awful
+lonely-like, I call it," said the girl.
+
+But her, stepmother remained silent.
+
+"Whatever does he do with himself all day?" persisted Daisy.
+
+"Just now he's reading the Bible," Mrs. Bunting answered, shortly
+and dryly.
+
+"Well, I never! That's a funny thing for a gentleman to do!"
+
+And Joe, alone of her three listeners, laughed--a long hearty peal
+of amusement.
+
+"There's nothing to laugh at," said Mrs. Bunting sharply. "I should
+feel ashamed of being caught laughing at anything connected with the
+Bible."
+
+And poor Joe became suddenly quite serious. This was the first time
+that Mrs. Bunting had ever spoken really nastily to him, and he
+answered very humbly, "I beg pardon. I know I oughtn't to have
+laughed at anything to do with the Bible, but you see, Miss Daisy
+said it so funny-like, and, by all accounts, your lodger must be a
+queer card, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"He's no queerer than many people I could mention," she said quickly;
+and with these enigmatic words she got up, and left the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Each hour of the days that followed held for Bunting its full meed
+of aching fear and suspense.
+
+The unhappy man was ever debating within himself what course he
+should pursue, and, according to his mood and to the state of his
+mind at any particular moment, he would waver between various
+widely-differing lines of action.
+
+He told himself again and again, and with fretful unease, that the
+most awful thing about it all was that he wasn't sure. If only he
+could have been sure, he might have made up his mind exactly what
+it was he ought to do.
+
+But when telling himself this he was deceiving himself, and he was
+vaguely conscious of the fact; for, from Bunting's point of view,
+almost any alternative would have been preferable to that which to
+some, nay, perhaps to most, householders would have seemed the only
+thing to do, namely, to go to the police. But Londoners of Bunting's
+class have an uneasy fear of the law. To his mind it would be ruin
+for him and for his Ellen to be mixed up publicly in such a terrible
+affair. No one concerned in the business would give them and their
+future a thought, but it would track them to their dying day, and,
+above all, it would make it quite impossible for them ever to get
+again into a good joint situation. It was that for which Bunting,
+in his secret soul, now longed with all his heart.
+
+No, some other way than going to the police must be found--and he
+racked his slow brain to find it.
+
+The worst of it was that every hour that went by made his future
+course more difficult and more delicate, and increased the awful
+weight on his conscience.
+
+If only he really knew! If only he could feel quite sure! And
+then he would tell himself that, after all, he had very little to
+go upon; only suspicion--suspicion, and a secret, horrible
+certainty that his suspicion was justified.
+
+And so at last Bunting began to long for a solution which he knew
+to be indefensible from every point of view; he began to hope, that
+is, in the depths of his heart, that the lodger would again go out
+one evening on his horrible business and be caught--red-handed.
+
+But far from going out on any business, horrible or other, Mr.
+Sleuth now never went out at all. He kept upstairs, and often spent
+quite a considerable part of his day in bed. He still felt, so he
+assured Mrs. Bunting, very far from well. He had never thrown off
+the chill he had caught on that bitter night he and his landlord
+had met on their several ways home.
+
+Joe Chandler, too, had become a terrible complication to Daisy's
+father. The detective spent every waking hour that he was not on
+duty with the Buntings; and Bunting, who at one time had liked him
+so well and so cordially, now became mortally afraid of him.
+
+But though the young man talked of little else than The Avenger,
+and though on one evening he described at immense length the
+eccentric-looking gent who had given the barmaid a sovereign,
+picturing Mr. Sleuth with such awful accuracy that both Bunting and
+Mrs. Bunting secretly and separately turned sick when they listened
+to him, he never showed the slightest interest in their lodger.
+
+At last there came a morning when Bunting and Chandler held a strange
+conversation about The Avenger. The young fellow had come in earlier
+than usual, and just as he arrived Mrs. Bunting and Daisy were
+starting out to do some shopping. The girl would fain have stopped
+behind, but her stepmother had given her a very peculiar, disagreeable
+look, daring her, so to speak, to be so forward, and Daisy had gone
+on with a flushed, angry look on her pretty face.
+
+And then, as young Chandler stepped through into the sitting-room,
+it suddenly struck Bunting that the young man looked unlike himself
+--indeed, to the ex-butler's apprehension there was something almost
+threatening in Chandler's attitude.
+
+"I want a word with you, Mr. Bunting," he began abruptly, falteringly.
+"And I'm glad to have the chance now that Mrs. Bunting and Miss Daisy
+are out."
+
+Bunting braced himself to hear the awful words--the accusation of
+having sheltered a murderer, the monster whom all the world was
+seeking, under his roof. And then he remembered a phrase, a
+horrible legal phrase--"Accessory after the fact." Yes, he had
+been that, there wasn't any doubt about it!
+
+"Yes?" he said. "What is it, Joe?" and then the unfortunate man
+sat down in his chair. "Yes?" he said again uncertainly; for young
+Chandler had now advanced to the table, he was looking at Bunting
+fixedly--the other thought threateningly. "Well, out with it,
+Joe! Don't keep me in suspense."
+
+And then a slight smile broke over the young man's face. "I don't
+think what I've got to say can take you by surprise, Mr. Bunting."
+
+And Bunting wagged his head in a way that might mean anything--yes
+or no, as the case might be.
+
+The two men looked at one another for what seemed a very, very long
+time to the elder of them. And then, making a great effort, Joe
+Chandler brought out the words, "Well, I suppose you know what it
+is I want to talk about. I'm sure Mrs. Bunting would, from a look
+or two she's lately cast on me. It's your daughter--it's Miss
+Daisy."
+
+And then Bunting gave a kind of cry, 'twixt a sob and a laugh.
+"My girl?" he cried. "Good Lord, Joe! Is that all you wants to
+talk about? Why, you fair frightened me--that you did!"
+
+And, indeed, the relief was so great that the room swam round as
+he stared across it at his daughter's lover, that lover who was
+also the embodiment of that now awful thing to him, the law. He
+smiled, rather foolishly, at his visitor; and Chandler felt a sharp
+wave of irritation, of impatience sweep over his good-natured soul.
+Daisy's father was an old stupid--that's what he was.
+
+And then Bunting grew serious. The room ceased to go round. "As
+far as I'm concerned," he said, with a good deal of solemnity, even
+a little dignity, "you have my blessing, Joe. You're a very likely
+young chap, and I had a true respect for your father."
+
+"Yes," said Chandler, "that's very kind of you, Mr. Bunting. But
+how about her--her herself?"
+
+Bunting stared at him. It pleased him to think that Daisy hadn't
+given herself away, as Ellen was always hinting the girl was doing.
+
+"I can't answer for Daisy," he said heavily. "You'll have to ask
+her yourself--that's not a job any other man can do for you, my lad."
+
+"I never gets a chance. I never sees her, not by our two selves,"
+said Chandler, with some heat. "You don't seem to understand, Mr.
+Bunting, that I never do see Miss Daisy alone," he repeated. "I
+hear now that she's going away Monday, and I've only once had the
+chance of a walk with her. Mrs. Bunting's very particular, not to
+say pernickety in her ideas, Mr. Bunting--"
+
+"That's a fault on the right side, that is--with a young girl,"
+said Bunting thoughtfully.
+
+And Chandler nodded. He quite agreed that as regarded other young
+chaps Mrs. Bunting could not be too particular.
+
+"She's been brought up like a lady, my Daisy has," went on Bunting,
+with some pride. "That Old Aunt of hers hardly lets her out of her
+sight."
+
+"I was coming to the old aunt," said Chandler heavily. "Mrs.
+Bunting she talks as if your daughter was going to stay with that
+old woman the whole of her natural life--now is that right? That's
+what I wants to ask you, Mr. Bunting,--is that right?"
+
+"I'll say a word to Ellen, don't you fear," said Bunting abstractedly.
+
+His mind had wandered off, away from Daisy and this nice young chap,
+to his now constant anxious preoccupation. "You come along
+to-morrow," he said, "and I'll see you gets your walk with Daisy.
+It's only right you and she should have a chance of seeing one
+another without old folk being by; else how's the girl to tell
+whether she likes you or not! For the matter of that, you hardly
+knows her, Joe--" He looked at the young man consideringly.
+
+Chandler shook his head impatiently. "I knows her quite as well as
+I wants to know her," he said. "I made up my mind the very first
+time I see'd her, Mr. Bunting."
+
+"No! Did you really?" said Bunting. "Well, come to think of it,
+I did so with her mother; aye, and years after, with Ellen, too.
+But I hope you'll never want no second, Chandler."
+
+"God forbid!" said the young man under his breath. And then he
+asked, rather longingly, "D'you think they'll be out long now, Mr.
+Bunting?"
+
+And Bunting woke up to a due sense of hospitality. "Sit down, sit
+down; do!" he said hastily. "I don't believe they'll be very long.
+They've only got a little bit of shopping to do."
+
+And then, in a changed, in a ringing, nervous tone, he asked, "And
+how about your job, Joe? Nothing new, I take it? I suppose you're
+all just waiting for the next time?"
+
+"Aye--that's about the figure of it." Chandler's voice had also
+changed; it was now sombre, menacing. "We're fair tired of it--
+beginning to wonder when it'll end, that we are!"
+
+"Do you ever try and make to yourself a picture of what the master's
+like?" asked Bunting. Somehow, he felt he must ask that.
+
+"Yes," said Joe slowly. "I've a sort of notion--a savage,
+fierce-looking devil, the chap must be. It's that description that
+was circulated put us wrong. I don't believe it was the man that
+knocked up against that woman in the fog--no, not one bit I don't.
+But I wavers, I can't quite make up my mind. Sometimes I think it's
+a sailor--the foreigner they talks about, that goes away for eight
+or nine days in between, to Holland maybe, or to France. Then,
+again, I says to myself that it's a butcher, a man from the Central
+Market. Whoever it is, it's someone used to killing, that's flat."
+
+"Then it don't seem to you possible--?" (Bunting got up and walked
+over to the window.) "You don't take any stock, I suppose, in that
+idea some of the papers put out, that the man is"--then he
+hesitated and brought out, with a gasp--"a gentleman?"
+
+Chandler looked at him, surprised. "No," he said deliberately.
+"I've made up my mind that's quite a wrong tack, though I knows that
+some of our fellows--big pots, too--are quite sure that the fellow
+what gave the girl the sovereign is the man we're looking for. You
+see, Mr. Bunting, if that's the fact--well, it stands to reason the
+fellow's an escaped lunatic; and if he's an escaped lunatic he's got
+a keeper, and they'd be raising a hue and cry after him; now,
+wouldn't they?"
+
+"You don't think," went on Bunting, lowering his voice, "that he
+could be just staying somewhere, lodging like?"
+
+"D'you mean that The Avenger may be a toff, staying in some
+West-end hotel, Mr. Bunting? Well, things almost as funny as that
+'ud be have come to pass." He smiled as if the notion was a funny
+one.
+
+"Yes, something o' that sort," muttered Bunting.
+
+"Well, if your idea's correct, Mr. Bunting--"
+
+"I never said 'twas my idea," said Bunting, all in a hurry.
+
+"Well, if that idea's correct then, 'twill make our task more
+difficult than ever. Why, 'twould be looking for a needle in a
+field of hay, Mr. Bunting! But there! I don't think it's
+anything quite so unlikely as that--not myself I don't." He
+hesitated. "There's some of us"--he lowered his voice--"that
+hopes he'll betake himself off--The Avenger, I mean--to another
+big city, to Manchester or to Edinburgh. There'd be plenty of
+work for him to do there," and Chandler chuckled at his own grim
+joke.
+
+And then, to both men's secret relief, for Bunting was now
+mortally afraid of this discussion concerning The Avenger and
+his doings, they heard Mrs. Bunting's key in the lock.
+
+Daisy blushed rosy-red with pleasure when she saw that young
+Chandler was still there. She had feared that when they got home
+he would be gone, the more so that Ellen, just as if she was doing
+it on purpose, had lingered aggravatingly long over each small
+purchase.
+
+"Here's Joe come to ask if he can take Daisy out for a walk,"
+blurted out Bunting.
+
+"My mother says as how she'd like you to come to tea, over at
+Richmond," said Chandler awkwardly, "I just come in to see whether
+we could fix it up, Miss Daisy." And Daisy looked imploringly at
+her stepmother.
+
+"D'you mean now--this minute?" asked Mrs. Bunting tartly.
+
+"No, o' course not"--Bunting broke in hastily. "How you do go on,
+Ellen!"
+
+"What day did your mother mention would be convenient to her?"
+asked Mrs. Bunting, looking at the young man satirically.
+
+Chandler hesitated. His mother had not mentioned any special day
+--in fact, his mother had shown a surprising lack of anxiety to
+see Daisy at all. But he had talked her round.
+
+"How about Saturday?" suggested Bunting. "That's Daisy's birthday.
+'Twould be a birthday treat for her to go to Richmond, and she's
+going back to Old Aunt on Monday."
+
+"I can't go Saturday," said Chandler disconsolately. "I'm on duty
+Saturday."
+
+"Well, then, let it be Sunday," said Bunting firmly. And his wife
+looked at him surprised; he seldom asserted himself so much in her
+presence.
+
+"What do you say, Miss Daisy?" said Chandler.
+
+"Sunday would be very nice," said Daisy demurely. And then, as the
+young man took up his hat, and as her stepmother did not stir, Daisy
+ventured to go out into the hall with him for a minute.
+
+Chandler shut the door behind them, and so was spared the hearing
+of Mrs. Bunting's whispered remark: "When I was a young woman folk
+didn't gallivant about on Sunday; those who was courting used to
+go to church together, decent-like--"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Daisy's eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully. Her father gave
+her what he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth
+birthday--a watch. It was a pretty little silver watch, which
+Bunting had bought secondhand on the last day he had been happy--
+it seemed a long, long time ago now.
+
+Mrs. Bunting thought a silver watch a very extravagant present but
+she was far too wretched, far too absorbed in her own thoughts, to
+trouble much about it. Besides, in such matters she had generally
+had the good sense not to interfere between her husband and his
+child.
+
+In the middle of the birthday morning Bunting went out to buy
+himself some more tobacco. He had never smoked so much as in the
+last four days, excepting, perhaps, the week that had followed on
+his leaving service. Smoking a pipe had then held all the exquisite
+pleasure which we are told attaches itself to the eating of forbidden
+fruit.
+
+His tobacco had now become his only relaxation; it acted on his
+nerves as an opiate, soothing his fears and helping him to think.
+But he had been overdoing it, and it was that which now made him
+feel so "jumpy," so he assured himself, when he found himself
+starting at any casual sound outside, or even when his wife spoke
+to him suddenly.
+
+Just now Ellen and Daisy were down in the kitchen, and Bunting
+didn't quite like the sensation of knowing that there was only
+one pair of stairs between Mr. Sleuth and himself. So he quietly
+slipped out of the house without telling Ellen that he was going
+out.
+
+In the last four days Bunting had avoided his usual haunts; above
+all, he had avoided even passing the time of day to his
+acquaintances and neighbours. He feared, with a great fear, that
+they would talk to him of a subject which, because it filled his
+mind to the exclusion of all else, might make him betray the
+knowledge--no, not knowledge, rather the--the suspicion--that
+dwelt within him.
+
+But to-day the unfortunate man had a curious, instinctive longing
+for human companionship--companionship, that is, other than that
+of his wife and of his daughter.
+
+This longing for a change of company finally led him into a small,
+populous thoroughfare hard by the Edgware Road. There were more
+people there than usual just now, for the housewives of the
+neighbourhood were doing their Saturday marketing for Sunday. The
+ex-butler turned into a small old-fashioned shop where he generally
+bought his tobacco.
+
+Bunting passed the time of day with the tobacconist, and the two
+fell into desultory talk, but to his customer's relief and surprise
+the man made no allusion to the subject of which all the
+neighbourhood must still be talking.
+
+And then, quite suddenly, while still standing by the counter, and
+before he had paid for the packet of tobacco he held in his hand,
+Bunting, through the open door, saw with horrified surprise that
+Ellen, his wife, was standing, alone, outside a greengrocer's shop
+just opposite.
+
+Muttering a word of apology, he rushed out of the shop and across
+the road.
+
+"Ellen!" he gasped hoarsely, "you've never gone and left my little
+girl alone in the house with the lodger?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting's face went yellow with fear. "I thought you was
+indoors," she cried. "You was indoors! Whatever made you come out
+for, without first making sure I'd stay in?"
+
+Bunting made no answer; but, as they stared at each other in
+exasperated silence, each now knew that the other knew.
+
+They turned and scurried down the crowded street. "Don't run," he
+said suddenly; "we shall get there just as quickly if we walk fast.
+People are noticing you, Ellen. Don't run."
+
+He spoke breathlessly, but it was breathlessness induced by fear
+and by excitement, not by the quick pace at which they were walking.
+
+At last they reached their own gate, and Bunting pushed past in
+front of his wife.
+
+After all, Daisy was his child; Ellen couldn't know how he was
+feeling.
+
+He seemed to take the path in one leap, then fumbled for a moment
+with his latchkey.
+
+Opening wide the door, "Daisy!" he called out, in a wailing voice,
+"Daisy, my dear! where are you?"
+
+"Here I am, father. What is it?"
+
+"She's all right." Bunting turned a grey face to his wife. "She's
+all right, Ellen."
+
+He waited a moment, leaning against the wall of the passage. "It
+did give me a turn," he said, and then, warningly, "Don't frighten
+the girl, Ellen."
+
+Daisy was standing before the fire in their sitting room, admiring
+herself in the glass.
+
+"Oh, father," she exclaimed, without turning round, "I've seen the
+lodger! He's quite a nice gentleman, though, to be sure, he does
+look a cure. He rang his bell, but I didn't like to go up; and so
+he came down to ask Ellen for something. We had quite a nice
+little chat--that we had. I told him it was my birthday, and he
+asked me and Ellen to go to Madame Tussaud's with him this
+afternoon." She laughed, a little self-consciously. "Of course,
+I could see he was 'centric, and then at first he spoke so funnily.
+'And who be you?' he says, threatening-like. And I says to him,
+'I'm Mr. Bunting's daughter, sir.' 'Then you're a very fortunate
+girl'--that's what he says, Ellen--'to 'ave such a nice
+stepmother as you've got. That's why,' he says, 'you look such
+a good, innocent girl.' And then he quoted a bit of the Prayer
+Book. 'Keep innocency,' he says, wagging his head at me. Lor'!
+It made me feel as if I was with Old Aunt again."
+
+"I won't have you going out with the lodger--that's flat."
+
+Bunting spoke in a muffled, angry tone. He was wiping his forehead
+with one hand, while with the other he mechanically squeezed the
+little packet of tobacco, for which, as he now remembered, he had
+forgotten to pay.
+
+Daisy pouted. "Oh, father, I think you might let me have a treat
+on my birthday! I told him that Saturday wasn't a very good day--
+at least, so I'd heard--for Madame Tussaud's. Then he said we
+could go early, while the fine folk are still having their dinners."
+She turned to her stepmother, then giggled happily. "He particularly
+said you was to come, too. The lodger has a wonderful fancy for you,
+Ellen; if I was father, I'd feel quite jealous!"
+
+Her last words were cut across by a tap-tap on the door.
+
+Bunting and his wife looked at each other apprehensively. Was it
+possible that, in their agitation, they had left the front door
+open, and that someone, some merciless myrmidon of the law, had
+crept in behind them?
+
+Both felt a curious thrill of satisfaction when they saw that it
+was only Mr. Sleuth--Mr. Sleuth dressed for going out; the tall
+hat he had worn when he had first come to them was in his hand, but
+he was wearing a coat instead of his Inverness cape.
+
+"I heard you come in"--he addressed Mrs. Bunting in his high,
+whistling, hesitating voice--"and so I've come down to ask you if
+you and Miss Bunting will come to Madame Tussaud's now. I have
+never seen those famous waxworks, though I've heard of the place
+all my life."
+
+As Bunting forced himself to look fixedly at his lodger, a sudden
+doubt bringing with it a sense of immeasurable relief, came to
+Mr. Sleuth's landlord.
+
+Surely it was inconceivable that this gentle, mild-mannered
+gentleman could be the monster of cruelty and cunning that Bunting
+had now for the terrible space of four days believed him to be!
+
+He tried to catch his wife's eye, but Mrs. Bunting was looking away,
+staring into vacancy. She still, of course, wore the bonnet and
+cloak in which she had just been out to do her marketing. Daisy
+was already putting on her hat and coat.
+
+"Well?" said Mr. Sleuth. Then Mrs. Bunting turned, and it seemed
+to his landlady that he was looking at her threateningly. "Well?"
+
+"Yes, sir. We'll come in a minute," she said dully.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Madame Tussaud's had hitherto held pleasant memories for Mrs. Bunting.
+In the days when she and Bunting were courting they often spent there
+part of their afternoon-out.
+
+The butler had an acquaintance, a man named Hopkins, who was one of
+the waxworks staff, and this man had sometimes given him passes for
+"self and lady." But this was the first time Mrs. Bunting had been
+inside the place since she had come to live almost next door, as it
+were, to the big building.
+
+They walked in silence to the familiar entrance, and then, after
+the ill-assorted trio had gone up the great staircase and into the
+first gallery, Mr. Sleuth suddenly stopped short. The presence of
+those curious, still, waxen figures which suggest so strangely death
+in life, seemed to surprise and affright him.
+
+Daisy took quick advantage of the lodger's hesitation and unease.
+
+"Oh, Ellen," she cried, "do let us begin by going into the Chamber
+of Horrors! I've never been in there. Old Aunt made father promise
+he wouldn't take me the only time I've ever been here. But now that
+I'm eighteen I can do just as I like; besides, Old Aunt will never
+know."
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked down at her, and a smile passed for a moment over
+his worn, gaunt face.
+
+"Yes," he said, "let us go into the Chamber of Horrors; that's a
+good idea, Miss Bunting. I've always wanted to see the Chamber of
+Horrors."
+
+They turned into the great room in which the Napoleonic relics were
+then kept, and which led into the curious, vault-like chamber where
+waxen effigies of dead criminals stand grouped in wooden docks.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was at once disturbed and relieved to see her husband's
+old acquaintance, Mr. Hopkins, in charge of the turnstile admitting
+the public to the Chamber of Horrors.
+
+"Well, you are a stranger," the man observed genially. "I do believe
+that this is the very first time I've seen you in here, Mrs. Bunting,
+since you was married!"
+
+"Yes," she said, "that is so. And this is my husband's daughter,
+Daisy; I expect you've heard of her, Mr. Hopkins. And this"--she
+hesitated a moment--"is our lodger, Mr. Sleuth."
+
+But Mr. Sleuth frowned and shuffled away. Daisy, leaving her
+stepmother's side, joined him.
+
+Two, as all the world knows, is company, three is none. Mrs.
+Bunting put down three sixpences.
+
+"Wait a minute," said Hopkins; "you can't go into the Chamber of
+Horrors just yet. But you won't have to wait more than four or
+five minutes, Mrs. Bunting. It's this way, you see; our boss is
+in there, showing a party round." He lowered his voice. "It's
+Sir John Burney--I suppose you know who Sir John Burney is?"
+
+"No," she answered indifferently, "I don't know that I ever heard
+of him."
+
+She felt slightly--oh, very sightly--uneasy about Daisy. She
+would have liked her stepdaughter to keep well within sight and
+sound, but Mr. Sleuth was now taking the girl down to the other
+end of the room.
+
+"Well, I hope you never will know him--not in any personal sense,
+Mrs. Bunting." The man chuckled. "He's the Commissioner of Police
+--the new one--that's what Sir John Burney is. One of the
+gentlemen he's showing round our place is the Paris Police boss--
+whose job is on all fours, so to speak, with Sir John's. The
+Frenchy has brought his daughter with him, and there are several
+other ladies. Ladies always likes horrors, Mrs. Bunting; that's
+our experience here. 'Oh, take me to the Chamber of Horrors'--
+that's what they say the minute they gets into this here building!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked at him thoughtfully. It occurred to Mr. Hopkins
+that she was very wan and tired; she used to look better in the old
+days, when she was still in service, before Bunting married her.
+
+"Yes," she said; "that's just what my stepdaughter said just now.
+'Oh, take me to the Chamber of Horrors'--that's exactly what she
+did say when we got upstairs."
+
+******
+
+A group of people, all talking and laughing together; were advancing,
+from within the wooden barrier, toward the turnstile.
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared at them nervously. She wondered which of them
+was the gentleman with whom Mr. Hopkins had hoped she would never be
+brought into personal contact; she thought she could pick him out
+among the others. He was a tall, powerful, handsome gentleman, with
+a military appearance.
+
+Just now he was smiling down into the face of a young lady.
+"Monsieur Barberoux is quite right," he was saying in a loud,
+cheerful voice, "our English law is too kind to the criminal,
+especially to the murderer. If we conducted our trials in the
+French fashion, the place we have just left would be very much
+fuller than it is to-day. A man of whose guilt we are absolutely
+assured is oftener than not acquitted, and then the public taunt
+us with 'another undiscovered crime!'"
+
+"D'you mean, Sir John, that murderers sometimes escape scot-free?
+Take the man who has been committing all these awful murders this
+last month? I suppose there's no doubt he'll be hanged--if he's
+ever caught, that is!"
+
+Her girlish voice rang out, and Mrs. Bunting could hear every word
+that was said.
+
+The whole party gathered round, listening eagerly. "Well, no."
+He spoke very deliberately. "I doubt if that particular murderer
+ever will be hanged."
+
+"You mean that you'll never catch him?" the girl spoke with a touch
+of airy impertinence in her clear voice.
+
+"I think we shall end by catching him--because"--he waited a moment,
+then added in a lower voice--"now don't give me away to a newspaper
+fellow, Miss Rose--because now I think we do know who the murderer
+in question is--"
+
+Several of those standing near by uttered expressions of surprise and
+incredulity.
+
+"Then why don't you catch him?" cried the girl indignantly.
+
+"I didn't say we knew where he was; I only said we knew who he was,
+or, rather, perhaps I ought to say that I personally have a very
+strong suspicion of his identity."
+
+Sir John's French colleague looked up quickly. "De Leipsic and
+Liverpool man?" he said interrogatively.
+
+The other nodded. "Yes, I suppose you've had the case turned up?"
+
+Then, speaking very quickly, as if he wished to dismiss the subject
+from his own mind, and from that of his auditors, he went on:
+
+"Four murders of the kind were committed eight years ago--two in
+Leipsic, the others, just afterwards, in Liverpool,--and there were
+certain peculiarities connected with the crimes which made it clear
+they were committed by the same hand. The perpetrator was caught,
+fortunately for us, red-handed, just as he was leaving the house of
+his last victim, for in Liverpool the murder was committed in a
+house. I myself saw the unhappy man--I say unhappy, for there is
+no doubt at all that he was mad"--he hesitated, and added in a
+lower tone--"suffering from an acute form of religious mania.
+I myself saw him, as I say, at some length. But now comes the really
+interesting point. I have just been informed that a month ago this
+criminal lunatic, as we must of course regard him, made his escape
+from the asylum where he was confined. He arranged the whole
+thing with extraordinary cunning and intelligence, and we should
+probably have caught him long ago, were it not that he managed, when
+on his way out of the place, to annex a considerable sum of money
+in gold, with which the wages of the asylum staff were about to be
+paid. It is owing to that fact that his escape was, very wrongly,
+concealed--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, as if sorry he had said so much, and a moment
+later the party were walking in Indian file through the turnstile,
+Sir John Burney leading the way.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked straight before her. She felt--so she
+expressed it to her husband later--as if she had been turned to
+stone.
+
+Even had she wished to do so, she had neither the time nor the power
+to warn her lodger of his danger, for Daisy and her companion were
+now coming down the room, bearing straight for the Commissioner of
+Police. In another moment Mrs. Bunting's lodger and Sir John Burney
+were face to face.
+
+Mr. Sleuth swerved to one side; there came a terrible change over
+his pale, narrow face; it became discomposed, livid with rage and
+terror.
+
+But, to Mrs. Bunting's relief--yes, to her inexpressible relief
+--Sir John Burney and his friends swept on. They passed Mr. Sleuth
+and the girl by his side, unaware, or so it seemed to her, that
+there was anyone else in the room but themselves.
+
+"Hurry up, Mrs. Bunting," said the turnstile-keeper; "you and your
+friends will have the place all to yourselves for a bit." From an
+official he had become a man, and it was the man in Mr. Hopkins that
+gallantly addressed pretty Daisy Bunting: "It seems strange that a
+young lady like you should want to go in and see all those 'orrible
+frights," he said jestingly.
+
+"Mrs. Bunting, may I trouble you to come over here for a moment?"
+
+The words were hissed rather than spoken by Mr. Sleuth's lips.
+
+His landlady took a doubtful step towards him.
+
+"A last word with you, Mrs. Bunting." The lodger's face was still
+distorted with fear and passion. "Do not think to escape the
+consequences of your hideous treachery. I trusted you, Mrs. Bunting,
+and you betrayed me! Put I am protected by a higher power, for
+I still have much to do." Then, his voice sinking to a whisper, he
+hissed out "Your end will be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a
+two-edged sword. Your feet shall go down to death, and your steps
+take hold on hell."
+
+Even while Mr. Sleuth was muttering these strange, dreadful words,
+he was looking round, glancing this way and that, seeking a way of
+escape.
+
+At last his eyes became fixed on a small placard placed above a
+curtain. "Emergency Exit" was written there. Mrs. Bunting thought
+he was going to make a dash for the place; but Mr. Sleuth did
+something very different. Leaving his landlady's side, he walked
+over to the turnstile, he fumbled in his pocket for a moment, and
+then touched the man on the arm. "I feel ill," he said, speaking
+very rapidly; "very ill indeed! It is the atmosphere of this place.
+I want you to let me out by the quickest way. It would be a pity
+for me to faint here--especially with ladies about."
+
+His left hand shot out and placed what he had been fumbling for in
+his pocket on the other's bare palm. "I see there's an emergency
+exit over there. Would it be possible for me to get out that way?"
+
+"Well, yes, sir; I think so."
+
+The man hesitated; he felt a slight, a very sight, feeling of
+misgiving. He looked at Daisy, flushed and smiling, happy and
+unconcerned, and then at Mrs. Bunting. She was very pale; but
+surely her lodger's sudden seizure was enough to make her feel
+worried. Hopkins felt the half-sovereign pleasantly tickling his
+palm. The Paris Prefect of Police had given him only half-a-crown
+--mean, shabby foreigner!
+
+"Yes, sir; I can let you out that way," he said at last, "and p'raps
+when you're standing out in the air, on the iron balcony, you'll feel
+better. But then, you know, sir, you'll have to come round to the
+front if you wants to come in again, for those emergency doors only
+open outward."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sleuth hurriedly. "I quite understand! If I
+feel better I'll come in by the front way, and pay another shilling
+--that's only fair."
+
+"You needn't do that if you'll just explain what happened here."
+
+The man went and pulled the curtain aside, and put his shoulder
+against the door. It burst open, and the light, for a moment,
+blinded Mr. Sleuth.
+
+He passed his hand over his eyes. "Thank you," he muttered, "thank
+you. I shall get all right out there."
+
+An iron stairway led down into a small stable yard, of which the
+door opened into a side street.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked round once more; he really did feel very ill--
+ill and dazed. How pleasant it would be to take a flying leap over
+the balcony railing and find rest, eternal rest, below.
+
+But no--he thrust the thought, the temptation, from him. Again a
+convulsive look of rage came over his face. He had remembered his
+landlady. How could the woman whom he had treated so generously have
+betrayed him to his arch-enemy?--to the official, that is, who had
+entered into a conspiracy years ago to have him confined--him, an
+absolutely sane man with a great avenging work to do in the world--
+in a lunatic asylum.
+
+He stepped out into the open air, and the curtain, falling-to behind
+him, blotted out the tall, thin figure from the little group of
+people who had watched him disappear.
+
+Even Daisy felt a little scared. "He did look bad, didn't he, now?"
+she turned appealingly to Mr. Hopkins.
+
+"Yes, that he did, poor gentleman--your lodger, too?" he looked
+sympathetically at Mrs. Bunting.
+
+She moistened her lips with her tongue. "Yes," she repeated dully,
+"my lodger."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+In vain Mr. Hopkins invited Mrs. Bunting and her pretty stepdaughter
+to step through into the Chamber of Horrors. "I think we ought to
+go straight home," said Mr. Sleuth's landlady decidedly. And Daisy
+meekly assented. Somehow the girl felt confused, a little scared by
+the lodger's sudden disappearance. Perhaps this unwonted feeling of
+hers was induced by the look of stunned surprise and, yes, pain, on
+her stepmother's face.
+
+Slowly they made their way out of the building, and when they got
+home it was Daisy who described the strange way Mr. Sleuth had been
+taken.
+
+"I don't suppose he'll be long before he comes home," said Bunting
+heavily, and he cast an anxious, furtive look at his wife. She
+looked as if stricken in a vital part; he saw from her face that
+there was something wrong--very wrong indeed.
+
+The hours dragged on. All three felt moody and ill at ease. Daisy
+knew there was no chance that young Chandler would come in to-day.
+
+About six o'clock Mrs. Bunting went upstairs. She lit the gas in
+Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room and looked about her with a fearful glance.
+Somehow everything seemed to speak to her of the lodger, there lay
+her Bible and his Concordance, side by side on the table, exactly
+as he had left them, when he had come downstairs and suggested that
+ill-starred expedition to his landlord's daughter. She took a few
+steps forward, listening the while anxiously for the familiar sound
+of the click in the door which would tell her that the lodger had
+come back, and then she went over to the window and looked out.
+
+What a cold night for a man to be wandering about, homeless,
+friendless, and, as she suspected with a pang, with but very little
+money on him!
+
+Turning abruptly, she went into the lodger's bedroom and opened the
+drawer of the looking-glass.
+
+Yes, there lay the much-diminished heap of sovereigns. If only he
+had taken his money out with him! She wondered painfully whether he
+had enough on his person to secure a good night's lodging, and then
+suddenly she remembered that which brought relief to her mind. The
+lodger had given something to that Hopkins fellow--either a sovereign
+or half a sovereign, she wasn't sure which.
+
+The memory of Mr. Sleuth's cruel words to her, of his threat, did
+not disturb her overmuch. It had been a mistake--all a mistake.
+Far from betraying Mr. Sleuth, she had sheltered him--kept his awful
+secret as she could not have kept it had she known, or even dimly
+suspected, the horrible fact with which Sir John Burney's words had
+made her acquainted; namely, that Mr. Sleuth was victim of no
+temporary aberration, but that he was, and had been for years, a
+madman, a homicidal maniac.
+
+In her ears there still rang the Frenchman's half careless yet
+confident question, "De Leipsic and Liverpool man?"
+
+Following a sudden impulse, she went back into the sitting-room,
+and taking a black-headed pin out of her bodice stuck it amid the
+leaves of the Bible. Then she opened the Book, and looked at the
+page the pin had marked:--
+
+"My tabernacle is spoiled and all my cords are broken . . .
+There is none to stretch forth my tent any more and to set up my
+curtains."
+
+At last leaving the Bible open, Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and
+as she opened the door of her sitting-room Daisy came towards her
+stepmother.
+
+"I'll go down and start getting the lodger's supper ready for you,"
+said the girl good-naturedly. "He's certain to come in when he gets
+hungry. But he did look upset, didn't he, Ellen? Right down bad--
+that he did!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no answer; she simply stepped aside to allow Daisy
+to go down.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth won't never come back no more," she said sombrely, and
+then she felt both glad and angry at the extraordinary change which
+came over her husband's face. Yet, perversely, that look of relief,
+of right-down joy, chiefly angered her, and tempted her to add,
+"That's to say, I don't suppose he will."
+
+And Bunting's face altered again; the old, anxious, depressed look,
+the look it had worn the last few days, returned.
+
+"What makes you think he mayn't come back?" he muttered.
+
+"Too long to tell you now," she said. "Wait till the child's gone
+to bed."
+
+And Bunting had to restrain his curiosity.
+
+And then, when at last Daisy had gone off to the back room where
+she now slept with her stepmother, Mrs. Bunting beckoned to her
+husband to follow her upstairs.
+
+Before doing so he went down the passage and put the chain on the
+door. And about this they had a few sharp whispered words.
+
+"You're never going to shut him out?" she expostulated angrily,
+beneath her breath.
+
+"I'm not going to leave Daisy down here with that man perhaps
+walking in any minute."
+
+"Mr. Sleuth won't hurt Daisy, bless you! Much more likely to hurt
+me," and she gave a half sob.
+
+Bunting stared at her. "What do you mean?" he said roughly.
+"Come upstairs and tell me what you mean."
+
+And then, in what had been the lodger's sitting-room, Mrs. Bunting
+told her husband exactly what it was that had happened.
+
+He listened in heavy silence.
+
+"So you see," she said at last, "you see, Bunting, that 'twas me
+that was right after all. The lodger was never responsible for
+his actions. I never thought he was, for my part."
+
+And Bunting stared at her ruminatingly. "Depends on what you call
+responsible--" he began argumentatively.
+
+But she would have none of that. "I heard the gentleman say myself
+that he was a lunatic," she said fiercely. And then, dropping her
+voice, "A religious maniac--that's what he called him."
+
+"Well, he never seemed so to me," said Bunting stoutly. "He simply
+seemed to me 'centric--that's all he did. Not a bit madder than
+many I could tell you of." He was walking round the room restlessly,
+but he stopped short at last. "And what d'you think we ought to do
+now?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting shook her head impatiently. "I don't think we ought
+to do nothing," she said. "Why should we?"
+
+And then again he began walking round the room in an aimless fashion
+that irritated her.
+
+"If only I could put out a bit of supper for him somewhere where he
+would get it! And his money, too? I hate to feel it's in there."
+
+"Don't you make any mistake--he'll come back for that," said Bunting,
+with decision.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting shook her head. She knew better. "Now," she said,
+"you go off up to bed. It's no use us sitting up any longer."
+
+And Bunting acquiesced.
+
+She ran down and got him a bedroom candle--there was no gas in the
+little back bedroom upstairs. And then she watched him go slowly up.
+
+Suddenly he turned and came down again. "Ellen," he said, in an
+urgent whisper, "if I was you I'd take the chain off the door, and
+I'd lock myself in--that's what I'm going to do. Then he can sneak
+in and take his dirty money away."
+
+Mrs. Bunting neither nodded nor shook her head. Slowly she went
+downstairs, and there she carried out half of Bunting's advice.
+She took, that is, the chain off the front door. But she did not
+go to bed, neither did she lock herself in. She sat up all night,
+waiting. At half-past seven she made herself a cup of tea, and
+then she went into her bedroom.
+
+Daisy opened her eyes.
+
+"Why, Ellen," she said, "I suppose I was that tired, and slept so
+sound, that I never heard you come to bed or get up--funny,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Young people don't sleep as light as do old folks," Mrs. Bunting
+said sententiously.
+
+"Did the lodger come in after all? I suppose he's upstairs now?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting shook her head. "It looks as if 'twould be a fine
+day for you down at Richmond," she observed in a kindly tone.
+
+And Daisy smiled, a very happy, confident little smile.
+
+******
+
+That evening Mrs. Bunting forced herself to tell young Chandler
+that their lodger had, so to speak, disappeared. She and Bunting
+had thought carefully over what they would say, and so well did
+they carry out their programme, or, what is more likely, so full
+was young Chandler of the long happy day he and Daisy had spent
+together, that he took their news very calmly.
+
+"Gone away, has he?" he observed casually. "Well, I hope he paid
+up all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," said Mrs. Bunting hastily. "No trouble of that sort."
+
+And Bunting said shamefacedly, "Aye, aye, the lodger was quite an
+honest gentleman, Joe. But I feel worried, about him. He was such
+a poor, gentle chap--not the sort o' man one likes to think of as
+wandering about by himself."
+
+"You always said he was 'centric," said Joe thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, he was that," said Bunting slowly. "Regular right-down queer.
+Leetle touched, you know, under the thatch," and, as he tapped his
+head significantly, both young people burst out laughing.
+
+"Would you like a description of him circulated?" asked Joe
+good-naturedly.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bunting looked at one another.
+
+"No, I don't think so. Not yet awhile at any rate. 'Twould upset
+him awfully, you see."
+
+And Joe acquiesced. "You'd be surprised at the number o' people
+who disappears and are never heard of again," he said cheerfully.
+And then he got up, very reluctantly.
+
+Daisy, making no bones about it this time, followed him out into
+the passage, and shut the sitting-room door behind her.
+
+When she came back she walked over to where her father was sitting
+in his easy chair, and standing behind him she put her arms round
+his neck.
+
+Then she bent down her head. "Father," she said, "I've a bit of
+news for you!"
+
+"Yes, my dear?"
+
+"Father, I'm engaged! Aren't you surprised?"
+
+"Well, what do you think?" said Bunting fondly. Then he turned
+round and, catching hold of her head, gave her a good, hearty kiss.
+
+"What'll Old Aunt say, I wonder?" he whispered.
+
+"Don't you worry about Old Aunt," exclaimed his wife suddenly.
+"I'll manage Old Aunt! I'll go down and see her. She and I have
+always got on pretty comfortable together, as you knows well, Daisy."
+
+"Yes," said Daisy a little wonderingly. "I know you have, Ellen."
+
+******
+
+Mr. Sleuth never came back, and at last after many days and many
+nights had gone by, Mrs. Bunting left off listening for the click
+of the lock which she at once hoped and feared would herald her
+lodger's return.
+
+As suddenly and as mysteriously as they had begun the "Avenger"
+murders stopped, but there came a morning in the early spring when
+a gardener, working in the Regent's Park, found a newspaper in which
+was wrapped, together with a half-worn pair of rubber-soled shoes,
+a long, peculiarly shaped knife. The fact, though of considerable
+interest to the police, was not chronicled in any newspaper, but
+about the same time a picturesque little paragraph went the round
+of the press concerning a small boxful of sovereigns which had been
+anonymously forwarded to the Governors of the Foundling Hospital.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Bunting had been as good as her word about "Old Aunt,"
+and that lady had received the wonderful news concerning Daisy in a
+more philosophical spirit than her great-niece had expected her to
+do. She only observed that it was odd to reflect that if gentlefolks
+leave a house in charge of the police a burglary is pretty sure to
+follow--a remark which Daisy resented much more than did her Joe.
+
+
+Mr. Bunting and his Ellen are now in the service of an old
+lady, by whom they are feared as well as respected, and whom they
+make very comfortable.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LODGER ***
+
+***** This file should be named 2014-8.txt or 2014-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/1/2014/
+
+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/2014-8.zip b/old/2014-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb13e74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/2014-8.zip
diff --git a/old/2014.txt b/old/2014.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..806c47a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/2014.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10081 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Lodger
+
+Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2005 [EBook #2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LODGER ***
+
+
+
+
+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+
+
+The Lodger
+
+by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+
+
+
+"Lover and friend hast thou put far from me,
+and mine acquaintance into darkness."
+    PSALM lxxxviii. 18
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning,
+carefully-banked-up fire.
+
+The room, especially when it be known that it was part of a house
+standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare,
+was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for. A casual stranger,
+more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly
+opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr.
+and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of
+comfortable married life. Bunting, who was leaning back in a deep
+leather arm-chair, was clean-shaven and dapper, still in appearance
+what he had been for many years of his life--a self-respecting
+man-servant.
+
+On his wife, now sitting up in an uncomfortable straight-backed
+chair, the marks of past servitude were less apparent; but they
+were there all the same--in her neat black stuff dress, and in
+her scrupulously clean, plain collar and cuffs. Mrs. Bunting, as
+a single woman, had been what is known as a useful maid.
+
+But peculiarly true of average English life is the time-worn
+English proverb as to appearances being deceitful. Mr. and Mrs.
+Bunting were sitting in a very nice room and in their time--how
+long ago it now seemed!--both husband and wife had been proud of
+their carefully chosen belongings. Everything in the room was
+strong and substantial, and each article of furniture had been
+bought at a well-conducted auction held in a private house.
+
+Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden,
+drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song,
+and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years.
+A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which
+covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat
+forward, staring into the dull, small fire. In fact, that arm-chair
+had been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting. She had wanted her husband
+to be comfortable after the day's work was done, and she had paid
+thirty-seven shillings for the chair. Only yesterday Bunting had
+tried to find a purchaser for it, but the man who had come to look at
+it, guessing their cruel necessities, had only offered them twelve
+shillings and sixpence for it; so for the present they were keeping
+their arm-chair.
+
+But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort,
+much as that is valued by the Buntings of this world. So, on the
+walls of the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded
+photographs--photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's various former
+employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had
+separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not
+unhappy servitude.
+
+But appearances were not only deceitful, they were more than
+usually deceitful with regard to these unfortunate people. In
+spite of their good furniture--that substantial outward sign of
+respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall
+into trouble try to dispose of--they were almost at the end of
+their tether. Already they had learnt to go hungry, and they were
+beginning to learn to go cold. Tobacco, the last thing the sober
+man foregoes among his comforts, had been given up some time ago
+by Bunting. And even Mrs. Bunting--prim, prudent, careful woman
+as she was in her way--had realised what this must mean to him.
+So well, indeed, had she understood that some days back she had
+crept out and bought him a packet of Virginia.
+
+Bunting had been touched--touched as he had not been for years by
+any woman's thought and love for him. Painful tears had forced
+themselves into his eyes, and husband and wife had both felt in
+their odd, unemotional way, moved to the heart.
+
+Fortunately he never guessed--how could he have guessed, with his
+slow, normal, rather dull mind?--that his poor Ellen had since
+more than once bitterly regretted that fourpence-ha'penny, for they
+were now very near the soundless depths which divide those who dwell
+on the safe tableland of security--those, that is, who are sure of
+making a respectable, if not a happy, living--and the submerged
+multitude who, through some lack in themselves, or owing to the
+conditions under which our strange civilisation has become organised,
+struggle rudderless till they die in workhouse, hospital, or prison.
+
+Had the Buntings been in a class lower than their own, had they
+belonged to the great company of human beings technically known to
+so many of us as the poor, there would have been friendly neighbours
+ready to help them, and the same would have been the case had they
+belonged to the class of smug, well-meaning, if unimaginative, folk
+whom they had spent so much of their lives in serving.
+
+There was only one person in the world who might possibly be brought
+to help them. That was an aunt of Bunting's first wife. With this
+woman, the widow of a man who had been well-to-do, lived Daisy,
+Bunting's only child by his first wife, and during the last long two
+days he had been trying to make up his mind to write to the old lady,
+and that though he suspected that she would almost certainly retort
+with a cruel, sharp rebuff.
+
+As to their few acquaintances, former fellow-servants, and so on,
+they had gradually fallen out of touch with them. There was but
+one friend who often came to see them in their deep trouble. This
+was a young fellow named Chandler, under whose grandfather Bunting
+had been footman years and years ago. Joe Chandler had never gone
+into service; he was attached to the police; in fact not to put too
+fine a point upon it, young Chandler was a detective.
+
+When they had first taken the house which had brought them, so they
+both thought, such bad luck, Bunting had encouraged the young chap
+to come often, for his tales were well worth listening to--quite
+exciting at times. But now poor Bunting didn't want to hear that
+sort of stories--stories of people being cleverly "nabbed," or
+stupidly allowed to escape the fate they always, from Chandler's
+point of view, richly deserved.
+
+But Joe still came very faithfully once or twice a week, so timing
+his calls that neither host nor hostess need press food upon him
+--nay, more, he had done that which showed him to have a good and
+feeling heart. He had offered his father's old acquaintance a loan,
+and Bunting, at last, had taken 30s. Very little of that money
+now remained: Bunting still could jingle a few coppers in his pocket;
+and Mrs. Bunting had 2s. 9d.; that and the rent they would have to
+pay in five weeks, was all they had left. Everything of the light,
+portable sort that would fetch money had been sold. Mrs. Bunting
+had a fierce horror of the pawnshop. She had never put her feet in
+such a place, and she declared she never would--she would rather
+starve first.
+
+But she had said nothing when there had occurred the gradual
+disappearance of various little possessions she knew that Bunting
+valued, notably of the old-fashioned gold watch-chain which had been
+given to him after the death of his first master, a master he had
+nursed faithfully and kindly through a long and terrible illness.
+There had also vanished a twisted gold tie-pin, and a large mourning
+ring, both gifts of former employers.
+
+When people are living near that deep pit which divides the secure
+from the insecure--when they see themselves creeping closer and
+closer to its dread edge--they are apt, however loquacious by
+nature, to fall into long silences. Bunting had always been a
+talker, but now he talked no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but
+then she had always been a silent woman, and that was perhaps one
+reason why Bunting had felt drawn to her from the very first moment
+he had seen her.
+
+It had fallen out in this way. A lady had just engaged him as
+butler, and he had been shown, by the man whose place he was to
+take, into the dining-room. There, to use his own expression, he
+had discovered Ellen Green, carefully pouring out the glass of port
+wine which her then mistress always drank at 11.30 every morning.
+And as he, the new butler, had seen her engaged in this task, as he
+had watched her carefully stopper the decanter and put it back into
+the old wine-cooler, he had said to himself, "That is the woman for
+me!"
+
+But now her stillness, her--her dumbness, had got on the
+unfortunate man's nerves. He no longer felt like going into the
+various little shops, close by, patronised by him in more prosperous
+days, and Mrs. Bunting also went afield to make the slender purchases
+which still had to be made every day or two, if they were to be
+saved from actually starving to death.
+
+Suddenly, across the stillness of the dark November evening there
+came the muffled sounds of hurrying feet and of loud, shrill shouting
+outside--boys crying the late afternoon editions of the evening
+papers.
+
+Bunting turned uneasily in his chair. The giving up of a daily
+paper had been, after his tobacco, his bitterest deprivation. And
+the paper was an older habit than the tobacco, for servants are
+great readers of newspapers.
+
+As the shouts came through the closed windows and the thick damask
+curtains, Bunting felt a sudden sense of mind hunger fall upon him.
+
+It was a shame--a damned shame--that he shouldn't know what was
+happening in the world outside! Only criminals are kept from hearing
+news of what is going on beyond their prison walls. And those
+shouts, those hoarse, sharp cries must portend that something really
+exciting had happened, something warranted to make a man forget for
+the moment his own intimate, gnawing troubles.
+
+He got up, and going towards the nearest window strained his ears to
+listen. There fell on them, emerging now and again from the confused
+babel of hoarse shouts, the one clear word "Murder!"
+
+Slowly Bunting's brain pieced the loud, indistinct cries into some
+sort of connected order. Yes, that was it--"Horrible Murder!
+Murder at St. Pancras!" Bunting remembered vaguely another murder
+which had been committed near St. Pancras--that of an old lady by
+her servant-maid. It had happened a great many years ago, but was
+still vividly remembered, as of special and natural interest, among
+the class to which he had belonged.
+
+The newsboys--for there were more than one of them, a rather unusual
+thing in the Marylebone Road--were coming nearer and nearer; now
+they had adopted another cry, but he could not quite catch what they
+were crying. They were still shouting hoarsely, excitedly, but he
+could only hear a word or two now and then. Suddenly "The Avenger!
+The Avenger at his work again!" broke on his ear.
+
+During the last fortnight four very curious and brutal murders had
+been committed in London and within a comparatively small area.
+
+The first had aroused no special interest--even the second had only
+been awarded, in the paper Bunting was still then taking in, quite a
+small paragraph.
+
+Then had come the third--and with that a wave of keen excitement,
+for pinned to the dress of the victim--a drunken woman--had been
+found a three-cornered piece of paper, on which was written, in red
+ink, and in printed characters, the words,
+
+"THE AVENGER"
+
+It was then realised, not only by those whose business it is to
+investigate such terrible happenings, but also by the vast world
+of men and women who take an intelligent interest in such sinister
+mysteries, that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes;
+and before that extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into
+the public mind there took place yet another murder, and again the
+murderer had been to special pains to make it clear that some
+obscure and terrible lust for vengeance possessed him.
+
+Now everyone was talking of The Avenger and his crimes! Even the
+man who left their ha'porth of milk at the door each morning had
+spoken to Bunting about them that very day.
+
+******
+
+Bunting came back to the fire and looked down at his wife with mild
+excitement. Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of
+weary, mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him.
+He felt he could have shaken her!
+
+Ellen had hardly taken the trouble to listen when he, Bunting, had
+come back to bed that morning, and told her what the milkman had
+said. In fact, she had been quite nasty about it, intimating that
+she didn't like hearing about such horrid things.
+
+It was a curious fact that though Mrs. Bunting enjoyed tales of
+pathos and sentiment, and would listen with frigid amusement to
+the details of a breach of promise action, she shrank from stories
+of immorality or of physical violence. In the old, happy days,
+when they could afford to buy a paper, aye, and more than one paper
+daily, Bunting had often had to choke down his interest in some
+exciting "case" or "mystery" which was affording him pleasant mental
+relaxation, because any allusion to it sharply angered Ellen.
+
+But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she
+felt.
+
+Walking away from the window he took a slow, uncertain step towards
+the door; when there he turned half round, and there came over his
+close-shaven, round face the rather sly, pleading look with which
+a child about to do something naughty glances at its parent.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting remained quite still; her thin, narrow shoulders
+just showed above the back of the chair on which she was sitting,
+bolt upright, staring before her as if into vacancy.
+
+Bunting turned round, opened the door, and quickly he went out into
+the dark hall--they had given up lighting the gas there some time
+ago--and opened the front door.
+
+Walking down the small flagged path outside, he flung open the iron
+gate which gave on to the damp pavement. But there he hesitated.
+The coppers in his pocket seemed to have shrunk in number, and he
+remembered ruefully how far Ellen could make even four pennies go.
+
+Then a boy ran up to him with a sheaf of evening papers, and Bunting,
+being sorely tempted--fell. "Give me a Sun," he said roughly, "Sun
+or Echo!"
+
+But the boy, scarcely stopping to take breath, shook his head. "Only
+penny papers left," he gasped. "What'll yer 'ave, sir?"
+
+With an eagerness which was mingled with shame, Bunting drew a penny
+out of his pocket and took a paper--it was the Evening Standard--
+from the boy's hand.
+
+Then, very slowly, he shut the gate and walked back through the raw,
+cold air, up the flagged path, shivering yet full of eager, joyful
+anticipation.
+
+Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly he would pass
+a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent,
+miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments
+of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife,
+with careworn, troubled Ellen.
+
+A hot wave of unease, almost of remorse, swept over Bunting. Ellen
+would never have spent that penny on herself--he knew that well
+enough--and if it hadn't been so cold, so foggy, so--so drizzly,
+he would have gone out again through the gate and stood under the
+street lamp to take his pleasure. He dreaded with a nervous dread
+the glance of Ellen's cold, reproving light-blue eye. That glance
+would tell him that he had had no business to waste a penny on a
+paper, and that well he knew it!
+
+Suddenly the door in front of him opened, and he beard a familiar
+voice saying crossly, yet anxiously, "What on earth are you doing
+out there, Bunting? Come in--do! You'll catch your death of cold!
+I don't want to have you ill on my hands as well as everything else!"
+Mrs. Bunting rarely uttered so many words at once nowadays.
+
+He walked in through the front door of his cheerless house. "I
+went out to get a paper," he said sullenly.
+
+After all, he was master. He had as much right to spend the money
+as she had; for the matter of that the money on which they were now
+both living had been lent, nay, pressed on him--not on Ellen--by
+that decent young chap, Joe Chandler. And he, Bunting, had done
+all he could; he had pawned everything he could pawn, while Ellen,
+so he resentfully noticed, still wore her wedding ring.
+
+He stepped past her heavily, and though she said nothing, he knew
+she grudged him his coming joy. Then, full of rage with her and
+contempt for himself, and giving himself the luxury of a mild, a
+very mild, oath--Ellen had very early made it clear she would
+have no swearing in her presence--he lit the hall gas full-flare.
+
+"How can we hope to get lodgers if they can't even see the card?"
+he shouted angrily.
+
+And there was truth in what he said, for now that he had lit the
+gas, the oblong card, though not the word "Apartments" printed on
+it, could be plainly seen out-lined against the old-fashioned
+fanlight above the front door.
+
+Bunting went into the sitting-room, silently followed by his wife,
+and then, sitting down in his nice arm-chair, he poked the little
+banked-up fire. It was the first time Bunting had poked the fire
+for many a long day, and this exertion of marital authority made
+him feel better. A man has to assert himself sometimes, and he,
+Bunting, had not asserted himself enough lately.
+
+A little colour came into Mrs. Bunting's pale face. She was not
+used to be flouted in this way. For Bunting, when not thoroughly
+upset, was the mildest of men.
+
+She began moving about the room, flicking off an imperceptible
+touch of dust here, straightening a piece of furniture there.
+
+But her hands trembled--they trembled with excitement, with
+self-pity, with anger. A penny? It was dreadful--dreadful to
+have to worry about a penny! But they had come to the point when
+one has to worry about pennies. Strange that her husband didn't
+realise that.
+
+Bunting looked round once or twice; he would have liked to ask Ellen
+to leave off fidgeting, but he was fond of peace, and perhaps, by
+now, a little bit ashamed of himself, so he refrained from remark,
+and she soon gave over what irritated him of her own accord.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting did not come and sit down as her husband would have
+liked her to do. The sight of him, absorbed in his paper as he was,
+irritated her, and made her long to get away from him. Opening the
+door which separated the sitting-room from the bedroom behind, and
+--shutting out the aggravating vision of Bunting sitting comfortably
+by the now brightly burning fire, with the Evening Standard spread
+out before him--she sat down in the cold darkness, and pressed her
+hands against her temples.
+
+Never, never had she felt so hopeless, so--so broken as now. Where
+was the good of having been an upright, conscientious, self-respecting
+woman all her life long, if it only led to this utter, degrading
+poverty and wretchedness? She and Bunting were just past the age
+which gentlefolk think proper in a married couple seeking to enter
+service together, unless, that is, the wife happens to be a professed
+cook. A cook and a butler can always get a nice situation. But Mrs.
+Bunting was no cook. She could do all right the simple things any
+lodger she might get would require, but that was all.
+
+Lodgers? How foolish she had been to think of taking lodgers! For
+it had been her doing. Bunting had been like butter in her hands.
+
+Yet they had begun well, with a lodging-house in a seaside place.
+There they had prospered, not as they had hoped to do, but still
+pretty well; and then had come an epidemic of scarlet fever, and
+that had meant ruin for them, and for dozens, nay, hundreds, of
+other luckless people. Then had followed a business experiment
+which had proved even more disastrous, and which had left them in
+debt--in debt to an extent they could never hope to repay, to a
+good-natured former employer.
+
+After that, instead of going back to service, as they might have
+done, perhaps, either together or separately, they had made up
+their minds to make one last effort, and they had taken over, with
+the trifle of money that remained to them, the lease of this house
+in the Marylebone Road.
+
+In former days, when they had each been leading the sheltered,
+impersonal, and, above all, financially easy existence which is
+the compensation life offers to those men and women who deliberately
+take upon themselves the yoke of domestic service, they had both
+lived in houses overlooking Regent's Park. It had seemed a wise
+plan to settle in the same neighbourhood, the more so that Bunting,
+who had a good appearance, had retained the kind of connection
+which enables a man to get a job now and again as waiter at private
+parties.
+
+But life moves quickly, jaggedly, for people like the Buntings.
+Two of his former masters had moved to another part of London, and
+a caterer in Baker Street whom he had known went bankrupt.
+
+And now? Well, just now Bunting could not have taken a job had
+one been offered him, for he had pawned his dress clothes. He had
+not asked his wife's permission to do this, as so good a husband
+ought to have done. He had just gone out and done it. And she had
+not had the heart to say anything; nay, it was with part of the
+money that he had handed her silently the evening he did it that
+she had bought that last packet of tobacco.
+
+And then, as Mrs. Bunting sat there thinking these painful thoughts,
+there suddenly came to the front door the sound of a loud, tremulous,
+uncertain double knock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Mr. Bunting jumped nervously to her feet. She stood for a moment
+listening in the darkness, a darkness made the blacker by the line
+of light under the door behind which sat Bunting reading his paper.
+
+And then it came again, that loud, tremulous, uncertain double
+knock; not a knock, so the listener told herself, that boded any
+good. Would-be lodgers gave sharp, quick, bold, confident raps.
+No; this must be some kind of beggar. The queerest people came at
+all hours, and asked--whining or threatening--for money.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had had some sinister experiences with men and women
+--especially women--drawn from that nameless, mysterious class
+made up of the human flotsam and jetsam which drifts about every
+great city. But since she had taken to leaving the gas in the
+passage unlit at night she had been very little troubled with that
+kind of visitors, those human bats which are attracted by any kind
+of light but leave alone those who live in darkness.
+
+She opened the door of the sitting-room. It was Bunting's place
+to go to the front door, but she knew far better than he did how
+to deal with difficult or obtrusive callers. Still, somehow, she
+would have liked him to go to-night. But Bunting sat on, absorbed
+in his newspaper; all he did at the sound of the bedroom door
+opening was to look up and say, "Didn't you hear a knock?"
+
+Without answering his question she went out into the hall.
+
+Slowly she opened the front door.
+
+On the top of the three steps which led up to the door, there stood
+the long, lanky figure of a man, clad in an Inverness cape and an
+old-fashioned top hat. He waited for a few seconds blinking at her,
+perhaps dazzled by the light of the gas in the passage. Mrs.
+Bunting's trained perception told her at once that this man, odd as
+he looked, was a gentleman, belonging by birth to the class with
+whom her former employment had brought her in contact.
+
+"Is it not a fact that you let lodgings?" he asked, and there was
+something shrill, unbalanced, hesitating, in his voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said uncertainly--it was a long, long time since
+anyone had come after their lodgings, anyone, that is, that they
+could think of taking into their respectable house.
+
+Instinctively she stepped a little to one side, and the stranger
+walked past her, and so into the hall.
+
+And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting noticed that he held a
+narrow bag in his left hand. It was quite a new bag, made of strong
+brown leather.
+
+"I am looking for some quiet rooms," he said; then he repeated the
+words, "quiet rooms," in a dreamy, absent way, and as he uttered
+them he looked nervously round him.
+
+Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully
+furnished, and was very clean.
+
+There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary
+feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which
+matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
+
+A very superior lodging-house this, and evidently a superior
+lodging-house keeper.
+
+"You'd find my rooms quite quiet, sir," she said gently. "And just
+now I have four to let. The house is empty, save for my husband
+and me, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting spoke in a civil, passionless voice. It seemed too
+good to be true, this sudden coming of a possible lodger, and of a
+lodger who spoke in the pleasant, courteous way and voice which
+recalled to the poor woman her happy, far-off days of youth and
+of security.
+
+"That sounds very suitable," he said. "Four rooms? Well, perhaps
+I ought only to take two rooms, but, still, I should like to see
+all four before I make my choice."
+
+How fortunate, how very fortunate it was that Bunting had lit the
+gas! But for that circumstance this gentleman would have passed
+them by.
+
+She turned towards the staircase, quite forgetting in her agitation
+that the front door was still open; and it was the stranger whom
+she already in her mind described as "the lodger," who turned and
+rather quickly walked down the passage and shut it.
+
+"Oh, thank you, sir!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry you should have
+had the trouble."
+
+For a moment their eyes met. "It's not safe to leave a front door
+open in London," he said, rather sharply. "I hope you do not often
+do that. It would be so easy for anyone to slip in."
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt rather upset. The stranger had still spoken
+courteously, but he was evidently very much put out.
+
+"I assure you, sir, I never leave my front door open," she answered
+hastily. "You needn't be at all afraid of that!"
+
+And then, through the closed door of the sitting-room, came the
+sound of Bunting coughing--it was just a little, hard cough, but
+Mrs. Bunting's future lodger started violently.
+
+"Who's that?" he said, putting out a hand and clutching her arm.
+"Whatever was that?"
+
+"Only my husband, sir. He went out to buy a paper a few minutes
+ago, and the cold just caught him, I suppose."
+
+"Your husband--?" he looked at her intently, suspiciously. "What
+--what, may I ask, is your husband's occupation?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting drew herself up. The question as to Bunting's
+occupation was no one's business but theirs. Still, it wouldn't do
+for her to show offence. "He goes out waiting," she said stiffly.
+"He was a gentleman's servant, sir. He could, of course, valet you
+should you require him to do so."
+
+And then she turned and led the way up the steep, narrow staircase.
+
+At the top of the first flight of stairs was what Mrs. Bunting, to
+herself, called the drawing-room floor. It consisted of a
+sitting-room in front, and a bedroom behind. She opened the door
+of the sitting-room and quickly lit the chandelier.
+
+This front room was pleasant enough, though perhaps a little
+over-encumbered with furniture. Covering the floor was a green
+carpet simulating moss; four chairs were placed round the table
+which occupied the exact middle of the apartment, and in the
+corner, opposite the door giving on to the landing, was a roomy,
+old-fashioned chiffonnier.
+
+On the dark-green walls hung a series of eight engravings, portraits
+of early Victorian belles, clad in lace and tarletan ball dresses,
+clipped from an old Book of Beauty. Mrs. Bunting was very fond of
+these pictures; she thought they gave the drawing-room a note of
+elegance and refinement.
+
+As she hurriedly turned up the gas she was glad, glad indeed, that
+she had summoned up sufficient energy, two days ago, to give the
+room a thorough turn-out.
+
+It had remained for a long time in the state in which it had been
+left by its last dishonest, dirty occupants when they had been
+scared into going away by Bunting's rough threats of the police.
+But now it was in apple-pie order, with one paramount exception,
+of which Mrs. Bunting was painfully aware. There were no white
+curtains to the windows, but that omission could soon be remedied
+if this gentleman really took the lodgings.
+
+But what was this--? The stranger was looking round him rather
+dubiously. "This is rather--rather too grand for me," he said at
+last "I should like to see your other rooms, Mrs. er--"
+
+"--Bunting," she said softly. "Bunting, sir."
+
+And as she spoke the dark, heavy load of care again came down and
+settled on her sad, burdened heart. Perhaps she had been mistaken,
+after all--or rather, she had not been mistaken in one sense, but
+perhaps this gentleman was a poor gentleman--too poor, that is, to
+afford the rent of more than one room, say eight or ten shillings
+a week; eight or ten shillings a week would be very little use to
+her and Bunting, though better than nothing at all.
+
+"Will you just look at the bedroom, sir?"
+
+"No," he said, "no. I think I should like to see what you have
+farther up the house, Mrs.--," and then, as if making a prodigious
+mental effort, he brought out her name, "Bunting," with a kind of
+gasp.
+
+The two top rooms were, of course, immediately above the
+drawing-room floor. But they looked poor and mean, owing to the fact
+that they were bare of any kind of ornament. Very little trouble had
+been taken over their arrangement; in fact, they had been left in much
+the same condition as that in which the Buntings had found them.
+
+For the matter of that, it is difficult to make a nice, genteel
+sitting-room out of an apartment of which the principal features
+are a sink and a big gas stove. The gas stove, of an obsolete
+pattern, was fed by a tiresome, shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
+It had been the property of the people from whom the Buntings had
+taken over the lease of the house, who, knowing it to be of no
+monetary value, had thrown it in among the humble fittings they
+had left behind.
+
+What furniture there was in the room was substantial and clean, as
+everything belonging to Mrs. Bunting was bound to be, but it was a
+bare, uncomfortable-looking place, and the landlady now felt sorry
+that she had done nothing to make it appear more attractive.
+
+To her surprise, however, her companion's dark, sensitive,
+hatchet-shaped face became irradiated with satisfaction. "Capital!
+Capital!" he exclaimed, for the first time putting down the bag he
+held at his feet, and rubbing his long, thin hands together with a
+quick, nervous movement.
+
+"This is just what I have been looking for." He walked with long,
+eager strides towards the gas stove. "First-rate--quite first-rate!
+Exactly what I wanted to find! You must understand, Mrs.--er--
+Bunting, that I am a man of science. I make, that is, all sorts of
+experiments, and I often require the--ah, well, the presence of
+great heat."
+
+He shot out a hand, which she noticed shook a little, towards the
+stove. "This, too, will be useful--exceedingly useful, to me," and
+he touched the edge of the stone sink with a lingering, caressing
+touch.
+
+He threw his head back and passed his hand over his high, bare
+forehead; then, moving towards a chair, he sat down--wearily.
+"I'm tired," he muttered in a low voice, "tired--tired! I've been
+walking about all day, Mrs. Bunting, and I could find nothing to sit
+down upon. They do not put benches for tired men in the London
+streets. They do so on the Continent. In some ways they are far
+more humane on the Continent than they are in England, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Indeed, sir," she said civilly; and then, after a nervous glance,
+she asked the question of which the answer would mean so much to her,
+"Then you mean to take my rooms, sir?"
+
+"This room, certainly," he said, looking round. "This room is
+exactly what I have been looking for, and longing for, the last
+few days;" and then hastily he added, "I mean this kind of place
+is what I have always wanted to possess, Mrs. Bunting. You would
+be surprised if you knew how difficult it is to get anything of
+the sort. But now my weary search has ended, and that is a relief
+--a very, very great relief to me!"
+
+He stood up and looked round him with a dreamy, abstracted air. And
+then, "Where's my bag?" he asked suddenly, and there came a note of
+sharp, angry fear in his voice. He glared at the quiet woman
+standing before him, and for a moment Mrs. Bunting felt a tremor of
+fright shoot through her. It seemed a pity that Bunting was so far
+away, right down the house.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting was aware that eccentricity has always been a
+perquisite, as it were the special luxury, of the well-born and of
+the well-educated. Scholars, as she well knew, are never quite like
+other people, and her new lodger was undoubtedly a scholar. "Surely
+I had a bag when I came in?" he said in a scared, troubled voice.
+
+"Here it is, sir," she said soothingly, and, stooping, picked it
+up and handed it to him. And as she did so she noticed that the
+bag was not at all heavy; it was evidently by no means full.
+
+He took it eagerly from her. "I beg your pardon," he muttered.
+"But there is something in that bag which is very precious to me
+--something I procured with infinite difficulty, and which I could
+never get again without running into great danger, Mrs. Bunting.
+That must be the excuse for my late agitation."
+
+"About terms, sir?" she said a little timidly, returning to the
+subject which meant so much, so very much to her.
+
+"About terms?" he echoed. And then there came a pause. "My name
+is Sleuth," he said suddenly,--"S-l-e-u-t-h. Think of a hound,
+Mrs. Bunting, and you'll never forget my name. I could provide you
+with a reference--" (he gave her what she described to herself as
+a funny, sideways look), "but I should prefer you to dispense with
+that, if you don't mind. I am quite willing to pay you--well, shall
+we say a month in advance?"
+
+A spot of red shot into Mrs. Bunting's cheeks. She felt sick with
+relief--nay, with a joy which was almost pain. She had not known
+till that moment how hungry she was--how eager for--a good meal.
+"That would be all right, sir," she murmured.
+
+"And what are you going to charge me?" There had come a kindly,
+almost a friendly note into his voice. "With attendance, mind! I
+shall expect you to give me attendance, and I need hardly ask if
+you can cook, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," she said. "I am a plain cook. What would you say
+to twenty-five shillings a week, sir?" She looked at him
+deprecatingly, and as he did not answer she went on falteringly,
+"You see, sir, it may seem a good deal, but you would have the best
+of attendance and careful cooking--and my husband, sir--he would
+be pleased to valet you."
+
+"I shouldn't want anything of that sort done for me," said Mr.
+Sleuth hastily. "I prefer looking after my own clothes. I am used
+to waiting on myself. But, Mrs. Bunting, I have a great dislike to
+sharing lodgings--"
+
+She interrupted eagerly, "I could let you have the use of the two
+floors for the same price--that is, until we get another lodger.
+I shouldn't like you to sleep in the back room up here, sir. It's
+such a poor little room. You could do as you say, sir--do your work
+and your experiments up here, and then have your meals in the
+drawing-room."
+
+"Yes," he said hesitatingly, "that sounds a good plan. And if I
+offered you two pounds, or two guineas? Might I then rely on your
+not taking another lodger?"
+
+"Yes," she said quietly. "I'd be very glad only to have you to
+wait on, sir."
+
+"I suppose you have a key to the door of this room, Mrs. Bunting?
+I don't like to be disturbed while I'm working."
+
+He waited a moment, and then said again, rather urgently, "I suppose
+you have a key to this door, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, there's a key--a very nice little key. The people
+who lived here before had a new kind of lock put on to the door."
+She went over, and throwing the door open, showed him that a round
+disk had been fitted above the old keyhole.
+
+He nodded his head, and then, after standing silent a little, as if
+absorbed in thought, "Forty-two shillings a week? Yes, that will
+suit me perfectly. And I'll begin now by paying my first month's
+rent in advance. Now, four times forty-two shillings is"--he
+jerked his head back and stared at his new landlady; for the first
+time he smiled, a queer, wry smile--"why, just eight pounds eight
+shillings, Mrs. Bunting!"
+
+He thrust his hand through into an inner pocket of his long
+cape-like coat and took out a handful of sovereigns. Then he began
+putting these down in a row on the bare wooden table which stood in
+the centre of the room. "Here's five--six--seven--eight--nine
+--ten pounds. You'd better keep the odd change, Mrs. Bunting,
+for I shall want you to do some shopping for me to-morrow morning.
+I met with a misfortune to-day." But the new lodger did not speak
+as if his misfortune, whatever it was, weighed on his spirits.
+
+"Indeed, sir. I'm sorry to hear that." Mrs. Bunting's heart was
+going thump--thump--thump. She felt extraordinarily moved, dizzy
+with relief and joy.
+
+"Yes, a very great misfortune! I lost my luggage, the few things
+I managed to bring away with me." His voice dropped suddenly. "I
+shouldn't have said that," he muttered. "I was a fool to say that!"
+Then, more loudly, "Someone said to me, 'You can't go into a
+lodging-house without any luggage. They wouldn't take you in.' But
+you have taken me in, Mrs. Bunting, and I'm grateful for--for the
+kind way you have met me--" He looked at her feelingly, appealingly,
+and Mrs. Bunting was touched. She was beginning to feel very kindly
+towards her new lodger.
+
+"I hope I know a gentleman when I see one," she said, with a break
+in her staid voice.
+
+"I shall have to see about getting some clothes to-morrow, Mrs. Bunting."
+Again he looked at her appealingly.
+
+"I expect you'd like to wash your hands now, sir. And would you tell
+me what you'd like for supper? We haven't much in the house."
+
+"Oh, anything'll do," he said hastily. "I don't want you to go out
+for me. It's a cold, foggy, wet night, Mrs. Bunting. If you have a
+little bread-and-butter and a cup of milk I shall be quite satisfied."
+
+"I have a nice sausage," she said hesitatingly.
+
+It was a very nice sausage, and she had bought it that same morning
+for Bunting's supper; as to herself, she had been going to content
+herself with a little bread and cheese. But now--wonderful, almost,
+intoxicating thought--she could send Bunting out to get anything
+they both liked. The ten sovereigns lay in her hand full of comfort
+and good cheer.
+
+"A sausage? No, I fear that will hardly do. I never touch flesh
+meat," he said; "it is a long, long time since I tasted a sausage,
+Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Is it indeed, sir?" She hesitated a moment, then asked stiffly,
+"And will you be requiring any beer, or wine, sir?"
+
+A strange, wild look of lowering wrath suddenly filled Mr. Sleuth's
+pale face.
+
+"Certainly not. I thought I had made that quite clear, Mrs. Bunting.
+I had hoped to hear that you were an abstainer--"
+
+"So I am, sir, lifelong. And so's Bunting been since we married."
+She might have said, had she been a woman given to make such
+confidences, that she had made Bunting abstain very early in their
+acquaintance. That he had given in about that had been the thing
+that first made her believe, that he was sincere in all the nonsense
+that he talked to her, in those far-away days of his courting. Glad
+she was now that he had taken the pledge as a younger man; but for
+that nothing would have kept him from the drink during the bad times
+they had gone through.
+
+And then, going downstairs, she showed Mr. Sleuth the nice bedroom
+which opened out of the drawing-room. It was a replica of Mrs.
+Bunting's own room just underneath, excepting that everything up
+here had cost just a little more, and was therefore rather better
+in quality.
+
+The new lodger looked round him with such a strange expression of
+content and peace stealing over his worn face. "A haven of rest,"
+he muttered; and then, "'He bringeth them to their desired haven.'
+Beautiful words, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt a little startled. It was the first time anyone
+had quoted the Bible to her for many a long day. But it seemed to
+set the seal, as it were, on Mr. Sleuth's respectability.
+
+What a comfort it was, too, that she had to deal with only one
+lodger, and that a gentleman, instead of with a married couple!
+Very peculiar married couples had drifted in and out of Mr. and
+Mrs. Bunting's lodgings, not only here, in London, but at the
+seaside.
+
+How unlucky they had been, to be sure! Since they had come to
+London not a single pair of lodgers had been even moderately
+respectable and kindly. The last lot had belonged to that horrible
+underworld of men and women who, having, as the phrase goes, seen
+better days, now only keep their heads above water with the help of
+petty fraud.
+
+"I'll bring you up some hot water in a minute, sir, and some clean
+towels," she said, going to the door.
+
+And then Mr. Sleuth turned quickly round. "Mrs. Bunting"--and as
+he spoke he stammered a little--"I--I don't want you to interpret
+the word attendance too liberally. You need not run yourself off
+your feet for me. I'm accustomed to look after myself."
+
+And, queerly, uncomfortably, she felt herself dismissed--even a
+little snubbed. "All right, sir," she said. "I'll only just let
+you know when I've your supper ready."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+But what was a little snub compared with the intense relief and joy
+of going down and telling Bunting of the great piece of good fortune
+which had fallen their way?
+
+Staid Mrs. Bunting seemed to make but one leap down the steep stairs.
+In the hall, however, she pulled herself together, and tried to still
+her agitation. She had always disliked and despised any show of
+emotion; she called such betrayal of feeling "making a fuss."
+
+Opening the door of their sitting-room, she stood for a moment
+looking at her husband's bent back, and she realised, with a pang
+of pain, how the last few weeks had aged him.
+
+Bunting suddenly looked round, and, seeing his wife, stood up. He
+put the paper he had been holding down on to the table: "Well," he
+said, "well, who was it, then?"
+
+He felt rather ashamed of himself; it was he who ought to have
+answered the door and done all that parleying of which he had heard
+murmurs.
+
+And then in a moment his wife's hand shot out, and the ten sovereigns
+fell in a little clinking heap on the table.
+
+"Look there!" she whispered, with an excited, tearful quiver in her
+voice. "Look there, Bunting!"
+
+And Bunting did look there, but with a troubled, frowning gaze.
+
+He was not quick-witted, but at once he jumped to the conclusion
+that his wife had just had in a furniture dealer, and that this
+ten pounds represented all their nice furniture upstairs. If that
+were so, then it was the beginning of the end. That furniture in
+the first-floor front had cost--Ellen had reminded him of the fact
+bitterly only yesterday--seventeen pounds nine shillings, and
+every single item had been a bargain. It was too bad that she had
+only got ten pounds for it.
+
+Yet he hadn't the heart to reproach her.
+
+He did not speak as he looked across at her, and meeting that
+troubled, rebuking glance, she guessed what it was that he thought
+had happened.
+
+"We've a new lodger!" she cried. "And--and, Bunting? He's quite
+the gentleman! He actually offered to pay four weeks in advance, at
+two guineas a week."
+
+"No, never!"
+
+Bunting moved quickly round the table, and together they stood there,
+fascinated by the little heap of gold. "But there's ten sovereigns
+here," he said suddenly.
+
+"Yes, the gentleman said I'd have to buy some things for him
+to-morrow. And, oh, Bunting, he's so well spoken, I really felt
+that--I really felt that--" and then Mrs. Bunting, taking a step
+or two sideways, sat down, and throwing her little black apron over
+her face burst into gasping sobs.
+
+Bunting patted her back timidly. "Ellen?" he said, much moved by her
+agitation, "Ellen? Don't take on so, my dear--"
+
+"I won't," she sobbed, "I--I won't! I'm a fool--I know I am!
+But, oh, I didn't think we was ever going to have any luck again!"
+
+And then she told him--or rather tried to tell him--what the
+lodger was like. Mrs. Bunting was no hand at talking, but one thing
+she did impress on her husband's mind, namely, that Mr. Sleuth was
+eccentric, as so many clever people are eccentric--that is, in a
+harmless way--and that he must be humoured.
+
+"He says he doesn't want to be waited on much," she said at last
+wiping her eyes, "but I can see he will want a good bit of looking
+after, all the same, poor gentleman."
+
+And just as the words left her mouth there came the unfamiliar sound
+of a loud ring. It was that of the drawing-room bell being pulled
+again and again.
+
+Bunting looked at his wife eagerly. "I think I'd better go up, eh,
+Ellen?" he said. He felt quite anxious to see their new lodger.
+For the matter of that, it would be a relief to be doing something
+again.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "you go up! Don't keep him waiting! I wonder
+what it is he wants? I said I'd let him know when his supper was
+ready."
+
+A moment later Bunting came down again. There was an odd smile on
+his face. "Whatever d'you think he wanted?" he whispered
+mysteriously. And as she said nothing, he went on, "He's asked me
+for the loan of a Bible!"
+
+"Well, I don't see anything so out of the way in that," she said
+hastily, "'specially if he don't feel well. I'll take it up to him."
+
+And then going to a small table which stood between the two windows,
+Mrs. Bunting took off it a large Bible, which had been given to her
+as a wedding present by a married lady with whose mother she had
+lived for several years.
+
+"He said it would do quite well when you take up his supper," said
+Bunting; and, then, "Ellen? He's a queer-looking cove--not like
+any gentleman I ever had to do with."
+
+"He is a gentleman," said Mrs. Bunting rather fiercely.
+
+"Oh, yes, that's all right." But still he looked at her doubtfully.
+"I asked him if he'd like me to just put away his clothes. But,
+Ellen, he said he hadn't got any clothes!"
+
+"No more he hasn't;" she spoke quickly, defensively. "He had the
+misfortune to lose his luggage. He's one dishonest folk 'ud take
+advantage of."
+
+"Yes, one can see that with half an eye," Bunting agreed.
+
+And then there was silence for a few moments, while Mrs. Bunting
+put down on a little bit of paper the things she wanted her husband
+to go out and buy for her. She handed him the list, together with
+a sovereign. "Be as quick as you can," she said, "for I feel a bit
+hungry. I'll be going down now to see about Mr. Sleuth's supper.
+He only wants a glass of milk and two eggs. I'm glad I've never
+fallen to bad eggs!"
+
+"Sleuth," echoed Bunting, staring at her. "What a queer name!
+How d'you spell it--S-l-u-t-h?"
+
+"No," she shot out, "S-l-e--u--t--h."
+
+"Oh," he said doubtfully.
+
+"He said, 'Think of a hound and you'll never forget my name,'"
+and Mrs. Bunting smiled.
+
+When he got to the door, Bunting turned round: "We'll now be able
+to pay young Chandler back some o' that thirty shillings. I am
+glad." She nodded; her heart, as the saying is, too full for words.
+
+And then each went about his and her business--Bunting out into
+the drenching fog, his wife down to her cold kitchen.
+
+The lodger's tray was soon ready; everything upon it nicely and
+daintily arranged. Mrs. Bunting knew how to wait upon a gentleman.
+
+Just as the landlady was going up the kitchen stair, she suddenly
+remembered Mr. Sleuth's request for a Bible. Putting the tray down
+in the hall, she went into her sitting-room and took up the Book;
+but when back in the hall she hesitated a moment as to whether it
+was worth while to make two journeys. But, no, she thought she
+could manage; clasping the large, heavy volume under her arm, and
+taking up the tray, she walked slowly up the staircase.
+
+But a great surprise awaited her; in fact, when Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady opened the door of the drawing-room she very nearly dropped
+the tray. She actually did drop the Bible, and it fell with a heavy
+thud to the ground.
+
+The new lodger had turned all those nice framed engravings of the
+early Victorian beauties, of which Mrs. Bunting had been so proud,
+with their faces to the wall!
+
+For a moment she was really too surprised to speak. Putting the
+tray down on the table, she stooped and picked up the Book. It
+troubled her that the Book should have fallen to the ground; but
+really she hadn't been able to help it--it was mercy that the
+tray hadn't fallen, too.
+
+Mr. Sleuth got up. "I--I have taken the liberty to arrange the
+room as I should wish it to be," he said awkwardly. "You see,
+Mrs.--er--Bunting, I felt as I sat here that these women's eyes
+followed me about. It was a most unpleasant sensation, and gave
+me quite an eerie feeling."
+
+The landlady was now laying a small tablecloth over half of the
+table. She made no answer to her lodger's remark, for the good
+reason that she did not know what to say.
+
+Her silence seemed to distress Mr. Sleuth. After what seemed a
+long pause, he spoke again.
+
+"I prefer bare walls, Mrs. Bunting," he spoke with some agitation.
+"As a matter of fact, I have been used to seeing bare walls about
+me for a long time." And then, at last his landlady answered him,
+in a composed, soothing voice, which somehow did him good to hear.
+"I quite understand, sir. And when Bunting comes in he shall take
+the pictures all down. We have plenty of space in our own rooms
+for them."
+
+"Thank you--thank you very much."
+
+Mr. Sleuth appeared greatly relieved.
+
+"And I have brought you up my Bible, sir. I understood you wanted
+the loan of it?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth stared at her as if dazed for a moment; and then, rousing
+himself, he said, "Yes, yes, I do. There is no reading like the Book.
+There is something there which suits every state of mind, aye, and of
+body too--"
+
+"Very true, sir." And then Mrs. Bunting, having laid out what really
+looked a very appetising little meal, turned round and quietly shut
+the door.
+
+She went down straight into her sitting-room and waited there for
+Bunting, instead of going to the kitchen to clear up. And as she
+did so there came to her a comfortable recollection, an incident of
+her long-past youth, in the days when she, then Ellen Green, had
+maided a dear old lady.
+
+The old lady had a favourite nephew--a bright, jolly young gentleman,
+who was learning to paint animals in Paris. And one morning Mr.
+Algernon--that was his rather peculiar Christian name--had had the
+impudence to turn to the wall six beautiful engravings of paintings
+done by the famous Mr. Landseer!
+
+Mrs. Bunting remembered all the circumstances as if they had only
+occurred yesterday, and yet she had not thought of them for years.
+
+It was quite early; she had come down--for in those days maids
+weren't thought so much of as they are now, and she slept with the
+upper housemaid, and it was the upper housemaid's duty to be down
+very early--and, there, in the dining-room, she had found Mr.
+Algernon engaged in turning each engraving to the wall! Now, his
+aunt thought all the world of those pictures, and Ellen had felt
+quite concerned, for it doesn't do for a young gentleman to put
+himself wrong with a kind aunt.
+
+"Oh, sir," she had exclaimed in dismay, "whatever are you doing?"
+And even now she could almost hear his merry voice, as he had
+answered, "I am doing my duty, fair Helen"--he had always called
+her "fair Helen" when no one was listening. "How can I draw ordinary
+animals when I see these half-human monsters staring at me all the
+time I am having my breakfast, my lunch, and my dinner?" That was
+what Mr. Algernon had said in his own saucy way, and that was what
+he repeated in a more serious, respectful manner to his aunt, when
+that dear old lady had come downstairs. In fact he had declared,
+quite soberly, that the beautiful animals painted by Mr. Landseer
+put his eye out!
+
+But his aunt had been very much annoyed--in fact, she had made him
+turn the pictures all back again; and as long as he stayed there he
+just had to put up with what he called "those half-human monsters."
+Mrs. Bunting, sitting there, thinking the matter of Mr. Sleuth's
+odd behaviour over, was glad to recall that funny incident of her
+long-gone youth. It seemed to prove that her new lodger was not so
+strange as he appeared to be. Still, when Bunting came in, she did
+not tell him the queer thing which had happened. She told herself
+that she would be quite able to manage the taking down of the
+pictures in the drawing-room herself.
+
+But before getting ready their own supper, Mr. Sleuth's landlady
+went upstairs to clear away, and when on the staircase she heard the
+sound of--was it talking, in the drawing-room? Startled, she
+waited a moment on the landing outside the drawing-room door, then
+she realised that it was only the lodger reading aloud to himself.
+There was something very awful in the words which rose and fell on
+her listening ears:
+
+"A strange woman is a narrow gate. She also lieth in wait as for
+a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men."
+
+She remained where she was, her hand on the handle of the door,
+and again there broke on her shrinking ears that curious, high,
+sing-song voice, "Her house is the way to hell, going down to
+the chambers of death."
+
+It made the listener feel quite queer. But at last she summoned up
+courage, knocked, and walked in.
+
+"I'd better clear away, sir, had I not?" she said. And Mr. Sleuth
+nodded.
+
+Then he got up and closed the Book. "I think I'll go to bed now,"
+he said. "I am very, very tired. I've had a long and a very
+weary day, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+After he had disappeared into the back room, Mrs. Bunting climbed
+up on a chair and unhooked the pictures which had so offended Mr.
+Sleuth. Each left an unsightly mark on the wall--but that, after
+all, could not be helped.
+
+Treading softly, so that Bunting should not hear her, she carried
+them down, two by two, and stood them behind her bed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Mrs. Bunting woke up the next morning feeling happier than she had
+felt for a very, very long time.
+
+For just one moment she could not think why she felt so different
+--and then she suddenly remembered.
+
+How comfortable it was to know that upstairs, just over her head,
+lay, in the well-found bed she had bought with such satisfaction at
+an auction held in a Baker Street house, a lodger who was paying two
+guineas a week! Something seemed to tell her that Mr. Sleuth would
+be "a permanency." In any case, it wouldn't be her fault if he
+wasn't. As to his--his queerness, well, there's always something
+funny in everybody. But after she had got up, and as the morning
+wore itself away, Mrs. Bunting grew a little anxious, for there
+came no sound at all from the new lodger's rooms. At twelve,
+however, the drawing-room bell rang. Mrs. Bunting hurried upstairs.
+She was painfully anxious to please and satisfy Mr. Sleuth. His
+coming had only been in the nick of time to save them from terrible
+disaster.
+
+She found her lodger up, and fully dressed. He was sitting at the
+round table which occupied the middle of the sitting-room, and his
+landlady's large Bible lay open before him.
+
+As Mrs. Bunting came in, he looked up, and she was troubled to see
+how tired and worn he seemed.
+
+"You did not happen," he asked, "to have a Concordance, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She shook her head; she had no idea what a Concordance could be,
+but she was quite sure that she had nothing of the sort about.
+
+And then her new lodger proceeded to tell her what it was he
+desired her to buy for him. She had supposed the bag he had
+brought with him to contain certain little necessaries of
+civilised life--such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush,
+a set of razors, a toothbrush, to say nothing of a couple of
+nightshirts--but no, that was evidently not so, for Mr. Sleuth
+required all these things to be bought now.
+
+After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs. Bunting hurried
+out to purchase the things of which he was in urgent need.
+
+How pleasant it was to feel that there was money in her purse
+again--not only someone else's money, but money she was now in
+the very act of earning so agreeably.
+
+Mrs. Bunting first made her way to a little barber's shop close by.
+It was there she purchased the brush and comb and the razors. It
+was a funny, rather smelly little place, and she hurried as much as
+she could, the more so that the foreigner who served her insisted
+on telling her some of the strange, peculiar details of this
+Avenger murder which had taken place forty-eight hours before, and
+in which Bunting took such a morbid interest.
+
+The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting. She didn't want to think of
+anything painful or disagreeable on such a day as this.
+
+Then she came back and showed the lodger her various purchases. Mr.
+Sleuth was pleased with everything, and thanked her most courteously.
+But when she suggested doing his bedroom he frowned, and looked
+quite put out.
+
+"Please wait till this evening," he said hastily. "It is my custom
+to stay at home all day. I only care to walk about the streets when
+the lights are lit. You must bear with me, Mrs. Bunting, if I seem
+a little, just a little, unlike the lodgers you have been accustomed
+to. And I must ask you to understand that I must not be disturbed
+when thinking out my problems--" He broke off short, sighed, then
+added solemnly, "for mine are the great problems of life and death."
+
+And Mrs. Bunting willingly fell in with his wishes. In spite of her
+prim manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's landlady was a true woman
+--she had, that is, an infinite patience with masculine vagaries
+and oddities.
+
+
+When she was downstairs again, Mr. Sleuth's landlady met with a
+surprise; but it was quite a pleasant surprise. While she had
+been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young friend, Joe
+Chandler, the detective, had come in, and as she walked into the
+sitting-room she saw that her husband was pushing half a sovereign
+across the table towards Joe.
+
+Joe Chandler's fair, good-natured face was full of satisfaction:
+not at seeing his money again, mark you, but at the news Bunting
+had evidently been telling him--that news of the sudden wonderful
+change in their fortunes, the coming of an ideal lodger.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth don't want me to do his bedroom till he's gone out!"
+she exclaimed. And then she sat down for a bit of a rest.
+
+It was a comfort to know that the lodger was eating his good
+breakfast, and there was no need to think of him for the present.
+In a few minutes she would be going down to make her own and
+Bunting's dinner, and she told Joe Chandler that he might as well
+stop and have a bite with them.
+
+Her heart warmed to the young man, for Mrs. Bunting was in a mood
+which seldom surprised her--a mood to be pleased with anything
+and everything. Nay, more. When Bunting began to ask Joe Chandler
+about the last of those awful Avenger murders, she even listened
+with a certain languid interest to all he had to say.
+
+In the morning paper which Bunting had begun taking again that
+very day three columns were devoted to the extraordinary mystery
+which was now beginning to be the one topic of talk all over London,
+West and East, North and South. Bunting had read out little bits
+about it while they ate their breakfast, and in spite of herself
+Mrs. Bunting had felt thrilled and excited.
+
+"They do say," observed Bunting cautiously, "They do say, Joe, that
+the police have a clue they won't say nothing about?" He looked
+expectantly at his visitor. To Bunting the fact that Chandler was
+attached to the detective section of the Metropolitan Police
+invested the young man with a kind of sinister glory--especially
+just now, when these awful and mysterious crimes were amazing and
+terrifying the town.
+
+"Them who says that says wrong," answered Chandler slowly, and a
+look of unease, of resentment came over his fair, stolid face.
+"'Twould make a good bit of difference to me if the Yard had a clue."
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting interposed. "Why that, Joe?" she said,
+smiling indulgently; the young man's keenness about his work pleased
+her. And in his slow, sure way Joe Chandler was very keen, and took
+his job very seriously. He put his whole heart and mind into it.
+
+"Well, 'tis this way," he explained. "From to-day I'm on this
+business myself. You see, Mrs. Bunting, the Yard's nettled--that's
+what it is, and we're all on our mettle--that we are. I was right
+down sorry for the poor chap who was on point duty in the street
+where the last one happened--"
+
+"No!" said Bunting incredulously. "You don't mean there was a
+policeman there, within a few yards?"
+
+That fact hadn't been recorded in his newspaper.
+
+Chandler nodded. "That's exactly what I do mean, Mr. Bunting! The
+man is near off his head, so I'm told. He did hear a yell, so he
+says, but he took no notice--there are a good few yells in that
+part o' London, as you can guess. People always quarrelling and
+rowing at one another in such low parts."
+
+"Have you seen the bits of grey paper on which the monster writes
+his name?" inquired Bunting eagerly.
+
+Public imagination had been much stirred by the account of those
+three-cornered pieces of grey paper, pinned to the victims' skirts,
+on which was roughly written in red ink and in printed characters
+the words "The Avenger."
+
+His round, fat face was full of questioning eagerness. He put his
+elbows on the table, and stared across expectantly at the young man.
+
+"Yes, I have," said Joe briefly.
+
+"A funny kind of visiting card, eh!" Bunting laughed; the notion
+struck him as downright comic.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting coloured. "It isn't a thing to make a joke about,"
+she said reprovingly.
+
+And Chandler backed her up. "No, indeed," he said feelingly. "I'll
+never forget what I've been made to see over this job. And as for
+that grey bit of paper, Mr. Bunting--or, rather, those grey bits of
+paper"--he corrected himself hastily--"you know they've three of
+them now at the Yard--well, they gives me the horrors!"
+
+And then he jumped up. "That reminds me that I oughtn't to be
+wasting my time in pleasant company--"
+
+"Won't you stay and have a bit of dinner?" said Mrs. Bunting
+solicitously.
+
+But the detective shook his head. "No," he said, "I had a bite
+before I came out. Our job's a queer kind of job, as you know. A
+lot's left to our discretion, so to speak, but it don't leave us
+much time for lazing about, I can tell you."
+
+When he reached the door he turned round, and with elaborate
+carelessness he inquired, "Any chance of Miss Daisy coming to London
+again soon?"
+
+Bunting shook his head, but his face brightened. He was very, very
+fond of his only child; the pity was he saw her so seldom. "No,"
+he said, "I'm afraid not Joe. Old Aunt, as we calls the old lady,
+keeps Daisy pretty tightly tied to her apron-string. She was quite
+put about that week the child was up with us last June."
+
+"Indeed? Well, so long!"
+
+After his wife had let their friend out, Bunting said cheerfully,
+"Joe seems to like our Daisy, eh, Ellen?"
+
+But Mrs. Bunting shook her head scornfully. She did not exactly
+dislike the girl, though she did not hold with the way Bunting's
+daughter was being managed by that old aunt of hers--an idle,
+good-for-nothing way, very different from the fashion in which
+she herself had been trained at the Foundling, for Mrs. Bunting
+as a little child had known no other home, no other family than
+those provided by good Captain Coram.
+
+"Joe Chandler's too sensible a young chap to be thinking of girls
+yet awhile," she said tartly.
+
+"No doubt you're right," Bunting agreed. "Times be changed. In my
+young days chaps always had time for that. 'Twas just a notion that
+came into my head, hearing him asking, anxious-like, after her."
+
+******
+
+About five o'clock, after the street lamps were well alight, Mr.
+Sleuth went out, and that same evening there came two parcels
+addressed to his landlady. These parcels contained clothes. But
+it was quite clear to Mrs. Bunting's eyes that they were not new
+clothes. In fact, they had evidently been bought in some good
+second-hand clothes-shop. A funny thing for a real gentleman like
+Mr. Sleuth to do! It proved that he had given up all hope of
+getting back his lost luggage.
+
+When the lodger had gone out he had not taken his bag with him, of
+that Mrs. Bunting was positive. And yet, though she searched high
+and low for it, she could not find the place where Mr. Sleuth kept
+it. And at last, had it not been that she was a very clear-headed
+woman, with a good memory, she would have been disposed to think
+that the bag had never existed, save in her imagination.
+
+But no, she could not tell herself that! She remembered exactly
+how it had looked when Mr. Sleuth had first stood, a strange,
+queer-looking figure of a man, on her doorstep.
+
+She further remembered how he had put the bag down on the floor of
+the top front room, and then, forgetting what he had done, how he
+had asked her eagerly, in a tone of angry fear, where the bag was
+--only to find it safely lodged at his feet!
+
+As time went on Mrs. Bunting thought a great deal about that bag,
+for, strange and amazing fact, she never saw Mr. Sleuth's bag again.
+But, of course, she soon formed a theory as to its whereabouts.
+The brown leather bag which had formed Mr. Sleuth's only luggage
+the afternoon of his arrival was almost certainly locked up in the
+lower part of the drawing-room chiffonnier. Mr. Sleuth evidently
+always carried the key of the little corner cupboard about his
+person; Mrs. Bunting had also had a good hunt for that key, but,
+as was the case with the bag, the key disappeared, and she never
+saw either the one or the other again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+How quietly, how uneventfully, how pleasantly, sped the next few
+days. Already life was settling down into a groove. Waiting on
+Mr. Sleuth was just what Mrs. Bunting could manage to do easily,
+and without tiring herself.
+
+It had at once become clear that the lodger preferred to be waited
+on only by one person, and that person his landlady. He gave her
+very little trouble. Indeed, it did her good having to wait on the
+lodger; it even did her good that he was not like other gentlemen;
+for the fact occupied her mind, and in a way it amused her. The
+more so that whatever his oddities Mr. Sleuth had none of those
+tiresome, disagreeable ways with which landladies are only too
+familiar, and which seem peculiar only to those human beings who
+also happen to be lodgers. To take but one point: Mr. Sleuth did
+not ask to be called unduly early. Bunting and his Ellen had fallen
+into the way of lying rather late in the morning, and it was a great
+comfort not to have to turn out to make the lodger a cup of tea at
+seven, or even half-past seven. Mr. Sleuth seldom required anything
+before eleven.
+
+But odd he certainly was.
+
+The second evening he had been with them Mr. Sleuth had brought in
+a book of which the queer name was Cruden's Concordance. That and
+the Bible--Mrs. Bunting had soon discovered that there was a
+relation between the two books--seemed to be the lodger's only
+reading. He spent hours each day, generally after he had eaten
+the breakfast which also served for luncheon, poring over the Old
+Testament and over that strange kind of index to the Book.
+
+As for the delicate and yet the all-important question of money,
+Mr. Sleuth was everything--everything that the most exacting
+landlady could have wished. Never had there been a more confiding
+or trusting gentleman. On the very first day he had been with them
+he had allowed his money--the considerable sum of one hundred and
+eighty-four sovereigns--to lie about wrapped up in little pieces
+of rather dirty newspaper on his dressing-table. That had quite
+upset Mrs. Bunting. She had allowed herself respectfully to point
+out to him that what he was doing was foolish, indeed wrong. But
+as only answer he had laughed, and she had been startled when the
+loud, unusual and discordant sound had issued from his thin lips.
+
+"I know those I can trust," he had answered, stuttering rather, as
+was his way when moved. "And--and I assure you, Mrs. Bunting, that
+I hardly have to speak to a human being--especially to a woman"
+(and he had drawn in his breath with a hissing sound) "before I
+know exactly what manner of person is before me."
+
+It hadn't taken the landlady very long to find out that her lodger
+had a queer kind of fear and dislike of women. When she was doing
+the staircase and landings she would often hear Mr. Sleuth reading
+aloud to himself passages in the Bible that were very uncomplimentary
+to her sex. But Mrs. Bunting had no very great opinion of her sister
+woman, so that didn't put her out. Besides, where one's lodger is
+concerned, a dislike of women is better than--well, than the other
+thing.
+
+In any case, where would have been the good of worrying about the
+lodger's funny ways? Of course, Mr. Sleuth was eccentric. If he
+hadn't been, as Bunting funnily styled it, "just a leetle touched
+upstairs," he wouldn't be here, living this strange, solitary life
+in lodgings. He would be living in quite a different sort of way
+with some of his relatives, or with a friend of his own class.
+
+There came a time when Mrs. Bunting, looking back--as even the
+least imaginative of us are apt to look back to any part of our
+own past lives which becomes for any reason poignantly memorable
+--wondered how soon it was that she had discovered that her
+lodger was given to creeping out of the house at a time when
+almost all living things prefer to sleep.
+
+She brought herself to believe--but I am inclined to doubt whether
+she was right in so believing--that the first time she became aware
+of this strange nocturnal habit of Mr. Sleuth's happened to be
+during the night which preceded the day on which she had observed a
+very curious circumstance. This very curious circumstance was the
+complete disappearance of one of Mr. Sleuth's three suits of clothes.
+
+It always passes my comprehension how people can remember, over any
+length of time, not every moment of certain happenings, for that is
+natural enough, but the day, the hour, the minute when these
+happenings took place! Much as she thought about it afterwards,
+even Mrs. Bunting never quite made up her mind whether it was during
+the fifth or the sixth night of Mr. Sleuth's stay under her roof
+that she became aware that he had gone out at two in the morning and
+had only come in at five.
+
+But that there did come such a night is certain--as certain as is
+the fact that her discovery coincided with various occurrences
+which were destined to remain retrospectively memorable.
+
+******
+
+It was intensely dark, intensely quiet--the darkest quietest hour
+of the night, when suddenly Mrs. Bunting was awakened from a deep,
+dreamless sleep by sounds at once unexpected and familiar. She
+knew at once what those sounds were. They were those made by Mr.
+Sleuth, first coming down the stairs, and walking on tiptoe--she
+was sure it was on tiptoe--past her door, and finally softly
+shutting the front door behind him.
+
+Try as she would, Mrs. Bunting found it quite impossible to go to
+sleep again. There she lay wide awake, afraid to move lest Bunting
+should waken up too, till she heard Mr. Sleuth, three hours later,
+creep back into the house and so up to bed.
+
+Then, and not till then, she slept again. But in the morning she
+felt very tired, so tired indeed, that she had been very glad when
+Bunting good-naturedly suggested that he should go out and do their
+little bit of marketing.
+
+The worthy couple had very soon discovered that in the matter of
+catering it was not altogether an easy matter to satisfy Mr. Sleuth,
+and that though he always tried to appear pleased. This perfect
+lodger had one serious fault from the point of view of those who
+keep lodgings. Strange to say, he was a vegetarian. He would not
+eat meat in any form. He sometimes, however, condescended to a
+chicken, and when he did so condescend he generously intimated that
+Mr. and Mrs. Bunting were welcome to a share in it.
+
+Now to-day--this day of which the happenings were to linger in Mrs.
+Bunting's mind so very long, and to remain so very vivid, it had
+been arranged that Mr. Sleuth was to have some fish for his lunch,
+while what he left was to be "done up" to serve for his simple supper.
+
+Knowing that Bunting would be out for at least an hour, for he was
+a gregarious soul, and liked to have a gossip in the shops he
+frequented, Mrs. Bunting rose and dressed in a leisurely manner;
+then she went and "did" her front sitting-room.
+
+She felt languid and dull, as one is apt to feel after a broken
+night, and it was a comfort to her to know that Mr. Sleuth was not
+likely to ring before twelve.
+
+But long before twelve a loud ring suddenly clanged through the
+quiet house. She knew it for the front door bell.
+
+Mrs. Bunting frowned. No doubt the ring betokened one of those
+tiresome people who come round for old bottles and such-like
+fal-lals.
+
+She went slowly, reluctantly to the door. And then her face cleared,
+for it was that good young chap, Joe Chandler, who stood waiting
+outside.
+
+He was breathing a little hard, as if he had walked over-quickly
+through the moist, foggy air.
+
+"Why, Joe?" said Mrs. Bunting wonderingly. "Come in--do! Bunting's
+out, but he won't be very long now. You've been quite a stranger
+these last few days."
+
+"Well, you know why, Mrs. Bunting--"
+
+She stared at him for a moment, wondering what he could mean. Then,
+suddenly she remembered. Why, of course, Joe was on a big job just
+now--the job of trying to catch The Avenger! Her husband had
+alluded to the fact again and again when reading out to her little
+bits from the halfpenny evening paper he was taking again.
+
+She led the way to the sitting-room. It was a good thing Bunting
+had insisted on lighting the fire before he went out, for now the
+room was nice and warm--and it was just horrible outside. She had
+felt a chill go right through her as she had stood, even for that
+second, at the front door.
+
+And she hadn't been alone to feel it, for, "I say, it is jolly to
+be in here, out of that awful cold!" exclaimed Chandler, sitting
+down heavily in Bunting's easy chair.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting bethought herself that the young man was tired,
+as well as cold. He was pale, almost pallid under his usual healthy,
+tanned complexion--the complexion of the man who lives much out of
+doors.
+
+"Wouldn't you like me just to make you a cup of tea?" she said
+solicitously.
+
+"Well, to tell truth, I should be right down thankful for one, Mrs.
+Bunting!" Then he looked round, and again he said her name, "Mrs.
+Bunting--?"
+
+He spoke in so odd, so thick a tone that she turned quickly. "Yes,
+what is it, Joe?" she asked. And then, in sudden terror, "You've
+never come to tell me that anything's happened to Bunting? He's
+not had an accident?"
+
+"Goodness, no! Whatever made you think that? But--but, Mrs.
+Bunting, there's been another of them!"
+
+His voice dropped almost to a whisper. He was staring at her with
+unhappy, it seemed to her terror-filled, eyes.
+
+"Another of them?" She looked at him, bewildered--at a loss.
+And then what he meant flashed across her--"another of them"
+meant another of these strange, mysterious, awful murders.
+
+But her relief for the moment was so great--for she really had
+thought for a second that he had come to give her ill news of
+Bunting--that the feeling that she did experience on hearing
+this piece of news was actually pleasurable, though she would
+have been much shocked had that fact been brought to her notice.
+
+Almost in spite of herself, Mrs. Bunting had become keenly interested
+in the amazing series of crimes which was occupying the imagination
+of the whole of London's nether-world. Even her refined mind had
+busied itself for the last two or three days with the strange problem
+so frequently presented to it by Bunting--for Bunting, now that they
+were no longer worried, took an open, unashamed, intense interest in
+"The Avenger" and his doings.
+
+She took the kettle off the gas-ring. "It's a pity Bunting isn't
+here," she said, drawing in her breath. "He'd a-liked so much to
+hear you tell all about it, Joe."
+
+As she spoke she was pouring boiling water into a little teapot.
+
+But Chandler said nothing, and she turned and glanced at him. "Why,
+you do look bad!" she exclaimed.
+
+And, indeed, the young fellow did look bad--very bad indeed.
+
+"I can't help it," he said, with a kind of gasp. "It was your
+saying that about my telling you all about it that made me turn
+queer. You see, this time I was one of the first there, and it
+fairly turned me sick--that it did. Oh, it was too awful, Mrs.
+Bunting! Don't talk of it."
+
+He began gulping down the hot tea before it was well made.
+
+She looked at him with sympathetic interest. "Why, Joe," she said,
+"I never would have thought, with all the horrible sights you see,
+that anything could upset you like that."
+
+"This isn't like anything there's ever been before," he said. "And
+then--then--oh, Mrs. Bunting, 'twas I that discovered the piece of
+paper this time."
+
+"Then it is true," she cried eagerly. "It is The Avenger's bit of
+paper! Bunting always said it was. He never believed in that
+practical joker."
+
+"I did," said Chandler reluctantly. "You see, there are some queer
+fellows even--even--" (he lowered his voice, and looked round him
+as if the walls had ears)--"even in the Force, Mrs. Bunting, and
+these murders have fair got on our nerves."
+
+"No, never!" she said. "D'you think that a Bobby might do a thing
+like that?"
+
+He nodded impatiently, as if the question wasn't worth answering.
+Then, "It was all along of that bit of paper and my finding it while
+the poor soul was still warm,"--he shuddered--"that brought me out
+West this morning. One of our bosses lives close by, in Prince
+Albert Terrace, and I had to go and tell him all about it. They
+never offered me a bit or a sup--I think they might have done that,
+don't you, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Yes," she said absently. "Yes, I do think so."
+
+"But, there, I don't know that I ought to say that," went on Chandler.
+"He had me up in his dressing-room, and was very considerate-like to
+me while I was telling him."
+
+"Have a bit of something now?" she said suddenly.
+
+"Oh, no, I couldn't eat anything," he said hastily. "I don't feel
+as if I could ever eat anything any more."
+
+"That'll only make you ill." Mrs. Bunting spoke rather crossly,
+for she was a sensible woman. And to please her he took a bite
+out of the slice of bread-and-butter she had cut for him.
+
+"I expect you're right," he said. "And I've a goodish heavy day
+in front of me. Been up since four, too--"
+
+"Four?" she said. "Was it then they found--" she hesitated a
+moment, and then said, "it?"
+
+He nodded. "It was just a chance I was near by. If I'd been half
+a minute sooner either I or the officer who found her must have
+knocked up against that--that monster. But two or three people
+do think they saw him slinking away."
+
+"What was he like?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Well, that's hard to answer. You see, there was such an awful
+fog. But there's one thing they all agree about. He was carrying
+a bag--"
+
+"A bag?" repeated Mrs. Bunting, in a low voice. "Whatever sort of
+bag might it have been, Joe?"
+
+There had come across her--just right in her middle, like--such a
+strange sensation, a curious kind of tremor, or fluttering.
+
+She was at a loss to account for it.
+
+"Just a hand-bag," said Joe Chandler vaguely. "A woman I spoke to
+--cross-examining her, like--who was positive she had seen him,
+said, 'Just a tall, thin shadow--that's what he was, a tall, thin
+shadow of a man--with a bag.'"
+
+"With a bag?" repeated Mrs. Bunting absently. "How very strange
+and peculiar--"
+
+"Why, no, not strange at all. He has to carry the thing he does
+the deed with in something, Mrs. Bunting. We've always wondered how
+he hid it. They generally throws the knife or fire-arms away, you
+know."
+
+"Do they, indeed?" Mrs. Bunting still spoke in that absent, wondering
+way. She was thinking that she really must try and see what the
+lodger had done with his bag. It was possible--in fact, when one
+came to think of it, it was very probable--that he had just lost
+it, being so forgetful a gentleman, on one of the days he had gone
+out, as she knew he was fond of doing, into the Regent's Park.
+
+"There'll be a description circulated in an hour or two," went on
+Chandler. "Perhaps that'll help catch him. There isn't a London
+man or woman, I don't suppose, who wouldn't give a good bit to lay
+that chap by the heels. Well, I suppose I must be going now."
+
+"Won't you wait a bit longer for Bunting?" she said hesitatingly.
+
+"No, I can't do that. But I'll come in, maybe, either this evening
+or to-morrow, and tell you any more that's happened. Thanks kindly
+for the tea. It's made a man of me, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Well, you've had enough to unman you, Joe."
+
+"Aye, that I have," he said heavily.
+
+A few minutes later Bunting did come in, and he and his wife had
+quite a little tiff--the first tiff they had had since Mr. Sleuth
+became their lodger.
+
+It fell out this way. When he heard who had been there, Bunting
+was angry that Mrs. Bunting hadn't got more details of the horrible
+occurrence which had taken place that morning, out of Chandler.
+
+"You don't mean to say, Ellen, that you can't even tell me where it
+happened?" he said indignantly. "I suppose you put Chandler off
+--that's what you did! Why, whatever did he come here for,
+excepting to tell us all about it?"
+
+"He came to have something to eat and drink," snapped out Mrs.
+Bunting. "That's what the poor lad came for, if you wants to know.
+He could hardly speak of it at all--he felt so bad. In fact, he
+didn't say a word about it until he'd come right into the room and
+sat down. He told me quite enough!"
+
+"Didn't he tell you if the piece of paper on which the murderer had
+written his name was square or three-cornered?" demanded Bunting.
+
+"No; he did not. And that isn't the sort of thing I should have
+cared to ask him."
+
+"The more fool you!" And then he stopped abruptly. The newsboys
+were coming down the Marylebone Road, shouting out the awful
+discovery which had been made that morning--that of The Avenger's
+fifth murder. Bunting went out to buy a paper, and his wife took
+the things he had brought in down to the kitchen.
+
+The noise the newspaper-sellers made outside had evidently wakened
+Mr. Sleuth, for his landlady hadn't been in the kitchen ten minutes
+before his bell rang.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Mr. Sleuth's bell rang again.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's breakfast was quite ready, but for the first time since
+he had been her lodger Mrs. Bunting did not answer the summons at
+once. But when there came the second imperative tinkle--for
+electric bells had not been fitted into that old-fashioned house--
+she made up her mind to go upstairs.
+
+As she emerged into the hall from the kitchen stairway, Bunting,
+sitting comfortably in their parlour, heard his wife stepping heavily
+under the load of the well-laden tray.
+
+"Wait a minute!" he called out. "I'll help you, Ellen," and he came
+out and took the tray from her.
+
+She said nothing, and together they proceeded up to the drawing-room
+floor landing.
+
+There she stopped him. "Here," she whispered quickly, "you give me
+that, Bunting. The lodger won't like your going in to him." And
+then, as he obeyed her, and was about to turn downstairs again, she
+added in a rather acid tone, "You might open the door for me, at
+any rate! How can I manage to do it with this here heavy tray on
+my hands?"
+
+She spoke in a queer, jerky way, and Bunting felt surprised--rather
+put out. Ellen wasn't exactly what you'd call a lively, jolly woman,
+but when things were going well--as now--she was generally equable
+enough. He supposed she was still resentful of the way he had
+spoken to her about young Chandler and the new Avenger murder.
+
+However, he was always for peace, so he opened the drawing-room door,
+and as soon as he had started going downstairs Mrs. Bunting walked
+into the room.
+
+And then at once there came over her the queerest feeling of relief,
+of lightness of heart.
+
+As usual, the lodger was sitting at his old place, reading the Bible.
+
+Somehow--she could not have told you why, she would not willingly
+have told herself--she had expected to see Mr. Sleuth looking
+different. But no, he appeared to be exactly the same--in fact,
+as he glanced up at her a pleasanter smile than usual lighted up
+his thin, pallid face.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bunting," he said genially, "I overslept myself this
+morning, but I feel all the better for the rest."
+
+"I'm glad of that, sir," she answered, in a low voice. "One of the
+ladies I once lived with used to say, 'Rest is an old-fashioned
+remedy, but it's the best remedy of all.'"
+
+Mr. Sleuth himself removed the Bible and Cruden's Concordance off
+the table out of her way, and then he stood watching his landlady
+laying the cloth.
+
+Suddenly he spoke again. He was not often so talkative in the
+morning. "I think, Mrs. Bunting, that there was someone with you
+outside the door just now?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Bunting helped me up with the tray."
+
+"I'm afraid I give you a good deal of trouble," he said hesitatingly.
+
+But she answered quickly, "Oh, no, sir! Not at all, sir! I was
+only saying yesterday that we've never had a lodger that gave us as
+little trouble as you do, sir."
+
+"I'm glad of that. I am aware that my habits are somewhat peculiar."
+
+He looked at her fixedly, as if expecting her to give some sort of
+denial to this observation. But Mrs. Bunting was an honest and
+truthful woman. It never occurred to her to question his statement.
+Mr. Sleuth's habits were somewhat peculiar. Take that going out at
+night, or rather in the early morning, for instance? So she remained
+silent.
+
+After she had laid the lodger's breakfast on the table she prepared
+to leave the room. "I suppose I'm not to do your room till you goes
+out, sir?"
+
+And Mr. Sleuth looked up sharply. "No, no!" he said. "I never
+want my room done when I am engaged in studying the Scriptures, Mrs.
+Bunting. But I am not going out to-day. I shall be carrying out a
+somewhat elaborate experiment--upstairs. If I go out at all" he
+waited a moment, and again he looked at her fixedly "--I shall wait
+till night-time to do so." And then, coming back to the matter in
+hand, he added hastily, "Perhaps you could do my room when I go
+upstairs, about five o'clock--if that time is convenient to you,
+that is?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir! That'll do nicely!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and as she did so she took herself
+wordlessly, ruthlessly to task, but she did not face--even in her
+inmost heart--the strange tenors and tremors which had so shaken
+her. She only repeated to herself again and again, "I've got upset
+--that's what I've done," and then she spoke aloud, "I must get
+myself a dose at the chemist's next time I'm out. That's what I
+must do."
+
+And just as she murmured the word "do," there came a loud double
+knock on the front door.
+
+It was only the postman's knock, but the postman was an unfamiliar
+visitor in that house, and Mrs. Bunting started violently. She was
+nervous, that's what was the matter with her,--so she told herself
+angrily. No doubt this was a letter for Mr. Sleuth; the lodger must
+have relations and acquaintances somewhere in the world. All
+gentlefolk have. But when she picked the small envelope off the
+hall floor, she saw it was a letter from Daisy, her husband's daughter.
+
+"Bunting!" she called out sharply. "Here's a letter for you."
+
+She opened the door of their sitting-room and looked in. Yes, there
+was her husband, sitting back comfortably in his easy chair, reading
+a paper. And as she saw his broad, rather rounded back, Mrs. Bunting
+felt a sudden thrill of sharp irritation. There he was, doing
+nothing--in fact, doing worse than nothing--wasting his time
+reading all about those horrid crimes.
+
+She sighed--a long, unconscious sigh. Bunting was getting into
+idle ways, bad ways for a man of his years. But how could she
+prevent it? He had been such an active, conscientious sort of man
+when they had first made acquaintance. . .
+
+She also could remember, even more clearly than Bunting did himself,
+that first meeting of theirs in the dining-room of No. 90 Cumberland
+Terrace. As she had stood there, pouring out her mistress's glass of
+port wine, she had not been too much absorbed in her task to have a
+good out-of-her-eye look at the spruce, nice, respectable-looking
+fellow who was standing over by the window. How superior he had
+appeared even then to the man she already hoped he would succeed as
+butler!
+
+To-day, perhaps because she was not feeling quite herself, the past
+rose before her very vividly, and a lump came into her throat.
+
+Putting the letter addressed to her husband on the table, she closed
+the door softly, and went down into the kitchen; there were various
+little things to put away and clean up, as well as their dinner to
+cook. And all the time she was down there she fixed her mind
+obstinately, determinedly on Bunting and on the problem of Bunting.
+She wondered what she'd better do to get him into good ways again.
+
+Thanks to Mr. Sleuth, their outlook was now moderately bright. A
+week ago everything had seemed utterly hopeless. It seemed as if
+nothing could save them from disaster. But everything was now
+changed!
+
+Perhaps it would be well for her to go and see the new proprietor
+of that registry office, in Baker Street, which had lately changed
+hands. It would be a good thing for Bunting to get even an
+occasional job--for the matter of that he could now take up a
+fairly regular thing in the way of waiting. Mrs. Bunting knew that
+it isn't easy to get a man out of idle ways once he has acquired
+those ways.
+
+When, at last, she went upstairs again she felt a little ashamed of
+what she had been thinking, for Bunting had laid the cloth, and laid
+it very nicely, too, and brought up the two chairs to the table.
+
+"Ellen?" he cried eagerly, "here's news! Daisy's coming to-morrow!
+There's scarlet fever in their house. Old Aunt thinks she'd better
+come away for a few days. So, you see, she'll be here for her
+birthday. Eighteen, that's what she be on the nineteenth! It do
+make me feel old--that it do!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting put down the tray. "I can't have the girl here just
+now," she said shortly. "I've just as much to do as I can manage.
+The lodger gives me more trouble than you seem to think for."
+
+"Rubbish!" he said sharply. "I'll help you with the lodger. It's
+your own fault you haven't had help with him before. Of course,
+Daisy must come here. Whatever other place could the girl go to?"
+
+Bunting felt pugnacious--so cheerful as to be almost light-hearted.
+But as he looked across at his wife his feeling of satisfaction
+vanished. Ellen's face was pinched and drawn to-day; she looked ill
+--ill and horribly tired. It was very aggravating of her to go and
+behave like this--just when they were beginning to get on nicely
+again.
+
+"For the matter of that," he said suddenly, "Daisy'll be able to help
+you with the work, Ellen, and she'll brisk us both up a bit."
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no answer. She sat down heavily at the table.
+And then she said languidly, "You might as well show me the girl's
+letter."
+
+He handed it across to her, and she read it slowly to herself.
+
+"DEAR FATHER (it ran)--I hope this finds you as well at it leaves
+me. Mrs. Puddle's youngest has got scarlet fever, and Aunt thinks
+I had better come away at once, just to stay with you for a few
+days. Please tell Ellen I won't give her no trouble. I'll start
+at ten if I don't hear nothing.--Your loving daughter,
+
+
+"Yes, I suppose Daisy will have to come here," Mrs. Bunting slowly.
+"It'll do her good to have a bit of work to do for once in her life."
+
+And with that ungraciously worded permission Bunting had to content
+himself.
+
+******
+
+Quietly the rest of that eventful day sped by. When dusk fell Mr.
+Sleuth's landlady heard him go upstairs to the top floor. She
+remembered that this was the signal for her to go and do his room.
+
+He was a tidy man, was the lodger; he did not throw his things
+about as so many gentlemen do, leaving them all over the place.
+No, he kept everything scrupulously tidy. His clothes, and the
+various articles Mrs. Bunting had bought for him during the first
+two days he had been there, were carefully arranged in the chest
+of drawers. He had lately purchased a pair of boots. Those he
+had arrived in were peculiar-looking footgear, buff leather shoes
+with rubber soles, and he had told his landlady on that very first
+day that he never wished them to go down to be cleaned.
+
+A funny idea--a funny habit that, of going out for a walk after
+midnight in weather so cold and foggy that all other folk were
+glad to be at home, snug in bed. But then Mr. Sleuth himself
+admitted that he was a funny sort of gentleman.
+
+After she had done his bedroom the landlady went into the
+sitting-room and gave it a good dusting. This room was not kept
+quite as nice as she would have liked it to be. Mrs. Bunting
+longed to give the drawing-room something of a good turn out; but
+Mr. Sleuth disliked her to be moving about in it when he himself
+was in his bedroom; and when up he sat there almost all the time.
+Delighted as he had seemed to be with the top room, he only used
+it when making his mysterious experiments, and never during the
+day-time.
+
+And now, this afternoon, she looked at the rosewood chiffonnier with
+longing eyes--she even gave that pretty little piece of furniture
+a slight shake. If only the doors would fly open, as the locked
+doors of old cupboards sometimes do, even after they have been
+securely fastened, how pleased she would be, how much more
+comfortable somehow she would feel!
+
+But the chiffonnier refused to give up its secret.
+
+******
+
+About eight o'clock on that same evening Joe Chandler came in, just
+for a few minutes' chat. He had recovered from his agitation of the
+morning, but he was full of eager excitement, and Mrs. Bunting
+listened in silence, intensely interested in spite of herself, while
+he and Bunting talked.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I'm as right as a trivet now! I've had a good rest
+--laid down all this afternoon. You see, the Yard thinks there's
+going to be something on to-night. He's always done them in pairs."
+
+"So he has," exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. "So he has! Now, I
+never thought o' that. Then you think, Joe, that the monster'll be
+on the job again to-night?"
+
+Chandler nodded. "Yes. And I think there's a very good chance of
+his being caught too--"
+
+"I suppose there'll be a lot on the watch to-night, eh?"
+
+"I should think there will be! How many of our men d'you think
+there'll be on night duty to-night, Mr. Bunting?"
+
+Bunting shook his head. "I don't know," he said helplessly.
+
+"I mean extra," suggested Chandler, in an encouraging voice.
+
+"A thousand?" ventured Bunting.
+
+"Five thousand, Mr. Bunting."
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Bunting, amazed.
+
+And even Mrs. Bunting echoed "Never!" incredulously.
+
+"Yes, that there will. You see, the Boss has got his monkey up!"
+Chandler drew a folded-up newspaper out of his coat pocket. "Just
+listen to this:
+
+"'The police have reluctantly to admit that they have no clue to
+the perpetrators of these horrible crimes, and we cannot feel any
+surprise at the information that a popular attack has been organised
+on the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. There is even
+talk of an indignation mass meeting.'
+
+"What d'you think of that? That's not a pleasant thing for a
+gentleman as is doing his best to read, eh?"
+
+"Well, it does seem queer that the police can't catch him, now
+doesn't it?" said Bunting argumentatively.
+
+"I don't think it's queer at all," said young Chandler crossly.
+"Now you just listen again! Here's a bit of the truth for once--
+in a newspaper." And slowly he read out:
+
+"'The detection of crime in London now resembles a game of blind
+man's buff, in which the detective has his hands tied and his eyes
+bandaged. Thus is he turned loose to hunt the murderer through
+the slums of a great city.'"
+
+"Whatever does that mean?" said Bunting. "Your hands aren't tied,
+and your eyes aren't bandaged, Joe?"
+
+"It's metaphorical-like that it's intended, Mr. Bunting. We haven't
+got the same facilities--no, not a quarter of them--that the
+French 'tecs have."
+
+And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting spoke: "What was that
+word, Joe--'perpetrators'? I mean that first bit you read out."
+
+"Yes," he said, turning to her eagerly.
+
+"Then do they think there's more than one of them?" she said, and
+a look of relief came over her thin face.
+
+"There's some of our chaps thinks it's a gang," said Chandler.
+"They say it can't be the work of one man."
+
+"What do you think, Joe?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bunting, I don't know what to think. I'm fair puzzled."
+
+He got up. "Don't you come to the door. I'll shut it all right.
+So long! See you to-morrow, perhaps." As he had done the other
+evening, Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's visitor stopped at the door. "Any
+news of Miss Daisy?" he asked casually.
+
+"Yes; she's coming to-morrow," said her father. "They've got scarlet
+fever at her place. So Old Aunt thinks she'd better clear out."
+
+
+The husband and wife went to bed early that night, but Mrs. Bunting
+found she could not sleep. She lay wide awake, hearing the hours,
+the half-hours, the quarters chime out from the belfry of the old
+church close by.
+
+And then, just as she was dozing off--it must have been about one
+o'clock--she heard the sound she had half unconsciously been
+expecting to hear, that of the lodger's stealthy footsteps coming
+down the stairs just outside her room.
+
+He crept along the passage and let himself out very, very quietly.
+
+But though she tried to keep awake, Mrs. Bunting did not hear him
+come in again, for she soon fell into a heavy sleep.
+
+Oddly enough, she was the first to wake the next morning; odder
+still, it was she, not Bunting, who jumped out of bed, and going
+out into the passage, picked up the newspaper which had just been
+pushed through the letter-box.
+
+But having picked it up, Mrs. Bunting did not go back at once into
+her bedroom. Instead she lit the gas in the passage, and leaning
+up against the wall to steady herself, for she was trembling with
+cold and fatigue, she opened the paper.
+
+Yes, there was the heading she sought:
+
+"The AVENGER Murders"
+
+But, oh, how glad she was to see the words that followed:
+
+"Up to the time of going to press there is little new to report
+concerning the extraordinary series of crimes which are amazing,
+and, indeed, staggering not only London, but the whole civilised
+world, and which would seem to be the work of some woman-hating
+teetotal fanatic. Since yesterday morning, when the last of these
+dastardly murders was committed, no reliable clue to the perpetrator,
+or perpetrators, has been obtained, though several arrests were made
+in the course of the day. In every case, however, those arrested
+were able to prove a satisfactory alibi."
+
+And then, a little lower down:
+
+"The excitement grows and grows. It is not too much to say that
+even a stranger to London would know that something very unusual
+was in the air. As for the place where the murder was committed
+last night--"
+
+"Last night!" thought Mrs. Bunting, startled; and then she realised
+that "last night," in this connection, meant the night before last.
+
+She began the sentence again:
+
+"As for the place where the murder was committed last night, all
+approaches to it were still blocked up to a late hour by hundreds
+of onlookers, though, of course, nothing now remains in the way of
+traces of the tragedy."
+
+Slowly and carefully Mrs. Bunting folded the paper up again in its
+original creases, and then she stooped and put it back down on the
+mat where she had found it. She then turned out the gas, and going
+back into bed she lay down by her still sleeping husband.
+
+"Anything the matter?" Bunting murmured, and stirred uneasily.
+"Anything the matter, Ellen?"
+
+She answered in a whisper, a whisper thrilling with a strange
+gladness, "No, nothing, Bunting--nothing the matter! Go to sleep
+again, my dear."
+
+They got up an hour later, both in a happy, cheerful mood. Bunting
+rejoiced at the thought of his daughter's coming, and even Daisy's
+stepmother told herself that it would be pleasant having the girl
+about the house to help her a bit.
+
+About ten o'clock Bunting went out to do some shopping. He brought
+back with him a nice little bit of pork for Daisy's dinner, and
+three mince-pies. He even remembered to get some apples for the
+sauce.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate.
+
+It brought Daisy--pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy--a
+sight to gladden any father's heart.
+
+"Old Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad," she
+cried out joyously.
+
+There was a bit of a wrangle over the fare. King's Cross, as all
+the world knows, is nothing like two miles from the Marylebone Road,
+but the man clamoured for one and sixpence, and hinted darkly that
+he had done the young lady a favour in bringing her at all.
+
+While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it,
+walked up the flagged path to the door where her stepmother was
+awaiting her.
+
+As they were exchanging a rather frigid kiss, indeed, 'twas a mere
+peck on Mrs. Bunting's part, there fell, with startling suddenness,
+loud cries on the still, cold air. Long-drawn and wailing, they
+sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar
+of traffic in the Edgware Road.
+
+"What's that?" exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. "Why, whatever's
+that?"
+
+The cabman lowered his voice. "Them's 'a-crying out that 'orrible
+affair at King's Cross. He's done for two of 'em this time! That's
+what I meant when I said I might 'a got a better fare. I wouldn't
+say nothink before little missy there, but folk 'ave been coming
+from all over London the last five or six hours; plenty of toffs,
+too--but there, there's nothing to see now!"
+
+"What? Another woman murdered last night?"
+
+Bunting felt tremendously thrilled. What had the five thousand
+constables been about to let such a dreadful thing happen?
+
+The cabman stared at him, surprised. "Two of 'em, I tell yer--
+within a few yards of one another. He 'ave--got a nerve--But,
+of course, they was drunk. He are got a down on the drink!"
+
+"Have they caught him?" asked Bunting perfunctorily.
+
+"Lord, no! They'll never catch 'im! It must 'ave happened hours
+and hours ago--they was both stone cold. One each end of a little
+passage what ain't used no more. That's why they didn't find 'em
+before."
+
+The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer--two news vendors
+trying to outshout each other.
+
+"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross!" they yelled exultingly.
+"The Avenger again!"
+
+And Bunting, with his daughter's large straw hold-all in his hand,
+ran forward into the roadway and recklessly gave a boy a penny for
+a halfpenny paper.
+
+He felt very much moved and excited. Somehow his acquaintance with
+young Joe Chandler made these murders seem a personal affair. He
+hoped that Chandler would come in soon and tell them all about it,
+as he had done yesterday morning when he, Bunting, had unluckily
+been out.
+
+As he walked back into the little hall, he heard Daisy's voice--
+high, voluble, excited--giving her stepmother a long account of
+the scarlet fever case, and how at first Old Aunt's neighbours had
+thought it was not scarlet fever at all, but just nettlerash.
+
+But as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room, there
+came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter's voice, and he heard
+her cry, "Why, Ellen, whatever is the matter? You do look bad!"
+and his wife's muffled answer, "Open the window--do."
+
+"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross--a clue at last!" yelled
+the newspaper-boys triumphantly.
+
+And then, helplessly, Mrs. Bunting began to laugh. She laughed,
+and laughed, and laughed, rocking herself to and fro as if in an
+ecstasy of mirth.
+
+"Why, father, whatever's the matter with her?"
+
+Daisy looked quite scared.
+
+"She's in 'sterics--that's what it is," he said shortly.
+"I'll just get the water-jug. Wait a minute!"
+
+Bunting felt very put out. Ellen was ridiculous--that's what she
+was, to be so easily upset.
+
+The lodger's bell suddenly pealed through the quiet house. Either
+that sound, or maybe the threat of the water-jug, had a magical
+effect on Mrs. Bunting. She rose to her feet, still shaking all
+over, but mentally composed.
+
+"I'll go up," she said a little chokingly. "As for you, child,
+just run down into the kitchen. You'll find a piece of pork
+roasting in the oven. You might start paring the apples for the
+sauce."
+
+As Mrs. Bunting went upstairs her legs felt as if they were made
+of cotton wool. She put out a trembling hand, and clutched at the
+banister for support. But soon, making a great effort over herself,
+she began to feel more steady; and after waiting for a few moments
+on the landing, she knocked at the door of the drawing-room.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's voice answered her from the bedroom. "I'm not well,"
+he called out querulously; "I think I've caught a chill. I should
+be obliged if you would kindly bring me up a cup of tea, and put it
+outside my door, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting turned and went downstairs. She still felt queer and
+giddy, so instead of going into the kitchen, she made the lodger his
+cup of tea over her sitting-room gas-ring.
+
+During their midday dinner the husband and wife had a little
+discussion as to where Daisy should sleep. It had been settled
+that a bed should be made up for her in the top back room, but
+Mrs. Bunting saw reason to change this plan. "I think 'twould be
+better if Daisy were to sleep with me, Bunting, and you was to
+sleep upstairs."
+
+Bunting felt and looked rather surprised, but he acquiesced. Ellen
+was probably right; the girl would be rather lonely up there, and,
+after all, they didn't know much about the lodger, though he seemed
+a respectable gentleman enough.
+
+Daisy was a good-natured girl; she liked London, and wanted to make
+herself useful to her stepmother. "I'll wash up; don't you bother to
+come downstairs," she said cheerfully.
+
+Bunting began to walk up and down the room. His wife gave him a
+furtive glance; she wondered what he was thinking about.
+
+"Didn't you get a paper?" she said at last.
+
+"Yes, of course I did," he answered hastily. "But I've put it away.
+I thought you'd rather not look at it, as you're that nervous."
+
+Again she glanced at him quickly, furtively, but he seemed just as
+usual--he evidently meant just what he said and no more.
+
+"I thought they was shouting something in the street--I mean just
+before I was took bad."
+
+It was now Bunting's turn to stare at his wife quickly and rather
+furtively. He had felt sure that her sudden attack of queerness,
+of hysterics--call it what you might--had been due to the shouting
+outside. She was not the only woman in London who had got the
+Avenger murders on her nerves. His morning paper said quite a lot
+of women were afraid to go out alone. Was it possible that the
+curious way she had been taken just now had had nothing to do with
+the shouts and excitement outside?
+
+"Don't you know what it was they were calling out?" he asked slowly.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked across at him. She would have given a very
+great deal to be able to lie, to pretend that she did not know what
+those dreadful cries had portended. But when it came to the point
+she found she could not do so.
+
+"Yes," she said dully. "I heard a word here and there. There's
+been another murder, hasn't there?"
+
+"Two other murders," he said soberly.
+
+"Two? That's worse news!" She turned so pale--a sallow
+greenish-white--that Bunting thought she was again going queer.
+
+"Ellen?" he said warningly, "Ellen, now do have a care! I can't
+think what's come over you about these murders. Turn your mind
+away from them, do! We needn't talk about them--not so much,
+that is--"
+
+"But I wants to talk about them," cried Mrs. Bunting hysterically.
+
+The husband and wife were standing, one each side of the table,
+the man with his back to the fire, the woman with her back to the
+door.
+
+Bunting, staring across at his wife, felt sadly perplexed and
+disturbed. She really did seem ill; even her slight, spare figure
+looked shrunk. For the first time, so he told himself ruefully,
+Ellen was beginning to look her full age. Her slender hands--she
+had kept the pretty, soft white hands of the woman who has never
+done rough work--grasped the edge of the table with a convulsive
+movement.
+
+Bunting didn't at all like the look of her. "Oh, dear," he said
+to himself, "I do hope Ellen isn't going to be ill! That would be
+a to-do just now."
+
+"Tell me about it," she commanded, in a low voice. "Can't you see
+I'm waiting to hear? Be quick now, Bunting!"
+
+"There isn't very much to tell," he said reluctantly. "There's
+precious little in this paper, anyway. But the cabman what brought
+Daisy told me--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What I said just now. There's two of 'em this time, and they'd
+both been drinking heavily, poor creatures."
+
+"Was it where the others was done?" she asked looking at her husband
+fearfully.
+
+"No," he said awkwardly. "No, it wasn't, Ellen. It was a good bit
+farther West--in fact, not so very far from here. Near King's Cross
+--that's how the cabman knew about it, you see. They seems to have
+been done in a passage which isn't used no more." And then, as he
+thought his wife's eyes were beginning to look rather funny, he added
+hastily. "There, that's enough for the present! We shall soon be
+hearing a lot more about it from Joe Chandler. He's pretty sure to
+come in some time to-day."
+
+"Then the five thousand constables weren't no use?" said Mrs.
+Bunting slowly.
+
+She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was standing more
+upright.
+
+"No use at all," said Bunting briefly. "He is artful and no mistake
+about it. But wait a minute--" he turned and took up the paper
+which he had laid aside, on a chair. "Yes they says here that they
+has a clue."
+
+"A clue, Bunting?" Mrs. Bunting spoke in a soft, weak, die-away
+voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the edge of the
+table.
+
+But her husband was not noticing her now. He was holding the paper
+close up to his eyes, and he read from it, in a tone of considerable
+satisfaction:
+
+"'It is gratifying to be able to state that the police at last
+believe they are in possession of a clue which will lead to the
+arrest of the--'" and then Bunting dropped the paper and rushed
+round the table.
+
+His wife, with a curious sighing moan, had slipped down on to the
+floor, taking with her the tablecloth as she went. She lay there
+in what appeared to be a dead faint. And Bunting, scared out of
+his wits, opened the door and screamed out, "Daisy! Daisy! Come
+up, child. Ellen's took bad again."
+
+And Daisy, hurrying in, showed an amount of sense and resource
+which even at this anxious moment roused her fond father's
+admiration.
+
+"Get a wet sponge, Dad--quick!" she cried, "a sponge,--and, if
+you've got such a thing, a drop o' brandy. I'll see after her!"
+And then, after he had got the little medicine flask, "I can't think
+what's wrong with Ellen," said Daisy wonderingly. "She seemed quite
+all right when I first came in. She was listening, interested-like,
+to what I was telling her, and then, suddenly--well, you saw how
+she was took, father? 'Tain't like Ellen this, is it now?"
+
+"No," he whispered. "No, 'tain't. But you see, child, we've been
+going through a pretty bad time--worse nor I should ever have let
+you know of, my dear. Ellen's just feeling it now--that's what it
+is. She didn't say nothing, for Ellen's a good plucked one, but
+it's told on her--it's told on her!"
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting, sitting up, slowly opened her eyes, and
+instinctively put her hand up to her head to see if her hair was
+all right.
+
+She hadn't really been quite "off." It would have been better for
+her if she had. She had simply had an awful feeling that she
+couldn't stand up--more, that she must fall down. Bunting's words
+touched a most unwonted chord in the poor woman's heart, and the
+eyes which she opened were full of tears. She had not thought her
+husband knew how she had suffered during those weeks of starving
+and waiting.
+
+But she had a morbid dislike of any betrayal of sentiment. To her
+such betrayal betokened "foolishness," and so all she said was,
+"There's no need to make a fuss! I only turned over a little queer.
+I never was right off, Daisy."
+
+Pettishly she pushed away the glass in which Bunting had hurriedly
+poured a little brandy. "I wouldn't touch such stuff--no, not if
+I was dying!" she exclaimed.
+
+Putting out a languid hand, she pulled herself up, with the help of
+the table, on to her feet. "Go down again to the kitchen, child";
+but there was a sob, a kind of tremor in her voice.
+
+"You haven't been eating properly, Ellen--that's what's the matter
+with you," said Bunting suddenly. "Now I come to think of it, you
+haven't eat half enough these last two days. I always did say--in
+old days many a time I telled you--that a woman couldn't live on
+air. But there, you never believed me!"
+
+Daisy stood looking from one to the other, a shadow over her bright,
+pretty face. "I'd no idea you'd had such a bad time, father," she
+said feelingly. "Why didn't you let me know about it? I might have
+got something out of Old Aunt."
+
+"We didn't want anything of that sort," said her stepmother hastily.
+"But of course--well, I expect I'm still feeling the worry now. I
+don't seem able to forget it. Those days of waiting, of--of--"
+she restrained herself; another moment and the word "starving" would
+have left her lips.
+
+"But everything's all right now," said Bunting eagerly, "all right,
+thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is."
+
+"Yes," repeated his wife, in a low, strange tone of voice. "Yes,
+we're all right now, and as you say, Bunting, it's all along of
+Mr. Sleuth."
+
+She walked across to a chair and sat down on it. "I'm just a little
+tottery still," she muttered.
+
+And Daisy, looking at her, turned to her father and said in a
+whisper, but not so low but that Mrs. Bunting heard her, "Don't you
+think Ellen ought to see a doctor, father? He might give her
+something that would pull her round."
+
+"I won't see no doctor!" said Mrs. Bunting with sudden emphasis. "I
+saw enough of doctors in my last place. Thirty-eight doctors in ten
+months did my poor missis have. Just determined on having 'em she
+was! Did they save her? No! She died just the same! Maybe a bit
+sooner."
+
+"She was a freak, was your last mistress, Ellen," began Bunting
+aggressively.
+
+Ellen had insisted on staying on in that place till her poor mistress
+died. They might have been married some months before they were
+married but for that fact. Bunting had always resented it.
+
+His wife smile wanly. "We won't have no words about that," she said,
+and again she spoke in a softer, kindlier tone than usual. "Daisy?
+If you won't go down to the kitchen again, then I must"--she turned
+to her stepdaughter, and the girl flew out of the room.
+
+"I think the child grows prettier every minute," said Bunting fondly.
+
+"Folks are too apt to forget that beauty is but skin deep," said his
+wife. She was beginning to feel better. "But still, I do agree,
+Bunting, that Daisy's well enough. And she seems more willing, too."
+
+"I say, we mustn't forget the lodger's dinner," Bunting spoke
+uneasily. "It's a bit of fish to-day, isn't it? Hadn't I better
+just tell Daisy to see to it, and then I can take it up to him, as
+you're not feeling quite the thing, Ellen?"
+
+"I'm quite well enough to take up Mr. Sleuth's luncheon," she said
+quickly. It irritated her to hear her husband speak of the lodger's
+dinner. They had dinner in the middle of the day, but Mr. Sleuth
+had luncheon. However odd he might be, Mrs. Bunting never forgot
+her lodger was a gentleman.
+
+"After all, he likes me to wait on him, doesn't he? I can manage
+all right. Don't you worry," she added after a long pause.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later
+than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs
+with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice
+slice of roast pork downstairs.
+
+"I hope you're feeling a little better, sir," Mrs. Bunting had forced
+herself to say when she first took in his tray.
+
+And he had answered plaintively, querulously, "No, I can't say I
+feel well to-day, Mrs. Bunting. I am tired--very tired. And as I
+lay in bed I seemed to hear so many sounds--so much crying and
+shouting. I trust the Marylebone Road is not going to become a noisy
+thoroughfare, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I don't think that. We're generally reckoned very
+quiet indeed, sir."
+
+She waited a moment--try as she would, she could not allude to what
+those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened. "I expect you've
+got a chill, sir," she said suddenly. "If I was you, I shouldn't
+go out this afternoon; I'd just stay quietly indoors. There's a lot
+of rough people about--" Perhaps there was an undercurrent of
+warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated
+in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and
+an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous grey eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bunting. But I think I'll take your
+advice. That is, I will stay quietly at home, I am never at a loss
+to know what to do with myself so long as I can study the Book of
+Books."
+
+"Then you're not afraid about your eyes, sir?" said Mrs. Bunting
+curiously. Somehow she was beginning to feel better. It comforted
+her to be up here, talking to Mr. Sleuth, instead of thinking about
+him downstairs. It seemed to banish the terror which filled her
+soul--aye, and her body, too--at other times. When she was with
+him Mr. Sleuth was so gentle, so reasonable, so--so grateful.
+
+Poor kindly, solitary Mr. Sleuth! This kind of gentleman surely
+wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone a human being. Eccentric--so much
+must be admitted. But Mrs. Bunting had seen a good deal of eccentric
+folk, eccentric women rather than eccentric men, in her long career
+as useful maid.
+
+Being at ordinary times an exceptionally sensible, well-balanced
+woman, she had never, in old days, allowed her mind to dwell on
+certain things she had learnt as to the aberrations of which human
+nature is capable--even well-born, well-nurtured, gentle human
+nature--as exemplified in some of the households where she had
+served. It would, indeed, be unfortunate if she now became morbid
+or--or hysterical.
+
+So it was in a sharp, cheerful voice, almost the voice in which she
+had talked during the first few days of Mr. Sleuth's stay in her
+house, that she exclaimed, "Well, sir, I'll be up again to clear
+away in about half an hour. And if you'll forgive me for saying so,
+I hope you will stay in and have a rest to-day. Nasty, muggy weather
+--that's what it is! If there's any little thing you want, me or
+Bunting can go out and get it."
+
+******
+
+It must have been about four o'clock when there came a ring at the
+front door.
+
+The three were sitting chatting together, for Daisy had washed up
+--she really was saving her stepmother a good bit of trouble--and
+the girl was now amusing her elders by a funny account of Old Aunt's
+pernickety ways.
+
+"Whoever can that be?" said Bunting, looking up. "It's too early
+for Joe Chandler, surely."
+
+"I'll go," said his wife, hurriedly jumping up from her chair.
+"I'll go! We don't want no strangers in here."
+
+And as she stepped down the short bit of passage she said to herself,
+"A clue? What clue?"
+
+But when she opened the front door a glad sigh of relief broke from
+her. "Why, Joe? We never thought 'twas you! But you're very
+welcome, I'm sure. Come in."
+
+And Chandler came in, a rather sheepish look on his good-looking,
+fair young face.
+
+"I thought maybe that Mr. Bunting would like to know--" he began,
+in a loud, cheerful voice, and Mrs. Bunting hurriedly checked him.
+She didn't want the lodger upstairs to hear what young Chandler
+might be going to say.
+
+"Don't talk so loud," she said a little sharply. "The lodger is
+not very well to-day. He's had a cold," she added hastily, "and
+during the last two or three days he hasn't been able to go out."
+
+She wondered at her temerity, her--her hypocrisy, and that moment,
+those few words, marked an epoch in Ellen Bunting's life. It was
+the first time she had told a bold and deliberate lie. She was
+one of those women--there are many, many such--to whom there is
+a whole world of difference between the suppression of the truth
+and the utterance of an untruth.
+
+But Chandler paid no heed to her remarks. "Has Miss Daisy arrived?"
+he asked, in a lower voice.
+
+She nodded. And then he went through into the room where the father
+and daughter were sitting.
+
+"Well?" said Bunting, starting up. "Well, Joe? Now you can tell
+us all about that mysterious clue. I suppose it'd be too good news
+to expect you to tell us they've caught him?"
+
+"No fear of such good news as that yet awhile. If they'd caught
+him," said Joe ruefully, "well, I don't suppose I should be here,
+Mr. Bunting. But the Yard are circulating a description at last.
+And--well, they've found his weapon!"
+
+"No?" cried Bunting excitedly. "You don't say so! Whatever sort
+of a thing is it? And are they sure 'tis his?"
+
+"Well, 'tain't sure, but it seems to be likely."
+
+Mrs. Bunting had slipped into the room and shut the door behind her.
+But she was still standing with her back against the door, looking
+at the group in front of her. None of them were thinking of her
+--she thanked God for that! She could hear everything that was
+said without joining in the talk and excitement.
+
+"Listen to this!" cried Joe Chandler exultantly. "'Tain't given
+out yet--not for the public, that is--but we was all given it by
+eight o'clock this morning. Quick work that, eh?" He read out:
+
+
+  "WANTED
+
+  A man, of age approximately 28, slight in figure, height
+  approximately 5 ft. 8 in. Complexion dark. No beard or
+  whiskers. Wearing a black diagonal coat, hard felt hat, high
+  white collar, and tie. Carried a newspaper parcel. Very
+  respectable appearance."
+
+
+Mrs. Bunting walked forward. She gave a long, fluttering sigh of
+unutterable relief.
+
+"There's the chap!" said Joe Chandler triumphantly. "And now, Miss
+Daisy"--he turned to her jokingly, but there was a funny little
+tremor in his frank, cheerful-sounding voice--"if you knows of any
+nice, likely young fellow that answers to that description--well,
+you've only got to walk in and earn your reward of five hundred
+pounds."
+
+"Five hundred pounds!" cried Daisy and her father simultaneously.
+
+"Yes. That's what the Lord Mayor offered yesterday. Some private
+bloke--nothing official about it. But we of the Yard is barred
+from taking that reward, worse luck. And it's too bad, for we has
+all the trouble, after all."
+
+"Just hand that bit of paper over, will you?" said Bunting. "I'd
+like to con it over to myself."
+
+Chandler threw over the bit of flimsy.
+
+A moment later Bunting looked up and handed it back. "Well, it's
+clear enough, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. And there's hundreds--nay, thousands--of young fellows
+that might be a description of," said Chandler sarcastically. "As
+a pal of mine said this morning, 'There isn't a chap will like to
+carry a newspaper parcel after this.' And it won't do to have a
+respectable appearance--eh?"
+
+Daisy's voice rang out in merry, pealing laughter. She greatly
+appreciated Mr. Chandler's witticism.
+
+"Why on earth didn't the people who saw him try and catch him?"
+asked Bunting suddenly.
+
+And Mrs. Bunting broke in, in a lower voice, "Yes, Joe--that seems
+odd, don't it?"
+
+Joe Chandler coughed. "Well, it's this way," he said. "No one
+person did see all that. The man who's described here is just made
+up from the description of two different folk who think they saw
+him. You see, the murders must have taken place--well, now, let
+me see--perhaps at two o'clock this last time. Two o'clock--
+that's the idea. Well, at such a time as that not many people are
+about, especially on a foggy night. Yes, one woman declares she
+saw a young chap walking away from the spot where 'twas done; and
+another one--but that was a good bit later--says The Avenger
+passed by her. It's mostly her they're following in this 'ere
+description. And then the boss who has charge of that sort of
+thing looked up what other people had said--I mean when the other
+crimes was committed. That's how he made up this 'Wanted.'"
+
+"Then The Avenger may be quite a different sort of man?" said
+Bunting slowly, disappointedly.
+
+"Well, of course he may be. But, no; I think that description
+fits him all right," said Chandler; but he also spoke in a
+hesitating voice.
+
+"You was saying, Joe, that they found a weapon?" observed Bunting
+insinuatingly.
+
+He was glad that Ellen allowed the discussion to go on--in fact,
+that she even seemed to take an intelligent interest in it. She
+had come up close to them, and now looked quite her old self again.
+
+"Yes. They believe they've found the weapon what he does his awful
+deeds with," said Chandler. "At any rate, within a hundred yards
+of that little dark passage where they found the bodies--one at
+each end, that was--there was discovered this morning a very
+peculiar kind o' knife--'keen as a razor, pointed as a dagger'--
+that's the exact words the boss used when he was describing it to
+a lot of us. He seemed to think a lot more of that clue than of
+the other--I mean than of the description people gave of the chap
+who walked quickly by with a newspaper parcel. But now there's a
+pretty job in front of us. Every shop where they sell or might a'
+sold, such a thing as that knife, including every eating-house in
+the East End, has got to be called at!"
+
+"Whatever for?" asked Daisy.
+
+"Why, with an idea of finding out if anyone saw such a knife fooling
+about there any time, and, if so, in whose possession it was at the
+time. But, Mr. Bunting"--Chandler's voice changed; it became
+businesslike, official--"they're not going to say anything about
+that--not in newspapers--till to-morrow, so don't you go and
+tell anybody. You see, we don't want to frighten the fellow off.
+If he knew they'd got his knife--well, he might just make himself
+scarce, and they don't want that! If it's discovered that any knife
+of that kind was sold, say a month ago, to some customer whose ways
+are known, then--then--"
+
+"What'll happen then?" said Mrs. Bunting, coming nearer.
+
+"Well, then, nothing'll be put about it in the papers at all," said
+Chandler deliberately. "The only objec' of letting the public know
+about it would be if nothink was found--I mean if the search of
+the shops, and so on, was no good. Then, of course, we must try
+and find out someone--some private person-like, who's watched that
+knife in the criminal's possession. It's there the reward--the
+five hundred pounds will come in."
+
+"Oh, I'd give anything to see that knife!" exclaimed Daisy, clasping
+her hands together.
+
+"You cruel, bloodthirsty, girl!" cried her stepmother passionately.
+
+They all looked round at her, surprised.
+
+"Come, come, Ellen!" said Bunting reprovingly.
+
+"Well, it is a horrible idea!" said his wife sullenly. "To go and
+sell a fellow-being for five hundred pounds."
+
+But Daisy was offended. "Of course I'd like to see it!" she cried
+defiantly. "I never said nothing about the reward. That was Mr.
+Chandler said that! I only said I'd like to see the knife."
+
+Chandler looked at her soothingly. "Well, the day may come when
+you will see it," he said slowly.
+
+A great idea had come into his mind.
+
+"No! What makes you think that?"
+
+"If they catches him, and if you comes along with me to see our
+Black Museum at the Yard, you'll certainly see the knife, Miss Daisy.
+They keeps all them kind of things there. So if, as I say, this
+weapon should lead to the conviction of The Avenger--well, then,
+that knife 'ull be there, and you'll see it!"
+
+"The Black Museum? Why, whatever do they have a museum in your
+place for?" asked Daisy wonderingly. "I thought there was only the
+British Museum--"
+
+And then even Mrs. Bunting, as well as Bunting and Chandler,
+laughed aloud.
+
+"You are a goosey girl!" said her father fondly. "Why, there's a
+lot of museums in London; the town's thick with 'em. Ask Ellen
+there. She and me used to go to them kind of places when we was
+courting--if the weather was bad."
+
+"But our museum's the one that would interest Miss Daisy," broke in
+Chandler eagerly. "It's a regular Chamber of 'Orrors!"
+
+"Why, Joe, you never told us about that place before," said Bunting
+excitedly. "D'you really mean that there's a museum where they
+keeps all sorts of things connected with crimes? Things like knives
+murders have been committed with?"
+
+"Knives?" cried Joe, pleased at having become the centre of
+attention, for Daisy had also fixed her blue eyes on him, and even
+Mrs. Bunting looked at him expectantly. "Much more than knives, Mr.
+Bunting! Why, they've got there, in little bottles, the real poison
+what people have been done away with."
+
+"And can you go there whenever you like?" asked Daisy wonderingly.
+She had not realised before what extraordinary and agreeable
+privileges are attached to the position of a detective member of
+the London Police Force.
+
+"Well, I suppose I could--" Joe smiled. "Anyway I can certainly
+get leave to take a friend there." He looked meaningly at Daisy,
+and Daisy looked eagerly at him.
+
+But would Ellen ever let her go out by herself with Mr. Chandler?
+Ellen was so prim, so--so irritatingly proper. But what was this
+father was saying? "D'you really mean that, Joe?"
+
+"Yes, of course I do!"
+
+"Well, then, look here! If it isn't asking too much of a favour, I
+should like to go along there with you very much one day. I don't
+want to wait till The Avenger's caught"--Bunting smiled broadly.
+"I'd be quite content as it is with what there is in that museum
+o' yours. Ellen, there,"--he looked across at his wife--"don't
+agree with me about such things. Yet I don't think I'm a
+bloodthirsty man! But I'm just terribly interested in all that sort
+of thing--always have been. I used to positively envy the butler
+in that Balham Mystery!"
+
+Again a look passed between Daisy and the young man--it was a look
+which contained and carried a great many things backwards and
+forwards, such as--"Now, isn't it funny that your father should
+want to go to such a place? But still, I can't help it if he does
+want to go, so we must put up with his company, though it would
+have been much nicer for us to go just by our two selves." And
+then Daisy's look answered quite as plainly, though perhaps Joe
+didn't read her glance quite as clearly as she had read his: "Yes,
+it is tiresome. But father means well; and 'twill be very pleasant
+going there, even if he does come too."
+
+"Well, what d'you say to the day after to-morrow, Mr. Bunting? I'd
+call for you here about--shall we say half-past two?--and just
+take you and Miss Daisy down to the Yard. 'Twouldn't take very
+long; we could go all the way by bus, right down to Westminster
+Bridge." He looked round at his hostess: "Wouldn't you join us,
+Mrs. Bunting? 'Tis truly a wonderful interesting place."
+
+But his hostess shook her head decidedly. "'Twould turn me sick,"
+she exclaimed, "to see the bottle of poison what had done away with
+the life of some poor creature!
+
+"And as for knives--!" a look of real horror, of startled fear,
+crept over her pale face.
+
+"There, there!" said Bunting hastily. "Live and let live--that's
+what I always say. Ellen ain't on in this turn. She can just
+stay at home and mind the cat--I beg his pardon, I mean the lodger!"
+
+"I won't have Mr. Sleuth laughed at," said Mrs. Bunting darkly.
+"But there! I'm sure it's very kind of you, Joe, to think of giving
+Bunting and Daisy such a rare treat"--she spoke sarcastically, but
+none of the three who heard her understood that.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The moment she passed though the great arched door which admits the
+stranger to that portion of New Scotland Yard where throbs the heart
+of that great organism which fights the forces of civilised crime,
+Daisy Bunting felt that she had indeed become free of the Kingdom of
+Romance. Even the lift in which the three of them were whirled up
+to one of the upper floors of the huge building was to the girl a
+new and delightful experience. Daisy had always lived a simple,
+quiet life in the little country town where dwelt Old Aunt and this
+was the first time a lift had come her way.
+
+With a touch of personal pride in the vast building, Joe Chandler
+marched his friends down a wide, airy corridor.
+
+Daisy clung to her father's arm, a little bewildered, a little
+oppressed by her good fortune. Her happy young voice was
+stilled by the awe she felt at the wonderful place where she
+found herself, and by the glimpses she caught of great rooms full
+of busy, silent men engaged in unravelling--or so she supposed
+--the mysteries of crime.
+
+They were passing a half-open door when Chandler suddenly stopped
+short. "Look in there," he said, in a low voice, addressing the
+father rather than the daughter, "that's the Finger-Print Room.
+We've records here of over two hundred thousand men's and women's
+finger-tips! I expect you know, Mr. Bunting, as how, once we've got
+the print of a man's five finger-tips, well, he's done for--if he
+ever does anything else, that is. Once we've got that bit of him
+registered he can't never escape us--no, not if he tries ever so.
+But though there's nigh on a quarter of a million records in there,
+yet it don't take--well, not half an hour, for them to tell
+whether any particular man has ever been convicted before! Wonderful
+thought, ain't it?"
+
+"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing a deep breath. And then a
+troubled look came over his stolid face. "Wonderful, but also a
+very fearful thought for the poor wretches as has got their
+finger-prints in, Joe."
+
+Joe laughed. "Agreed!" he said. "And the cleverer ones knows that
+only too well. Why, not long ago, one man who knew his record was
+here safe, managed to slash about his fingers something awful, just
+so as to make a blurred impression--you takes my meaning? But
+there, at the end of six weeks the skin grew all right again, and
+in exactly the same little creases as before!"
+
+"Poor devil!" said Bunting under his breath, and a cloud even came
+over Daisy's bright eager face.
+
+They were now going along a narrower passage, and then again they
+came to a half-open door, leading into a room far smaller than
+that of the Finger-Print Identification Room.
+
+"If you'll glance in there," said Joe briefly, "you'll see how we
+finds out all about any man whose finger-tips has given him away, so
+to speak. It's here we keeps an account of what he's done, his
+previous convictions, and so on. His finger-tips are where I told
+you, and his record in there--just connected by a number."
+
+"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing in his breath. But Daisy was
+longing to get on--to get to the Black Museum. All this that Joe
+and her father were saying was quite unreal to her, and, for the
+matter of that not worth taking the trouble to understand. However,
+she had not long to wait.
+
+A broad-shouldered, pleasant-looking young fellow, who seemed on
+very friendly terms with Joe Chandler, came forward suddenly, and,
+unlocking a common-place-looking door, ushered the little party of
+three through into the Black Museum.
+
+For a moment there came across Daisy a feeling of keen disappointment
+and surprise. This big, light room simply reminded her of what they
+called the Science Room in the public library of the town where she
+lived with Old Aunt. Here, as there, the centre was taken up with
+plain glass cases fixed at a height from the floor which enabled
+their contents to be looked at closely.
+
+She walked forward and peered into the case nearest the door. The
+exhibits shown there were mostly small, shabby-looking little things,
+the sort of things one might turn out of an old rubbish cupboard in
+an untidy house--old medicine bottles, a soiled neckerchief, what
+looked like a child's broken lantern, even a box of pills. . .
+
+As for the walls, they were covered with the queerest-looking
+objects; bits of old iron, odd-looking things made of wood and
+leather, and so on.
+
+It was really rather disappointing.
+
+Then Daisy Bunting gradually became aware that standing on a shelf
+just below the first of the broad, spacious windows which made the
+great room look so light and shadowless, was a row of life-size
+white plaster heads, each head slightly inclined to the right.
+There were about a dozen of these, not more--and they had such odd,
+staring, helpless, real-looking faces.
+
+"Whatever's those?" asked Bunting in a low voice.
+
+Daisy clung a thought closer to her father's arm. Even she guessed
+that these strange, pathetic, staring faces were the death-masks of
+those men and women who had fulfilled the awful law which ordains
+that the murderer shall be, in his turn, done to death.
+
+"All hanged!" said the guardian of the Black Museum briefly. "Casts
+taken after death."
+
+Bunting smiled nervously. "They don't look dead somehow. They
+looks more as if they were listening," he said.
+
+"That's the fault of Jack Ketch," said the man facetiously. "It's
+his idea--that of knotting his patient's necktie under the left
+ear! That's what he does to each of the gentlemen to whom he has
+to act valet on just one occasion only. It makes them lean just a
+bit to one side. You look here--?"
+
+Daisy and her father came a little closer, and the speaker pointed
+with his finger to a little dent imprinted on the left side of each
+neck; running from this indentation was a curious little furrow,
+well ridged above, showing how tightly Jack Ketch's necktie had been
+drawn when its wearer was hurried through the gates of eternity.
+
+"They looks foolish-like, rather than terrified, or--or hurt," said
+Bunting wonderingly.
+
+He was extraordinarily moved and fascinated by those dumb, staring
+faces.
+
+But young Chandler exclaimed in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice,
+"Well, a man would look foolish at such a time as that, with all his
+plans brought to naught--and knowing he's only got a second to live
+--now wouldn't he?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose he would," said Bunting slowly.
+
+Daisy had gone a little pale. The sinister, breathless atmosphere
+of the place was beginning to tell on her. She now began to
+understand that the shabby little objects lying there in the glass
+case close to her were each and all links in the chain of evidence
+which, in almost every case, had brought some guilty man or woman
+to the gallows.
+
+"We had a yellow gentleman here the other day," observed the guardian
+suddenly; "one of those Brahmins--so they calls themselves. Well,
+you'd a been quite surprised to see how that heathen took on! He
+declared--what was the word he used?"--he turned to Chandler.
+
+"He said that each of these things, with the exception of the casts,
+mind you--queer to say, he left them out--exuded evil, that was
+the word he used! Exuded--squeezed out it means. He said that
+being here made him feel very bad. And twasn't all nonsense either.
+He turned quite green under his yellow skin, and we had to shove him
+out quick. He didn't feel better till he'd got right to the other
+end of the passage!"
+
+"There now! Who'd ever think of that?" said Bunting. "I should say
+that man 'ud got something on his conscience, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Well, I needn't stay now," said Joe's good-natured friend. "You
+show your friends round, Chandler. You knows the place nearly as
+well as I do, don't you?"
+
+He smiled at Joe's visitors, as if to say good-bye, but it seemed
+that he could not tear himself away after all.
+
+"Look here," he said to Bunting. "In this here little case are the
+tools of Charles Peace. I expect you've heard of him."
+
+"I should think I have!" cried Bunting eagerly.
+
+"Many gents as comes here thinks this case the most interesting of
+all. Peace was such a wonderful man! A great inventor they say he
+would have been, had he been put in the way of it. Here's his
+ladder; you see it folds up quite compactly, and makes a nice little
+bundle--just like a bundle of old sticks any man might have been
+seen carrying about London in those days without attracting any
+attention. Why, it probably helped him to look like an honest
+working man time and time again, for on being arrested he declared
+most solemnly he'd always carried that ladder openly under his arm."
+
+"The daring of that!" cried Bunting.
+
+"Yes, and when the ladder was opened out it could reach from the
+ground to the second storey of any old house. And, oh! how clever
+he was! Just open one section, and you see the other sections open
+automatically; so Peace could stand on the ground and force the
+thing quietly up to any window he wished to reach. Then he'd go
+away again, having done his job, with a mere bundle of old wood
+under his arm! My word, he was artful! I wonder if you've heard
+the tale of how Peace once lost a finger. Well, he guessed the
+constables were instructed to look out for a man missing a finger;
+so what did he do?"
+
+"Put on a false finger," suggested Bunting.
+
+"No, indeed! Peace made up his mind just to do without a hand
+altogether. Here's his false stump: you see, it's made of wood
+--wood and black felt? Well, that just held his hand nicely.
+Why, we considers that one of the most ingenious contrivances in
+the whole museum."
+
+Meanwhile, Daisy had let go her hold of her father. With Chandler
+in delighted attendance, she had moved away to the farther end of
+the great room, and now she was bending over yet another glass case.
+"Whatever are those little bottles for?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+There were five small phials, filled with varying quantities of
+cloudy liquids.
+
+"They're full of poison, Miss Daisy, that's what they are. There's
+enough arsenic in that little whack o' brandy to do for you and me
+--aye, and for your father as well, I should say."
+
+"Then chemists shouldn't sell such stuff," said Daisy, smiling.
+Poison was so remote from herself, that the sight of these little
+bottles only brought a pleasant thrill.
+
+"No more they don't. That was sneaked out of a flypaper, that was.
+Lady said she wanted a cosmetic for her complexion, but what she was
+really going for was flypapers for to do away with her husband.
+She'd got a bit tired of him, I suspect."
+
+"Perhaps he was a horrid man, and deserved to be done away with,"
+said Daisy. The idea struck them both as so very comic that they
+began to laugh aloud in unison.
+
+"Did you ever hear what a certain Mrs. Pearce did?" asked Chandler,
+becoming suddenly serious.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Daisy, and she shuddered a little. "That was the
+wicked, wicked woman what killed a pretty little baby and its mother.
+They've got her in Madame Tussaud's. But Ellen, she won't let me go
+to the Chamber of Horrors. She wouldn't let father take me there
+last time I was in London. Cruel of her, I called it. But somehow
+I don't feel as if I wanted to go there now, after having been here!"
+
+"Well," said Chandler slowly, "we've a case full of relics of Mrs.
+Pearce. But the pram the bodies were found in, that's at Madame
+Tussaud's--at least so they claim, I can't say. Now here's something
+just as curious, and not near so dreadful. See that man's jacket
+there?"
+
+"Yes," said Daisy falteringly. She was beginning to feel oppressed,
+frightened. She no longer wondered that the Indian gentleman had
+been taken queer.
+
+"A burglar shot a man dead who'd disturbed him, and by mistake he
+went and left that jacket behind him. Our people noticed that one
+of the buttons was broken in two. Well, that don't seem much of a
+clue, does it, Miss Daisy? Will you believe me when I tells you
+that that other bit of button was discovered, and that it hanged
+the fellow? And 'twas the more wonderful because all three buttons
+was different!"
+
+Daisy stared wonderingly, down at the little broken button which
+had hung a man. "And whatever's that!" she asked, pointing to a
+piece of dirty-looking stuff.
+
+"Well," said Chandler reluctantly, "that's rather a horrible thing
+--that is. That's a bit o' shirt that was buried with a woman--
+buried in the ground, I mean--after her husband had cut her up and
+tried, to burn her. 'Twas that bit o' shirt that brought him to the
+gallows."
+
+"I considers your museum's a very horrid place!" said Daisy
+pettishly, turning away.
+
+She longed to be out in the passage again, away from this brightly
+lighted, cheerful-looking, sinister room.
+
+But her father was now absorbed in the case containing various types
+of infernal machines. "Beautiful little works of art some of them
+are," said his guide eagerly, and Bunting could not but agree.
+
+"Come along--do, father!" said Daisy quickly. "I've seen about
+enough now. If I was to stay in here much longer it 'ud give me
+the horrors. I don't want to have no nightmares to-night. It's
+dreadful to think there are so many wicked people in the world.
+Why, we might knock up against some murderer any minute without
+knowing it, mightn't we?"
+
+"Not you, Miss Daisy," said Chandler smilingly. "I don't suppose
+you'll ever come across even a common swindler, let alone anyone
+who's committed a murder--not one in a million does that. Why,
+even I have never had anything to do with a proper murder case!"
+
+But Bunting was in no hurry. He was thoroughly enjoying every
+moment of the time. Just now he was studying intently the various
+photographs which hung on the walls of the Black Museum; especially
+was he pleased to see those connected with a famous and still
+mysterious case which had taken place not long before in Scotland,
+and in which the servant of the man who died had played a
+considerable part--not in elucidating, but in obscuring, the mystery.
+
+"I suppose a good many murderers get off?" he said musingly.
+
+And Joe Chandler's friend nodded. "I should think they did!" he
+exclaimed. "There's no such thing as justice here in England.
+'Tis odds on the murderer every time. 'Tisn't one in ten that
+come to the end he should do--to the gallows, that is."
+
+"And what d'you think about what's going on now--I mean about
+those Avenger murders?"
+
+Bunting lowered his voice, but Daisy and Chandler were already
+moving towards the door.
+
+"I don't believe he'll ever be caught," said the other
+confidentially. "In some ways 'tis a lot more of a job to catch a
+madman than 'tis to run down just an ordinary criminal. And, of
+course--leastways to my thinking--The Avenger is a madman--one
+of the cunning, quiet sort. Have you heard about the letter?" his
+voice dropped lower.
+
+ "No," said Bunting, staring eagerly at him. "What letter d'you
+mean?"
+
+"Well, there's a letter--it'll be in this museum some day--which
+came just before that last double event. 'Twas signed 'The Avenger,'
+in just the same printed characters as on that bit of paper he always
+leaves behind him. Mind you, it don't follow that it actually was The
+Avenger what sent that letter here, but it looks uncommonly like it,
+and I know that the Boss attaches quite a lot of importance to it."
+
+"And where was it posted?" asked Bunting. "That might be a bit of a
+clue, you know."
+
+"Oh, no," said the other. "They always goes a very long way to
+post anything--criminals do. It stands to reason they would. But
+this particular one was put in the Edgware Road Post Office."
+
+"What? Close to us?" said Bunting. "Goodness! dreadful!"
+
+"Any of us might knock up against him any minute. I don't suppose
+The Avenger's in any way peculiar-looking--in fact we know he ain't."
+
+"Then you think that woman as says she saw him did see him?" asked
+Bunting hesitatingly.
+
+"Our description was made up from what she said," answered the other
+cautiously. "But, there, you can't tell! In a case like that it's
+groping--groping in the dark all the time--and it's just a lucky
+accident if it comes out right in the end. Of course, it's upsetting
+us all very much here. You can't wonder at that!"
+
+"No, indeed," said Bunting quickly. "I give you my word, I've hardly
+thought of anything else for the last month."
+
+Daisy had disappeared, and when her father joined her in the passage
+she was listening, with downcast eyes, to what Joe Chandler was
+saying.
+
+He was telling her about his real home, of the place where his mother
+lived, at Richmond--that it was a nice little house, close to the
+park. He was asking her whether she could manage to come out there
+one afternoon, explaining that his mother would give them tea, and
+how nice it would be.
+
+"I don't see why Ellen shouldn't let me," the girl said rebelliously.
+"But she's that old-fashioned and pernickety is Ellen--a regular
+old maid! And, you see, Mr. Chandler, when I'm staying with them,
+father don't like for me to do anything that Ellen don't approve of.
+But she's got quite fond of you, so perhaps if you ask her--?"
+She looked at him, and he nodded sagely.
+
+"Don't you be afraid," he said confidently. "I'll get round Mrs.
+Bunting. But, Miss Daisy"--he grew very red--"I'd just like to
+ask you a question--no offence meant--"
+
+"Yes?" said Daisy a little breathlessly. "There's father close to
+us, Mr. Chandler. Tell me quick; what is it?"
+
+"Well, I take it, by what you said just now, that you've never
+walked out with any young fellow?"
+
+Daisy hesitated a moment; then a very pretty dimple came into her
+cheek. "No," she said sadly. "No, Mr. Chandler, that I have not."
+In a burst of candour she added, "You see, I never had the chance!"
+
+And Joe Chandler smiled, well pleased.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+By what she regarded as a fortunate chance, Mrs. Bunting found
+herself for close on an hour quite alone in the house during her
+husband's and Daisy's jaunt with young Chandler.
+
+Mr. Sleuth did not often go out in the daytime, but on this
+particular afternoon, after he had finished his tea, when dusk was
+falling, he suddenly observed that he wanted a new suit of clothes,
+and his landlady eagerly acquiesced in his going out to purchase it.
+
+As soon as he had left the house, she went quickly up to the
+drawing-room floor. Now had come her opportunity of giving the two
+rooms a good dusting; but Mrs. Bunting knew well, deep in her heart,
+that it was not so much the dusting of Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room she
+wanted to do--as to engage in a vague search for--she hardly knew
+for what.
+
+During the years she had been in service Mrs. Bunting had always
+had a deep, wordless contempt for those of her fellow-servants who
+read their employers' private letters, and who furtively peeped
+into desks and cupboards in the hope, more vague than positive, of
+discovering family skeletons.
+
+But now, with regard to Mr. Sleuth, she was ready, aye, eager, to
+do herself what she had once so scorned others for doing.
+
+Beginning with the bedroom, she started on a methodical search. He
+was a very tidy gentleman was the lodger, and his few things,
+under-garments, and so on, were in apple-pie order. She had early
+undertaken, much to his satisfaction, to do the very little bit of
+washing he required done, with her own and Bunting's. Luckily he
+wore soft shirts.
+
+At one time Mrs. Bunting had always had a woman in to help her with
+this tiresome weekly job, but lately she had grown quite clever at
+it herself. The only things she had to send out were Bunting's
+shirts. Everything else she managed to do herself.
+
+From the chest of drawers she now turned her attention to the
+dressing-table.
+
+Mr. Sleuth did not take his money with him when he went out, he
+generally left it in one of the drawers below the old-fashioned
+looking-glass. And now, in a perfunctory way, his landlady pulled
+out the little drawer, but she did not touch what was lying there;
+she only glanced at the heap of sovereigns and a few bits of silver.
+The lodger had taken just enough money with him to buy the clothes
+he required. He had consulted her as to how much they would cost,
+making no secret of why he was going out, and the fact had vaguely
+comforted Mrs. Bunting.
+
+Now she lifted the toilet-cover, and even rolled up the carpet a
+little way, but no, there was nothing there, not so much as a scrap
+of paper. And at last, when more or less giving up the search, as
+she came and went between the two rooms, leaving the connecting door
+wide open, her mind became full of uneasy speculation and wonder as
+to the lodger's past life.
+
+Odd Mr. Sleuth must surely always have been, but odd in a sensible
+sort of way, having on the whole the same moral ideals of conduct
+as have other people of his class. He was queer about the drink--one
+might say almost crazy on the subject--but there, as to that, he
+wasn't the only one! She, Ellen Bunting, had once lived with a
+lady who was just like that, who was quite crazed, that is, on the
+question of drink and drunkards--She looked round the neat
+drawing-room with vague dissatisfaction. There was only one place
+where anything could be kept concealed--that place was the
+substantial if small mahogany chiffonnier. And then an idea
+suddenly came to Mrs. Bunting, one she had never thought of before.
+
+After listening intently for a moment, lest something should suddenly
+bring Mr. Sleuth home earlier than she expected, she went to the
+corner where the chiffonnier stood, and, exerting the whole of her
+not very great physical strength, she tipped forward the heavy piece
+of furniture.
+
+As she did so, she heard a queer rumbling sound,--something rolling
+about on the second shelf, something which had not been there before
+Mr. Sleuth's arrival. Slowly, laboriously, she tipped the chiffonnier
+backwards and forwards--once, twice, thrice--satisfied, yet strangely
+troubled in her mind, for she now felt sure that the bag of which the
+disappearance had so surprised her was there, safely locked away by
+its owner.
+
+Suddenly a very uncomfortable thought came to Mrs. Bunting's mind.
+She hoped Mr. Sleuth would not notice that his bag had shifted inside
+the cupboard. A moment later, with sharp dismay, Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady realised that the fact that she had moved the chiffonnier
+must become known to her lodger, for a thin trickle of some
+dark-coloured liquid was oozing out though the bottom of the little
+cupboard door.
+
+She stooped down and touched the stuff. It showed red, bright red,
+on her finger.
+
+Mrs. Bunting grew chalky white, then recovered herself quickly. In
+fact the colour rushed into her face, and she grew hot all over.
+
+It was only a bottle of red ink she had upset--that was all! How
+could she have thought it was anything else?
+
+It was the more silly of her--so she told herself in scornful
+condemnation--because she knew that the lodger used red ink.
+Certain pages of Cruden's Concordance were covered with notes written
+in Mr. Sleuth's peculiar upright handwriting. In fact in some places
+you couldn't see the margin, so closely covered was it with remarks
+and notes of interrogation.
+
+Mr. Sleuth had foolishly placed his bottle of red ink in the
+chiffonnier--that was what her poor, foolish gentleman had done;
+and it was owing to her inquisitiveness, her restless wish to know
+things she would be none the better, none the happier, for knowing,
+that this accident had taken place.
+
+She mopped up with her duster the few drops of ink which had fallen
+on the green carpet and then, still feeling, as she angrily told
+herself, foolishly upset she went once more into the back room.
+
+It was curious that Mr. Sleuth possessed no notepaper. She would
+have expected him to have made that one of his first purchases--the
+more so that paper is so very cheap, especially that rather
+dirty-looking grey Silurian paper. Mrs. Bunting had once lived with
+a lady who always used two kinds of notepaper, white for her friends
+and equals, grey for those whom she called "common people." She,
+Ellen Green, as she then was, had always resented the fact. Strange
+she should remember it now, stranger in a way because that employer
+of her's had not been a real lady, and Mr. Sleuth, whatever his
+peculiarities, was, in every sense of the word, a real gentleman.
+Somehow Mrs. Bunting felt sure that if he had bought any notepaper
+it would have been white--white and probably cream-laid--not
+grey and cheap.
+
+Again she opened the drawer of the old-fashioned wardrobe and lifted
+up the few pieces of underclothing Mr. Sleuth now possessed.
+
+But there was nothing there--nothing, that is, hidden away. When
+one came to think of it there seemed something strange in the notion
+of leaving all one's money where anyone could take it, and in locking
+up such a valueless thing as a cheap sham leather bag, to say nothing
+of a bottle of ink.
+
+Mrs. Bunting once more opened out each of the tiny drawers below the
+looking-glass, each delicately fashioned of fine old mahogany. Mr.
+Sleuth kept his money in the centre drawer.
+
+The glass had only cost seven-and-sixpence, and, after the auction
+a dealer had come and offered her first fifteen shillings, and then
+a guinea for it. Not long ago, in Baker Street, she had seen a
+looking-glass which was the very spit of this one, labeled
+"Chippendale, Antique. L21 5s 0d."
+
+There lay Mr. Sleuth's money--the sovereigns, as the landlady well
+knew, would each and all gradually pass into her's and Bunting's
+possession, honestly earned by them no doubt but unattainable--in
+act unearnable--excepting in connection with the present owner of
+those dully shining gold sovereigns.
+
+At last she went downstairs to await Mr. Sleuth's return.
+
+When she heard the key turn in the door, she came out into the
+passage.
+
+"I'm sorry to say I've had an accident, sir," she said a little
+breathlessly. "Taking advantage of your being out I went up to
+dust the drawing-room, and while I was trying to get behind the
+chiffonnier it tilted. I'm afraid, sir, that a bottle of ink that
+was inside may have got broken, for just a few drops oozed out,
+sir. But I hope there's no harm done. I wiped it up as well as
+I could, seeing that the doors of the chiffonnier are locked."
+
+Mr. Sleuth stared at her with a wild, almost a terrified glance.
+But Mrs. Bunting stood her ground. She felt far less afraid now
+than she had felt before he came in. Then she had been so
+frightened that she had nearly gone out of the house, on to the
+pavement, for company.
+
+"Of course I had no idea, sir, that you kept any ink in there."
+
+She spoke as if she were on the defensive, and the lodger's brow
+cleared.
+
+"I was aware you used ink, sir," Mrs. Bunting went on, "for I have
+seen you marking that book of yours--I mean the book you read
+together with the Bible. Would you like me to go out and get you
+another bottle, sir?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Sleuth. "No, I thank you. I will at once proceed
+upstairs and see what damage has been done. When I require you I
+shall ring."
+
+He shuffled past her, and five minutes later the drawing-room bell
+did ring.
+
+At once, from the door, Mrs. Bunting saw that the chiffonnier was
+wide open, and that the shelves were empty save for the bottle of
+red ink which had turned over and now lay in a red pool of its own
+making on the lower shelf.
+
+"I'm afraid it will have stained the wood, Mrs. Bunting. Perhaps I
+was ill-advised to keep my ink in there."
+
+"Oh, no, sir! That doesn't matter at all. Only a drop or two fell
+out on to the carpet, and they don't show, as you see, sir, for it's
+a dark corner. Shall I take the bottle away? I may as well."
+
+Mr. Sleuth hesitated. "No," he said, after a long pause, "I think
+not, Mrs. Bunting. For the very little I require it the ink
+remaining in the bottle will do quite well, especially if I add a
+little water, or better still, a little tea, to what already
+remains in the bottle. I only require it to mark up passages which
+happen to be of peculiar interest in my Concordance--a work, Mrs.
+Bunting, which I should have taken great pleasure in compiling
+myself had not this--ah--this gentleman called Cruden, been before."
+
+******
+
+Not only Bunting, but Daisy also, thought Ellen far pleasanter in
+her manner than usual that evening. She listened to all they had
+to say about their interesting visit to the Black Museum, and did
+not snub either of them--no, not even when Bunting told of the
+dreadful, haunting, silly-looking death-masks taken from the hanged.
+
+But a few minutes after that, when her husband suddenly asked her
+a question, Mrs. Bunting answered at random. It was clear she had
+not heard the last few words he had been saying.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts!" he said jocularly. But she shook her
+head.
+
+Daisy slipped out of the room, and, five minutes later, came back
+dressed up in a blue-and-white check silk gown.
+
+"My!" said her father. "You do look fine, Daisy. I've never seen
+you wearing that before."
+
+"And a rare figure of fun she looks in it!" observed Mrs. Bunting
+sarcastically. And then, "I suppose this dressing up means that
+you're expecting someone. I should have thought both of you must
+have seen enough of young Chandler for one day. I wonder when that
+young chap does his work--that I do! He never seems too busy to
+come and waste an hour or two here."
+
+But that was the only nasty thing Ellen said all that evening. And
+even Daisy noticed that her stepmother seemed dazed and unlike
+herself. She went about her cooking and the various little things
+she had to do even more silently than was her wont.
+
+Yet under that still, almost sullen, manner, how fierce was the
+storm of dread, of sombre anguish, and, yes, of sick suspense,
+which shook her soul, and which so far affected her poor, ailing
+body that often she felt as if she could not force herself to
+accomplish her simple round of daily work.
+
+After they had finished supper Bunting went out and bought a penny
+evening paper, but as he came in he announced, with a rather rueful
+smile, that he had read so much of that nasty little print this
+last week or two that his eyes hurt him.
+
+"Let me read aloud a bit to you, father," said Daisy eagerly, and he
+handed her the paper.
+
+Scarcely had Daisy opened her lips when a loud ring and a knock
+echoed through the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+It was only Joe. Somehow, even Bunting called him "Joe" now, and no
+longer "Chandler," as he had mostly used to do.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way.
+She wasn't going to have any strangers pushing in past her.
+
+To her sharpened, suffering senses her house had become a citadel
+which must be defended; aye, even if the besiegers were a mighty
+horde with right on their side. And she was always expecting that
+first single spy who would herald the battalion against whom her
+only weapon would be her woman's wit and cunning.
+
+But when she saw who stood there smiling at her, the muscles of her
+face relaxed, and it lost the tense, anxious, almost agonised look
+it assumed the moment she turned her back on her husband and
+stepdaughter.
+
+"Why, Joe," she whispered, for she had left the door open behind
+her, and Daisy had already begun to read aloud, as her father had
+bidden her. "Come in, do! It's fairly cold to-night."
+
+A glance at his face had shown her that there was no fresh news.
+
+Joe Chandler walked in, past her, into the little hall. Cold?
+Well, he didn't feel cold, for he had walked quickly to be the
+sooner where he was now.
+
+Nine days had gone by since that last terrible occurrence, the
+double murder which had been committed early in the morning of
+the day Daisy had arrived in London. And though the thousands of
+men belonging to the Metropolitan Police--to say nothing of the
+smaller, more alert body of detectives attached to the Force--
+were keenly on the alert, not one but had begun to feel that
+there was nothing to be alert about. Familiarity, even with
+horror, breeds contempt.
+
+But with the public it was far otherwise. Each day something
+happened to revive and keep alive the mingled horror and interest
+this strange, enigmatic series of crimes had evoked. Even the
+more sober organs of the Press went on attacking, with gathering
+severity and indignation, the Commissioner of Police; and at the
+huge demonstration held in Victoria Park two days before violent
+speeches had also been made against the Home Secretary.
+
+But just now Joe Chandler wanted to forget all that. The little
+house in the Marylebone Road had become to him an enchanted isle
+of dreams, to which his thoughts were ever turning when he had a
+moment to spare from what had grown to be a wearisome, because an
+unsatisfactory, job. He secretly agreed with one of his pals who
+had exclaimed, and that within twenty-four hours of the last double
+crime, "Why, 'twould be easier to find a needle in a rick o' hay
+than this--bloke!"
+
+And if that had been true then, how much truer it was now--after
+nine long, empty days had gone by?
+
+Quickly he divested himself of his great-coat, muffler, and low hat.
+Then he put his finger on his lip, and motioned smilingly to Mrs.
+Bunting to wait a moment. From where he stood in the hall the
+father and daughter made a pleasant little picture of contented
+domesticity. Joe Chandler's honest heart swelled at the sight.
+
+Daisy, wearing the blue-and-white check silk dress about which her
+stepmother and she had had words, sat on a low stool on the left
+side of the fire, while Bunting, leaning back in his own comfortable
+arm-chair, was listening, his hand to his ear, in an attitude--as
+it was the first time she had caught him doing it, the fact brought
+a pang to Mrs. Bunting--which showed that age was beginning to
+creep over the listener.
+
+One of Daisy's duties as companion to her great-aunt was that of
+reading the newspaper aloud, and she prided herself on her
+accomplishment.
+
+Just as Joe had put his finger on his lip Daisy had been asking,
+"Shall I read this, father?" And Bunting had answered quickly,
+"Aye, do, my dear."
+
+He was absorbed in what he was hearing, and, on seeing Joe at the
+door, he had only just nodded his head. The young man was becoming
+so frequent a visitor as to be almost one of themselves.
+
+Daisy read out:
+
+"The Avenger: A--"
+
+And then she stopped short, for the next word puzzled her greatly.
+Bravely, however, she went on. "A the-o-ry."
+
+"Go in--do!" whispered Mrs. Bunting to her visitor. "Why should
+we stay out here in the cold? It's ridiculous."
+
+"I don't want to interrupt Miss Daisy," whispered Chandler back,
+rather hoarsely.
+
+"Well, you'll hear it all the better in the room. Don't think
+she'll stop because of you, bless you! There's nothing shy about
+our Daisy!"
+
+The young man resented the tart, short tone. "Poor little girl!"
+he said to himself tenderly. "That's what it is having a stepmother,
+instead of a proper mother." But he obeyed Mrs. Bunting, and then
+he was pleased he had done so, for Daisy looked up, and a bright
+blush came over her pretty face.
+
+"Joe begs you won't stop yet awhile. Go on with your reading,"
+commanded Mrs. Bunting quickly. "Now, Joe, you can go and sit over
+there, close to Daisy, and then you won't miss a word."
+
+There was a sarcastic inflection in her voice, even Chandler noticed
+that, but he obeyed her with alacrity, and crossing the room he went
+and sat on a chair just behind Daisy. From there he could note with
+reverent delight the charming way her fair hair grew upwards from
+the nape of her slender neck.
+
+"The AVENGER: A THE-O-RY"
+
+began Daisy again, clearing her throat.
+
+"DEAR Sir--I have a suggestion to put forward for which I think
+there is a great deal to be said. It seems to me very probable
+that The Avenger--to give him the name by which he apparently
+wishes to be known--comprises in his own person the peculiarities
+of Jekyll and Hyde, Mr. Louis Stevenson's now famous hero.
+
+"The culprit, according to my point of view, is a quiet,
+pleasant-looking gentleman who lives somewhere in the West End of
+London. He has, however, a tragedy in his past life. He is the
+husband of a dipsomaniac wife. She is, of course, under care, and
+is never mentioned in the house where he lives, maybe with his
+widowed mother and perhaps a maiden sister. They notice that he
+has become gloomy and brooding of late, but he lives his usual life,
+occupying himself each day with some harmless hobby. On foggy
+nights, once the quiet household is plunged in sleep, he creeps out
+of the house, maybe between one and two o'clock, and swiftly makes
+his way straight to what has become The Avenger's murder area.
+Picking out a likely victim, he approaches her with Judas-like
+gentleness, and having committed his awful crime, goes quietly home
+again. After a good bath and breakfast, he turns up happy, once
+more the quiet individual who is an excellent son, a kind brother,
+esteemed and even beloved by a large circle of friends and
+acquaintances. Meantime, the police are searching about the scene
+of the tragedy for what they regard as the usual type of criminal
+lunatic.
+
+"I give this theory, Sir, for what it is worth, but I confess that
+I am amazed the police have so wholly confined their inquiries to
+the part of London where these murders have been actually committed.
+I am quite sure from all that has come out--and we must remember
+that full information is never given to the newspapers--The Avenger
+should be sought for in the West and not in the East End of London
+--Believe me to remain, Sir, yours very truly--"
+
+Again Daisy hesitated, and then with an effort she brought out the
+word "Gab-o-ri-you," said she.
+
+"What a funny name!" said Bunting wonderingly.
+
+And then Joe broke in: "That's the name of a French chap what wrote
+detective stories," he said. "Pretty good, some of them are, too!"
+
+"Then this Gaboriyou has come over to study these Avenger murders,
+I take it?" said Bunting.
+
+"Oh, no," Joe spoke with confidence. "Whoever's written that silly
+letter just signed that name for fun."
+
+"It is a silly letter," Mrs. Bunting had broken in resentfully. "I
+wonder a respectable paper prints such rubbish."
+
+"Fancy if The Avenger did turn out to be a gentleman!" cried Daisy, in
+an awe-struck voice. "There'd be a how-to-do!"
+
+"There may be something in the notion," said her father thoughtfully.
+"After all, the monster must be somewhere. This very minute he must
+be somewhere a-hiding of himself."
+
+"Of course he's somewhere," said Mrs. Bunting scornfully.
+
+She had just heard Mr. Sleuth moving overhead. 'Twould soon be time
+for the lodger's supper.
+
+She hurried on: "But what I do say is that--that--he has nothing
+to do with the West End. Why, they say it's a sailor from the Docks
+--that's a good bit more likely, I take it. But there, I'm fair
+sick of the whole subject! We talk of nothing else in this house.
+The Avenger this--The Avenger that--"
+
+"I expect Joe has something to tell us new to-night," said Bunting
+cheerfully. "Well, Joe, is there anything new?"
+
+"I say, father, just listen to this!" Daisy broke in excitedly.
+She read out:
+
+
+"BLOODHOUNDS TO BE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED"
+
+
+"Bloodhounds?" repeated Mrs. Bunting, and there was terror in her
+tone. "Why bloodhounds? That do seem to me a most horrible idea!"
+
+Bunting looked across at her, mildly astonished. "Why, 'twould be
+a very good idea, if 'twas possible to have bloodhounds in a town.
+But, there, how can that be done in London, full of butchers' shops,
+to say nothing of slaughter-yards and other places o' that sort?"
+
+But Daisy went on, and to her stepmother's shrinking ear there
+seemed a horrible thrill of delight; of gloating pleasure, in her
+fresh young voice.
+
+"Hark to this," she said:
+
+"A man who had committed a murder in a lonely wood near Blackburn
+was traced by the help of a bloodhound, and thanks to the sagacious
+instincts of the animal, the miscreant was finally convicted and
+hanged."
+
+"La, now! Who'd ever have thought of such a thing?" Bunting
+exclaimed, in admiration. "The newspapers do have some useful
+hints in sometimes, Joe."
+
+But young Chandler shook his head. "Bloodhounds ain't no use," he
+said; "no use at all! If the Yard was to listen to all the
+suggestions that the last few days have brought in--well, all I
+can say is our work would be cut out for us--not but what it's
+cut out for us now, if it comes to that!" He sighed ruefully. He
+was beginning to feel very tired; if only he could stay in this
+pleasant, cosy room listening to Daisy Bunting reading on and on
+for ever, instead of having to go out, as he would presently have
+to do, into the cold and foggy night!
+
+Joe Chandler was fast becoming very sick of his new job. There
+was a lot of unpleasantness attached to the business, too. Why,
+even in the house where he lived, and in the little cook-shop where
+he habitually took his meals, the people round him had taken to
+taunt him with the remissness of the police. More than that one of
+his pals, a man he'd always looked up to, because the young fellow
+had the gift of the gab, had actually been among those who had
+spoken at the big demonstration in Victoria Park, making a violent
+speech, not only against the Commissioner of the Metropolitan
+Police, but also against the Home Secretary.
+
+But Daisy, like most people who believe themselves blessed with the
+possession of an accomplishment, had no mind to leave off reading
+just yet.
+
+"Here's another notion!" she exclaimed. "Another letter, father!"
+
+
+"PARDON TO ACCOMPLICES.
+
+
+"DEAR Sir--During the last day or two several of the more
+Intelligent of my acquaintances have suggested that The Avenger,
+whoever he may be, must be known to a certain number of persons.
+It is impossible that the perpetrator of such deeds, however
+nomad he may be in his habits--"
+
+"Now I wonder what 'nomad' can be?" Daisy interrupted herself, and
+looked round at her little audience.
+
+"I've always declared the fellow had all his senses about him,"
+observed Bunting confidently.
+
+Daisy went on, quite satisfied:
+
+"--however nomad he may be in his habit; must have some habitat
+where his ways are known to at least one person. Now the person
+who knows the terrible secret is evidently withholding information
+in expectation of a reward, or maybe because, being an accessory
+after the fact, he or she is now afraid of the consequences. My
+suggestion, Sir, is that the Home Secretary promise a free pardon.
+The more so that only thus can this miscreant be brought to justice.
+Unless he was caught red-handed in the act, it will be exceedingly
+difficult to trace the crime committed to any individual, for
+English law looks very askance at circumstantial evidence."
+
+"There's something worth listening to in that letter," said Joe,
+leaning forward.
+
+Now he was almost touching Daisy, and he smiled involuntarily as
+she turned her gay, pretty little face the better to hear what he
+was saying.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Chandler?" she said interrogatively.
+
+"Well, d'you remember that fellow what killed an old gentleman in
+a railway carriage? He took refuge with someone--a woman his
+mother had known, and she kept him hidden for quite a long time.
+But at last she gave him up, and she got a big reward, too!"
+
+"I don't think I'd like to give anybody up for a reward," said
+Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic way.
+
+"Oh, yes, you would, Mr. Bunting," said Chandler confidently. "You'd
+only be doing what it's the plain duty of everyone--everyone, that
+is, who's a good citizen. And you'd be getting something for doing
+it, which is more than most people gets as does their duty."
+
+"A man as gives up someone for a reward is no better than a common
+informer," went on Bunting obstinately. "And no man 'ud care to be
+called that! It's different for you, Joe," he added hastily. "It's
+your job to catch those who've done anything wrong. And a man'd be
+a fool who'd take refuge--like with you. He'd be walking into the
+lion's mouth--" Bunting laughed.
+
+And then Daisy broke in coquettishly: "If I'd done anything I
+wouldn't mind going for help to Mr. Chandler," she said.
+
+And Joe, with eyes kindling, cried, "No. And if you did you needn't
+be afraid I'd give you up, Miss Daisy!"
+
+And then, to their amazement, there suddenly broke from Mrs. Bunting,
+sitting with bowed head over the table, an exclamation of impatience
+and anger, and, it seemed to those listening, of pain.
+
+"Why, Ellen, don't you feel well?" asked Bunting quickly.
+
+"Just a spasm, a sharp stitch in my side, like," answered the poor
+woman heavily. "It's over now. Don't mind me."
+
+"But I don't believe--no, that I don't--that there's anybody in
+the world who knows who The Avenger is," went on Chandler quickly.
+"It stands to reason that anybody'd give him up--in their own
+interest, if not in anyone else's. Who'd shelter such a creature?
+Why, 'twould be dangerous to have him in the house along with one!"
+
+"Then it's your idea that he's not responsible for the wicked things
+he does?" Mrs. Bunting raised her head, and looked over at Chandler
+with eager, anxious eyes.
+
+"I'd be sorry to think he wasn't responsible enough to hang!" said
+Chandler deliberately. "After all the trouble he's been giving us, too!"
+
+"Hanging'd be too good for that chap," said Bunting.
+
+"Not if he's not responsible," said his wife sharply. "I never
+heard of anything so cruel--that I never did! If the man's a
+madman, he ought to be in an asylum--that's where he ought to be."
+
+"Hark to her now!" Bunting looked at his Ellen with amusement.
+"Contrary isn't the word for her! But there, I've noticed the last
+few days that she seemed to be taking that monster's part. That's
+what comes of being a born total abstainer."
+
+Mrs. Bunting had got up from her chair. "What nonsense you do talk!"
+she said angrily. "Not but what it's a good thing if these murders
+have emptied the public-houses of women for a bit. England's drink
+is England's shame--I'll never depart from that! Now, Daisy, child,
+get up, do! Put down that paper. We've heard quite enough. You can
+be laying the cloth while I goes down the kitchen."
+
+"Yes, you mustn't be forgetting the lodger's supper," called out
+Bunting. "Mr. Sleuth don't always ring--" he turned to Chandler.
+"For one thing, he's often out about this time."
+
+"Not often--just now and again, when he wants to buy something,"
+snapped out Mrs. Bunting. "But I hadn't forgot his supper. He
+never do want it before eight o'clock."
+
+"Let me take up the lodger's supper, Ellen," Daisy's eager voice
+broke in. She had got up in obedience to her stepmother, and was
+now laying the cloth.
+
+"Certainly not! I told you he only wanted me to wait on him. You
+have your work cut out looking after things down here--that's where
+I wants you to help me."
+
+Chandler also got up. Somehow he didn't like to be doing nothing
+while Daisy was so busy. "Yes," he said, looking across at Mrs.
+Bunting, "I'd forgotten about your lodger. Going on all right, eh?"
+
+"Never knew so quiet and well-behaved a gentleman," said Bunting.
+"He turned our luck, did Mr. Sleuth."
+
+His wife left the room, and after she had gone Daisy laughed.
+"You'll hardly believe it, Mr. Chandler, but I've never seen this
+wonderful lodger. Ellen keeps him to herself, that she does! If I
+was father I'd be jealous!"
+
+Both men laughed. Ellen? No, the idea was too funny.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go. One can't always do
+just what one wants to do--not in this world, at any rate!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular,
+though both her husband and her stepdaughter were in the room. She
+was standing by the table, staring straight before her, and as she
+spoke she avoided looking at either Bunting or Daisy. There was in
+her voice a tone of cross decision, of thin finality, with which
+they were both acquainted, and to which each listener knew the other
+would have to bow.
+
+There was silence for a moment, then Daisy broke out passionately,
+"I don't see why I should go if I don't want to!" she cried.
+"You'll allow I've been useful to you, Ellen? 'Tisn't even as if
+you was quite well."
+
+"I am quite well--perfectly well!" snapped out Mrs. Bunting, and
+she turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her
+stepdaughter.
+
+"'Tain't often I has a chance of being with you and father." There
+were tears in Daisy's voice, and Bunting glanced deprecatingly at
+his wife.
+
+An invitation had come to Daisy--an invitation from her own dead
+mother's sister, who was housekeeper in a big house in Belgrave
+Square. "The family" had gone away for the Christmas holidays, and
+Aunt Margaret--Daisy was her godchild--had begged that her niece
+might come and spend two or three days with her.
+
+But the girl had already had more than one taste of what life was
+like in the great gloomy basement of 100 Belgrave Square. Aunt
+Margaret was one of those old-fashioned servants for whom the modern
+employer is always sighing. While "the family" were away it was
+her joy--she regarded it as a privilege--to wash sixty-seven pieces
+of very valuable china contained in two cabinets in the drawing-room;
+she also slept in every bed by turns, to keep them all well aired.
+These were the two duties with which she intended her young niece
+to assist her, and Daisy's soul sickened at the prospect.
+
+But the matter had to be settled at once. The letter had come an
+hour ago, containing a stamped telegraph form, and Aunt Margaret
+was not one to be trifled with.
+
+Since breakfast the three had talked of nothing else, and from the
+very first Mrs. Bunting had said that Daisy ought to go--that there
+was no doubt about it, that it did not admit of discussion. But
+discuss it they all did, and for once Bunting stood up to his wife.
+But that, as was natural, only made his Ellen harder and more set
+on her own view.
+
+"What the child says is true," he observed. "It isn't as if you
+was quite well. You've been took bad twice in the last few days
+--you can't deny of it, Ellen. Why shouldn't I just take a bus
+and go over and see Margaret? I'd tell her just how it is. She'd
+understand, bless you!"
+
+"I won't have you doing nothing of the sort!" cried Mrs. Bunting,
+speaking almost as passionately as her stepdaughter had done.
+"Haven't I a right to be ill, haven't I a right to be took bad,
+aye, and to feel all right again--same as other people?"
+
+Daisy turned round and clasped her hands. "Oh, Ellen!" she cried;
+"do say that you can't spare me! I don't want to go across to that
+horrid old dungeon of a place."
+
+"Do as you like," said Mrs. Bunting sullenly. "I'm fair tired of
+you both! There'll come a day, Daisy, when you'll know, like me,
+that money is the main thing that matters in this world; and when
+your Aunt Margaret's left her savings to somebody else just because
+you wouldn't spend a few days with her this Christmas, then you'll
+know what it's like to go without--you'll know what a fool you
+were, and that nothing can't alter it any more!"
+
+And then, with victory actually in her grasp, poor Daisy saw it
+snatched from her.
+
+"Ellen is right," Bunting said heavily. "Money does matter--a
+terrible deal--though I never thought to hear Ellen say 'twas the
+only thing that mattered. But 'twould be foolish--very, very
+foolish, my girl, to offend your Aunt Margaret. It'll only be
+two days after all--two days isn't a very long time."
+
+But Daisy did not hear her father's last words. She had already
+rushed from the room, and gone down to the kitchen to hide her
+childish tears of disappointment--the childish tears which came
+because she was beginning to be a woman, with a woman's natural
+instinct for building her own human nest.
+
+Aunt Margaret was not one to tolerate the comings of any strange
+young man, and she had a peculiar dislike to the police.
+
+"Who'd ever have thought she'd have minded as much as that!"
+Bunting looked across at Ellen deprecatingly; already his heart
+was misgiving him.
+
+"It's plain enough why she's become so fond of us all of a sudden,"
+said Mrs. Bunting sarcastically. And as her husband stared at her
+uncomprehendingly, she added, in a tantalising tone, "as plain as
+the nose on your face, my man."
+
+"What d'you mean?" he said. "I daresay I'm a bit slow, Ellen, but
+I really don't know what you'd be at?"
+
+"Don't you remember telling me before Daisy came here that Joe
+Chandler had become sweet on her last summer? I thought it only
+foolishness then, but I've come round to your view--that's all."
+
+Bunting nodded his head slowly. Yes, Joe had got into the way of
+coming very often, and there had been the expedition to that gruesome
+Scotland Yard museum, but somehow he, Bunting, had been so interested
+in the Avenger murders that he hadn't thought of Joe in any other
+connection--not this time, at any rate.
+
+"And do you think Daisy likes him?" There was an unwonted tone of
+excitement, of tenderness, in Bunting's voice.
+
+His wife looked over at him; and a thin smile, not an unkindly
+smile by any means, lit up her pale face. "I've never been one
+to prophesy," she answered deliberately. "But this I don't mind
+telling you, Bunting--Daisy'll have plenty o' time to get tired
+of Joe Chandler before they two are dead. Mark my words!"
+
+"Well, she might do worse," said Bunting ruminatingly. "He's as
+steady as God makes them, and he's already earning thirty-two
+shillings a week. But I wonder how Old Aunt'd like the notion?
+I don't see her parting with Daisy before she must."
+
+"I wouldn't let no old aunt interfere with me about such a thing
+as that!" cried Mrs. Bunting. "No, not for millions of gold!"
+And Bunting looked at her in silent wonder. Ellen was singing a
+very different tune now to what she'd sung a few minutes ago, when
+she was so keen about the girl going to Belgrave Square.
+
+"If she still seems upset while she's having her dinner," said his
+wife suddenly, "well, you just wait till I've gone out for something,
+and then you just say to her, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'
+--just that, and nothing more! She'll take it from you. And I
+shouldn't be surprised if it comforted her quite a lot."
+
+"For the matter of that, there's no reason why Joe Chandler shouldn't
+go over and see her there," said Bunting hesitatingly.
+
+"Oh, yes, there is," said Mrs. Bunting, smiling shrewdly. "Plenty of
+reason. Daisy'll be a very foolish girl if she allows her aunt to
+know any of her secrets. I've only seen that woman once, but I know
+exactly the sort Margaret is. She's just waiting for Old Aunt to
+drop off and then she'll want to have Daisy herself--to wait on
+her, like. She'd turn quite nasty if she thought there was a young
+fellow what stood in her way."
+
+She glanced at the dock, the pretty little eight-day clock which
+had been a wedding present from a kind friend of her last mistress.
+It had mysteriously disappeared during their time of trouble, and
+had as mysteriously reappeared three or four days after Mr. Sleuth's
+arrival.
+
+"I've time to go out with that telegram," she said briskly--somehow
+she felt better, different to what she had done the last few days--
+"and then it'll be done. It's no good having more words about it,
+and I expect we should have plenty more words if I wait till the
+child comes upstairs again."
+
+She did not speak unkindly, and Bunting looked at her rather
+wonderingly. Ellen very seldom spoke of Daisy as "the child"
+--in fact, he could only remember her having done so once before,
+and that was a long time ago. They had been talking over their
+future life together, and she had said, very solemnly, "Bunting,
+I promise I will do my duty--as much as lies in my power, that
+is--by the child."
+
+But Ellen had not had much opportunity of doing her duty by Daisy.
+As not infrequently happens with the duties that we are willing to
+do, that particular duty had been taken over by someone else who
+had no mind to let it go.
+
+"What shall I do if Mr. Sleuth rings?" asked Bunting, rather
+nervously. It was the first time since the lodger had come to them
+that Ellen had offered to go out in the morning.
+
+She hesitated. In her anxiety to have the matter of Daisy settled,
+she had forgotten Mr. Sleuth. Strange that she should have done so
+--strange, and, to herself, very comfortable and pleasant.
+
+"Oh, well, you can just go up and knock at the door and say I'll be
+back in a few minutes--that I had to go out with a message. He's
+quite a reasonable gentleman." She went into the back room to put
+on her bonnet and thick jacket for it was very cold--getting colder
+every minute.
+
+As she stood, buttoning her gloves--she wouldn't have gone out
+untidy for the world--Bunting suddenly came across to her. "Give
+us a kiss, old girl," he said. And his wife turned up her face.
+
+"One 'ud think it was catching!" she said, but there was a lilt in
+her voice.
+
+"So it is," Bunting briefly answered. "Didn't that old cook get
+married just after us? She'd never 'a thought of it if it hadn't
+been for you!"
+
+But once she was out, walking along the damp, uneven pavement, Mr.
+Sleuth revenged himself for his landlady's temporary forgetfulness.
+
+During the last two days the lodger had been queer, odder than usual,
+unlike himself, or, rather, very much as he had been some ten days
+ago, just before that double murder had taken place.
+
+The night before, while Daisy was telling all about the dreadful
+place to which Joe Chandler had taken her and her father, Mrs.
+Bunting had heard Mr. Sleuth moving about overhead, restlessly
+walking up and down his sitting-room. And later, when she took up
+his supper, she had listened a moment outside the door, while he
+read aloud some of the texts his soul delighted in--terrible texts
+telling of the grim joys attendant on revenge.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was so absorbed in her thoughts, so possessed with the
+curious personality of her lodger, that she did not look where she
+was going, and suddenly a young woman bumped up against her.
+
+She started violently and looked round, dazed, as the young person
+muttered a word of apology;--then she again fell into deep thought.
+
+It was a good thing Daisy was going away for a few days; it made the
+problem of Mr. Sleuth and his queer ways less disturbing. She,
+Ellen, was sorry she had spoken so sharp-like to the girl, but after
+all it wasn't wonderful that she had been snappy. This last night
+she had hardly slept at all. Instead, she had lain awake listening
+--and there is nothing so tiring as to lie awake listening for a
+sound that never comes.
+
+The house had remained so still you could have heard a pin drop. Mr.
+Sleuth, lying snug in his nice warm bed upstairs, had not stirred.
+Had he stirred his landlady was bound to have heard him, for his bed
+was, as we know, just above hers. No, during those long hours of
+darkness Daisy's light, regular breathing was all that had fallen on
+Mrs. Bunting's ears.
+
+And then her mind switched off Mr. Sleuth. She made a determined
+effort to expel him, to toss him, as it were, out of her thoughts.
+
+It seemed strange that The Avenger had stayed his hand, for, as Joe
+had said only last evening, it was full time that he should again
+turn that awful, mysterious searchlight of his on himself. Mrs.
+Bunting always visioned The Avenger as a black shadow in the centre
+a bright blinding light--but the shadow had no form or definite
+substance. Sometimes he looked like one thing, sometimes like
+another . . .
+
+Mrs. Bunting had now come to the corner which led up the street
+where there was a Post Office. But instead of turning sharp to the
+left she stopped short for a minute.
+
+There had suddenly come over her a feeling of horrible self-rebuke
+and even self-loathing. It was dreadful that she, of all women,
+should have longed to hear that another murder had been committed
+last night!
+
+Yet such was the shameful fact. She had listened all through
+breakfast hoping to hear the dread news being shouted outside; yes,
+and more or less during the long discussion which had followed on
+the receipt of Margaret's letter she had been hoping--hoping
+against hope--that those dreadful triumphant shouts of the
+newspaper-sellers still might come echoing down the Marylebone Road.
+And yet hypocrite that she was, she had reproved Bunting when he
+had expressed, not disappointment exactly--but, well, surprise,
+that nothing had happened last night.
+
+Now her mind switched off to Joe Chandler. Strange to think how
+afraid she had been of that young man! She was no longer afraid of
+him, or hardly at all. He was dotty--that's what was the matter
+with him, dotty with love for rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed little Daisy.
+Anything might now go on, right under Joe Chandler's very nose--but,
+bless you, he'd never see it! Last summer, when this affair, this
+nonsense of young Chandler and Daisy had begun, she had had very
+little patience with it all. In fact, the memory of the way Joe
+had gone on then, the tiresome way he would be always dropping in,
+had been one reason (though not the most important reason of all)
+why she had felt so terribly put about at the idea of the girl
+coming again. But now? Well, now she had become quite tolerant,
+quite kindly--at any rate as far as Joe Chandler was concerned.
+
+She wondered why.
+
+Still, 'twouldn't do Joe a bit of harm not to see the girl for a
+couple of days. In fact 'twould be a very good thing, for then he'd
+think of Daisy--think of her to the exclusion of all else. Absence
+does make the heart grow fonder--at first, at any rate. Mrs.
+Bunting was well aware of that. During the long course of hers
+and Bunting's mild courting, they'd been separated for about three
+months, and it was that three months which had made up her mind for
+her. She had got so used to Bunting that she couldn't do without
+him, and she had felt--oddest fact of all--acutely, miserably
+jealous. But she hadn't let him know that--no fear!
+
+Of course, Joe mustn't neglect his job--that would never do. But
+what a good thing it was, after all, that he wasn't like some of
+those detective chaps that are written about in stories--the sort
+of chaps that know everything, see everything, guess everything
+--even where there isn't anything to see, or know, or guess!
+
+Why, to take only one little fact--Joe Chandler had never shown
+the slightest curiosity about their lodger. . . .
+
+Mrs. Bunting pulled herself together with a start, and hurried
+quickly on. Bunting would begin to wonder what had happened to her.
+
+She went into the Post Office and handed the form to the young woman
+without a word. Margaret, a sensible woman, who was accustomed to
+manage other people's affairs, had even written out the words: "Will
+be with you to tea.--DAISY."
+
+It was a comfort to have the thing settled once for all. If anything
+horrible was going to happen in the next two or three days--it was
+just as well Daisy shouldn't be at home. Not that there was any real
+danger that anything would happen,--Mrs. Bunting felt sure of that.
+
+By this time she was out in the street again, and she began mentally
+counting up the number of murders The Avenger had committed. Nine,
+or was it ten? Surely by now The Avenger must be avenged? Surely by
+now, if--as that writer in the newspaper had suggested--he was a
+quiet, blameless gentleman living in the West End, whatever vengeance
+he had to wreak, must be satisfied?
+
+She began hurrying homewards; it wouldn't do for the lodger to ring
+before she had got back. Bunting would never know how to manage Mr.
+Sleuth, especially if Mr. Sleuth was in one of his queer moods.
+
+******
+
+Mrs. Bunting put the key into the front door lock and passed into
+the house. Then her heart stood still with fear and terror. There
+came the sound of voices--of voices she thought she did not know--
+in the sitting-room.
+
+She opened the door, and then drew a long breath. It was only Joe
+Chandler--Joe, Daisy, and Bunting, talking together. They stopped
+rather guiltily as she came in, but not before she had heard
+Chandler utter the words: "That don't mean nothing! I'll just run
+out and send another saying you won't come, Miss Daisy."
+
+And then the strangest smile came over Mrs. Bunting's face. There
+had fallen on her ear the still distant, but unmistakable, shouts
+which betokened that something had happened last night--something
+which made it worth while for the newspaper-sellers to come crying
+down the Marylebone Road.
+
+"Well?" she said a little breathlessly. "Well, Joe? I suppose
+you've brought us news? I suppose there's been another?"
+
+He looked at her, surprised. "No, that there hasn't, Mrs. Bunting
+--not as far as I know, that is. Oh, you're thinking of those
+newspaper chaps? They've got to cry out something," he grinned.
+"You wouldn't 'a thought folk was so bloodthirsty. They're just
+shouting out that there's been an arrest; but we don't take no
+stock of that. It's a Scotchman what gave himself up last night
+at Dorking. He'd been drinking, and was a-pitying of himself.
+Why, since this business began, there's been about twenty arrests,
+but they've all come to nothing."
+
+"Why, Ellen, you looks quite sad, quite disappointed," said Bunting
+jokingly. "Come to think of it, it's high time The Avenger was at
+work again." He laughed as he made his grim joke. Then turned to
+young Chandler: "Well, you'll be glad when its all over, my lad."
+
+"Glad in a way," said Chandler unwillingly. "But one 'ud have liked
+to have caught him. One doesn't like to know such a creature's at
+large, now, does one?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting had taken off her bonnet and jacket. "I must just go
+and see about Mr. Sleuth's breakfast," she said in a weary,
+dispirited voice, and left them there.
+
+She felt disappointed, and very, very depressed. As to the plot
+which had been hatching when she came in, that had no chance of
+success; Bunting would never dare let Daisy send out another
+telegram contradicting the first. Besides, Daisy's stepmother
+shrewdly suspected that by now the girl herself wouldn't care to
+do such a thing. Daisy had plenty of sense tucked away somewhere
+in her pretty little head. If it ever became her fate to live as
+a married woman in London, it would be best to stay on the right
+side of Aunt Margaret.
+
+And when she came into her kitchen the stepmother's heart became
+very soft, for Daisy had got everything beautifully ready. In fact,
+there was nothing to do but to boil Mr. Sleuth's two eggs. Feeling
+suddenly more cheerful than she had felt of late, Mrs. Bunting took
+the tray upstairs.
+
+"As it was rather late, I didn't wait for you to ring, sir," she
+said.
+
+And the lodger looked up from the table where, as usual, he was
+studying with painful, almost agonising intentness, the Book.
+"Quite right, Mrs. Bunting--quite right! I have been pondering
+over the command, 'Work while it is yet light.'"
+
+"Yes, sir?" she said, and a queer, cold feeling stole over her
+heart. "Yes, sir?"
+
+"'The spirit is willing, but the flesh--the flesh is weak,'" said
+Mr. Sleuth, with a heavy sigh.
+
+"You studies too hard, and too long--that's what's ailing you, sir,"
+said Mr. Sleuth's landlady suddenly.
+
+******
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went down again she found that a great deal had
+been settled in her absence; among other things, that Joe Chandler
+was going to escort Miss Daisy across to Belgrave Square. He
+could carry Daisy's modest bag, and if they wanted to ride instead
+of walk, why, they could take the bus from Baker Street Station
+to Victoria--that would land them very near Belgrave Square.
+
+But Daisy seemed quite willing to walk; she hadn't had a walk, she
+declared, for a long, long time--and then she blushed rosy red,
+and even her stepmother had to admit to herself that Daisy was very
+nice looking, not at all the sort of girl who ought to be allowed to
+go about the London streets by herself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Daisy's father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door,
+watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness.
+
+A yellow pall of fog had suddenly descended on London, and Joe had
+come a full half-hour before they expected him, explaining, rather
+lamely, that it was the fog which had brought him so soon.
+
+"If we was to have waited much longer, perhaps, 'twouldn't have been
+possible to walk a yard," he explained, and they had accepted,
+silently, his explanation.
+
+"I hope it's quite safe sending her off like that?" Bunting looked
+deprecatingly at his wife. She had already told him more than once
+that he was too fussy about Daisy, that about his daughter he was
+like an old hen with her last chicken.
+
+"She's safer than she would be, with you or me. She couldn't have
+a smarter young fellow to look after her."
+
+"It'll be awful thick at Hyde Park Corner," said Bunting. "It's
+always worse there than anywhere else. If I was Joe I'd 'a taken
+her by the Underground Railway to Victoria--that 'ud been the best
+way, considering the weather 'tis."
+
+"They don't think anything of the weather, bless you!" said his
+wife. "They'll walk and walk as long as there's a glimmer left for
+'em to steer by. Daisy's just been pining to have a walk with that
+young chap. I wonder you didn't notice how disappointed they both
+were when you was so set on going along with them to that horrid
+place."
+
+"D'you really mean that, Ellen?" Bunting looked upset. "I understood
+Joe to say he liked my company."
+
+"Oh, did you?" said Mrs. Bunting dryly. "I expect he liked it just
+about as much as we liked the company of that old cook who would go
+out with us when we was courting. It always was a wonder to me how
+the woman could force herself upon two people who didn't want her."
+
+"But I'm Daisy's father; and an old friend of Chandler," said Bunting
+remonstratingly. "I'm quite different from that cook. She was
+nothing to us, and we was nothing to her."
+
+"She'd have liked to be something to you, I make no doubt," observed
+his Ellen, shaking her head, and her husband smiled, a little
+foolishly.
+
+By this time they were back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and
+a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs.
+Bunting. It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit.
+The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and
+she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very
+unseemly and silly curiosity concerning the lodger. "You might
+just let me have one peep at him, Ellen?" she had pleaded, only
+that morning. But Ellen had shaken her head. "No, that I won't!
+He's a very quiet gentleman; but he knows exactly what he likes,
+and he don't like anyone but me waiting on him. Why, even your
+father's hardly seen him."
+
+But that, naturally, had only increased Daisy's desire to view Mr.
+Sleuth.
+
+There was another reason why Mrs. Bunting was glad that her
+stepdaughter had gone away for two days. During her absence young
+Chandler was far less likely to haunt them in the way he had taken
+to doing lately, the more so that, in spite of what she had said to
+her husband, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that Daisy would ask Joe
+Chandler to call at Belgrave Square. 'Twouldn't be human nature
+--at any rate, not girlish human nature--not to do so, even if
+Joe's coming did anger Aunt Margaret.
+
+Yes, it was pretty safe that with Daisy away they, the Buntings,
+would be rid of that young chap for a bit, and that would be a
+good thing.
+
+When Daisy wasn't there to occupy the whole of his attention, Mrs.
+Bunting felt queerly afraid of Chandler. After all, he was a
+detective--it was his job to be always nosing about, trying to
+find out things. And, though she couldn't fairly say to herself
+that he had done much of that sort of thing in her house, he might
+start doing it any minute. And then--then--where would she, and
+--and Mr. Sleuth, be?
+
+She thought of the bottle of red ink--of the leather bag which
+must be hidden somewhere--and her heart almost stopped beating.
+Those were the sort of things which, in the stories Bunting was
+so fond of reading, always led to the detection of famous
+criminals. . . .
+
+Mr. Sleuth's bell for tea rang that afternoon far earlier than
+usual. The fog had probably misled him, and made him think it
+later than it was.
+
+When she went up, "I would like a cup of tea now, and just one
+piece of bread-and-butter," the lodger said wearily. "I don't
+feel like having anything else this afternoon."
+
+"It's a horrible day," Mrs. Bunting observed, in a cheerier voice
+than usual. "No wonder you don't feel hungry, sir. And then it
+isn't so very long since you had your dinner, is it?"
+
+"No," he said absently. "No, it isn't, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+She went down, made the tea, and brought it up again. And then,
+as she came into the room, she uttered an exclamation of sharp
+dismay.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was dressed for going out. He was wearing his long
+Inverness cloak, and his queer old high hat lay on the table,
+ready for him to put on.
+
+"You're never going out this afternoon, sir?" she asked falteringly.
+"Why, the fog's awful; you can't see a yard ahead of you!"
+
+Unknown to herself, Mrs. Bunting's voice had risen almost to a
+scream. She moved back, still holding the tray, and stood between
+the door and her lodger, as if she meant to bar his way--to erect
+between Mr. Sleuth and the dark, foggy world outside a living
+barrier.
+
+"The weather never affects me at all," he said sullenly; and he
+looked at her with so wild and pleading a look in his eyes that,
+slowly, reluctantly, she moved aside. As she did so she noticed
+for the first time that Mr. Sleuth held something in his right
+hand. It was the key of the chiffonnier cupboard. He had been
+on his way there when her coming in had disturbed him.
+
+"It's very kind of you to be so concerned about me," he stammered,
+"but--but, Mrs. Bunting, you must excuse me if I say that I do
+not welcome such solicitude. I prefer to be left alone. I--I
+cannot stay in your house if I feel that my comings and goings are
+watched--spied upon."
+
+She pulled herself together. "No one spies upon you, sir," she
+said, with considerable dignity. "I've done my best to satisfy
+you--"
+
+"You have--you have!" he spoke in a distressed, apologetic tone.
+"But you spoke just now as if you were trying to prevent my doing
+what I wish to do--indeed, what I have to do. For years I have
+been misunderstood--persecuted"--he waited a moment, then in
+a hollow voice added the one word, "tortured! Do not tell me that
+you are going to add yourself to the number of my tormentors, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She stared at him helplessly. "Don't you be afraid I'll ever be
+that, sir. I only spoke as I did because--well, sir, because I
+thought it really wasn't safe for a gentleman to go out this
+afternoon. Why, there's hardly anyone about, though we're so near
+Christmas."
+
+He walked across to the window and looked out. "The fog is clearing
+somewhat; Mrs. Bunting," but there was no relief in his voice, rather
+was there disappointment and dread.
+
+Plucking up courage, she followed him. Yes, Mr. Sleuth was right.
+The fog was lifting--rolling off in that sudden, mysterious way in
+which local fogs sometimes do lift in London.
+
+He turned sharply from the window. "Our conversation has made me
+forget an important thing, Mrs. Bunting. I should be glad if you
+would just leave out a glass of milk and some bread-and-butter for
+me this evening. I shall not require supper when I come in, for
+after my walk I shall probably go straight upstairs to carry through
+a very difficult experiment."
+
+"Very good, sir." And then Mrs. Bunting left the lodger.
+
+But when she found herself downstairs in the fog-laden hall, for it
+had drifted in as she and her husband had stood at the door seeing
+Daisy off, instead of going in to Bunting she did a very odd thing
+--a thing she had never thought of doing in her life before. She
+pressed her hot forehead against the cool bit of looking-glass let
+into the hat-and-umbrella stand. "I don't know what to do!" she
+moaned to herself, and then, "I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"
+
+But though she felt that her secret suspense and trouble was becoming
+intolerable, the one way in which she could have ended her misery
+never occurred to Mrs. Bunting.
+
+In the long history of crime it has very, very seldom happened that
+a woman has betrayed one who has taken refuge with her. The
+timorous and cautious woman has not infrequently hunted a human
+being fleeing from his pursuer from her door, but she has not
+revealed the fact that he was ever there. In fact, it may almost
+be said that such betrayal has never taken place unless the betrayer
+has been actuated by love of gain, or by a longing for revenge. So
+far, perhaps because she is subject rather than citizen, her duty
+as a component part of civilised society weighs but lightly on
+woman's shoulders.
+
+And then--and then, in a sort of way, Mrs. Bunting had become
+attached to Mr. Sleuth. A wan smile would sometimes light up his
+sad face when he saw her come in with one of his meals, and when
+this happened Mrs. Bunting felt pleased--pleased and vaguely
+touched. In between those--those dreadful events outside, which
+filled her with such suspicion, such anguish and such suspense,
+she never felt any fear, only pity, for Mr. Sleuth.
+
+Often and often, when lying wide awake at night, she turned over
+the strange problem in her mind. After all, the lodger must have
+lived somewhere during his forty-odd years of life. She did not
+even know if Mr. Sleuth had any brothers or sisters; friends she
+knew he had none. But, however odd and eccentric he was, he had
+evidently, or so she supposed, led a quiet, undistinguished kind
+of life, till--till now.
+
+What had made him alter all of a sudden--if, that is, he had
+altered? That was what Mrs. Bunting was always debating fitfully
+with herself; and, what was more, and very terribly, to the point,
+having altered, why should he not in time go back to what he
+evidently had been--that is, a blameless, quiet gentleman?
+
+If only he would! If only he would!
+
+As she stood in the hall, cooling her hot forehead, all these
+thoughts, these hopes and fears, jostled at lightning speed through
+her brain.
+
+She remembered what young Chandler had said the other day--that
+there had never been, in the history of the world, so strange a
+murderer as The Avenger had proved himself to be.
+
+She and Bunting, aye, and little Daisy too, had hung, fascinated,
+on Joe's words, as he had told them of other famous series of
+murders which had taken place in the past, not only in England but
+abroad--especially abroad.
+
+One woman, whom all the people round her believed to be a kind,
+respectable soul, had poisoned no fewer than fifteen people in order
+to get their insurance money. Then there had been the terrible tale
+of an apparently respectable, contented innkeeper and his wife, who,
+living at the entrance to a wood, killed all those humble travellers
+who took shelter under their roof, simply for their clothes, and any
+valuables they possessed. But in all those stories the murderer or
+murderers always had a very strong motive, the motive being, in
+almost every case, a wicked lust for gold.
+
+At last, after having passed her handkerchief over her forehead, she
+went into the room where Bunting was sitting smoking his pipe.
+
+"The fog's lifting a bit," she said in an ill-assured voice. "I hope
+that by this time Daisy and that Joe Chandler are right out of it."
+
+But the other shook his head silently. "No such luck!" he said
+briefly. "You don't know what it's like in Hyde Park, Ellen. I
+expect 'twill soon be just as heavy here as 'twas half an hour ago!"
+
+She wandered over to the window, and pulled the curtain back.
+"Quite a lot of people have come out, anyway," she observed.
+
+"There's a fine Christmas show in the Edgware Road. I was thinking
+of asking if you wouldn't like to go along there with me."
+
+"No," she said dully. "I'm quite content to stay at home."
+
+She was listening--listening for the sounds which would betoken
+that the lodger was coming downstairs.
+
+At last she heard the cautious, stuffless tread of his rubber-soled
+shoes shuffling along the hall. But Bunting only woke to the fact
+when the front door shut to.
+
+"That's never Mr. Sleuth going out?" He turned on his wife,
+startled. "Why, the poor gentleman'll come to harm--that he will!
+One has to be wide awake on an evening like this. I hope he hasn't
+taken any of his money out with him."
+
+"'Tisn't the first time Mr. Sleuth's been out in a fog," said Mrs.
+Bunting sombrely.
+
+Somehow she couldn't help uttering these over-true words. And then
+she turned, eager and half frightened, to see how Bunting had taken
+what she said.
+
+But he looked quite placid, as if he had hardly heard her. "We
+don't get the good old fogs we used to get--not what people used
+to call 'London particulars.' I expect the lodger feels like Mrs.
+Crowley--I've often told you about her, Ellen?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting nodded.
+
+Mrs. Crowley had been one of Bunting's ladies, one of those he had
+liked best--a cheerful, jolly lady, who used often to give her
+servants what she called a treat. It was seldom the kind of treat
+they would have chosen for themselves, but still they appreciated
+her kind thought.
+
+"Mrs. Crowley used to say," went on Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic
+way, "that she never minded how bad the weather was in London, so
+long as it was London and not the country. Mr. Crowley, he liked
+the country best, but Mrs. Crowley always felt dull-like there.
+Fog never kept her from going out--no, that it didn't. She wasn't
+a bit afraid. But--" he turned round and looked at his wife--
+"I am a bit surprised at Mr. Sleuth. I should have thought him a
+timid kind of gentleman--"
+
+He waited a moment, and she felt forced to answer him.
+
+"I wouldn't exactly call him timid," she said, in a low voice, "but
+he is very quiet, certainly. That's why he dislikes going out when
+there are a lot of people bustling about the streets. I don't
+suppose he'll be out long."
+
+She hoped with all her soul that Mr. Sleuth would be in very soon
+--that he would be daunted by the now increasing gloom.
+
+Somehow she did not feel she could sit still for very long. She
+got up, and went over to the farthest window.
+
+The fog had lifted, certainly. She could see the lamp-lights on
+the other side of the Marylebone Road, glimmering redly; and
+shadowy figures were hurrying past, mostly making their way towards
+the Edgware Road, to see the Christmas shops.
+
+At last to his wife's relief, Bunting got up too. He went over to
+the cupboard where he kept his little store of books, and took one
+out.
+
+"I think I'll read a bit," he said. "Seems a long time since I've
+looked at a book. The papers was so jolly interesting for a bit,
+but now there's nothing in 'em."
+
+His wife remained silent. She knew what he meant. A good many days
+had gone by since the last two Avenger murders, and the papers had
+very little to say about them that they hadn't said in different
+language a dozen times before.
+
+She went into her bedroom and came back with a bit of plain sewing.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was fond of sewing, and Bunting liked to see her so
+engaged. Since Mr. Sleuth had come to be their lodger she had not
+had much time for that sort of work.
+
+It was funny how quiet the house was without either Daisy, or--or
+the lodger, in it.
+
+At last she let her needle remain idle, and the bit of cambric
+slipped down on her knee, while she listened, longingly, for Mr.
+Sleuth's return home.
+
+And as the minutes sped by she fell to wondering with a painful
+wonder if she would ever see her lodger again, for, from what she
+knew of Mr. Sleuth, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that if he got into any
+kind of--well, trouble outside, he would never betray where he
+had lived during the last few weeks.
+
+No, in such a case the lodger would disappear in as sudden a way
+as he had come. And Bunting would never suspect, would never know,
+until, perhaps--God, what a horrible thought--a picture published
+in some newspaper might bring a certain dreadful fact to Bunting's
+knowledge.
+
+But if that happened--if that unthinkably awful thing came to pass,
+she made up her mind, here and now, never to say anything. She also
+would pretend to be amazed, shocked, unutterably horrified at the
+astounding revelation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"There he is at last, and I'm glad of it, Ellen. 'Tain't a night
+you would wish a dog to be out in."
+
+Bunting's voice was full of relief, but he did not turn round and
+look at his wife as he spoke; instead, he continued to read the
+evening paper he held in his hand.
+
+He was still close to the fire, sitting back comfortably in his
+nice arm-chair. He looked very well--well and ruddy. Mrs. Bunting
+stared across at him with a touch of sharp envy, nay, more, of
+resentment. And this was very curious, for she was, in her own dry
+way, very fond of Bunting.
+
+"You needn't feel so nervous about him; Mr. Sleuth can look out for
+himself all right."
+
+Bunting laid the paper he had been reading down on his knee. "I
+can't think why he wanted to go out in such weather," he said
+impatiently.
+
+"Well, it's none of your business, Bunting, now, is it?"
+
+"No, that's true enough. Still, 'twould be a very bad thing for us
+if anything happened to him. This lodger's the first bit of luck
+we've had for a terrible long time, Ellen."
+
+Mrs. Bunting moved a little impatiently in her high chair. She
+remained silent for a moment. What Bunting had said was too obvious
+to be worth answering. Also she was listening, following in
+imagination her lodger's quick, singularly quiet progress--
+"stealthy" she called it to herself--through the fog-filled,
+lamp-lit hall. Yes, now he was going up the staircase. What
+was that Bunting was saying?
+
+"It isn't safe for decent folk to be out in such weather--no, that
+it ain't, not unless they have something to do that won't wait till
+to-morrow." The speaker was looking straight into his wife's narrow,
+colourless face. Bunting was an obstinate man, and liked to prove
+himself right. "I've a good mind to speak to him about it, that
+I have! He ought to be told that it isn't safe--not for the sort
+of man he is--to be wandering about the streets at night. I read
+you out the accidents in Lloyd's--shocking, they were, and all
+brought about by the fog! And then, that horrid monster 'ull soon
+be at his work again--"
+
+"Monster?" repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.
+
+She was trying to hear the lodger's footsteps overhead. She was
+very curious to know whether he had gone into his nice sitting-room,
+or straight upstairs, to that cold experiment-room, as he now always
+called it.
+
+But her husband went on as if he had not heard her, and she gave up
+trying to listen to what was going on above.
+
+"It wouldn't be very pleasant to run up against such a party as that
+in the fog, eh, Ellen?" He spoke as if the notion had a certain
+pleasant thrill in it after all.
+
+"What stuff you do talk!" said Mrs. Bunting sharply. And then she
+got up. Her husband's remarks had disturbed her. Why couldn't they
+talk of something pleasant when they did have a quiet bit of time
+together?
+
+Bunting looked down again at his paper, and she moved quietly about
+the room. Very soon it would be time for supper, and to-night she
+was going to cook her husband a nice piece of toasted cheese. That
+fortunate man, as she was fond of telling him, with mingled contempt
+and envy, had the digestion of an ostrich, and yet he was rather
+fanciful, as gentlemen's servants who have lived in good places
+often are.
+
+Yes, Bunting was very lucky in the matter of his digestion. Mrs.
+Bunting prided herself on having a nice mind, and she would never
+have allowed an unrefined word--such a word as "stomach," for
+instance, to say nothing of an even plainer term--to pass her
+lips, except, of course, to a doctor in a sick-room.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's landlady did not go down at once into her cold kitchen;
+instead, with a sudden furtive movement, she opened the door leading
+into her bedroom, and then, closing the door quietly, stepped back
+into the darkness, and stood motionless, listening.
+
+At first she heard nothing, but gradually there stole on her
+listening ears the sound of someone moving softly about in the
+room just overhead, that is, in Mr. Sleuth's bedroom. But, try as
+she might, it was impossible for her to guess what the lodger was
+doing.
+
+At last she heard him open the door leading out on the little
+landing. She could hear the stairs creaking. That meant, no doubt,
+that Mr. Sleuth would pass the rest of the evening in the cheerless
+room above. He hadn't spent any time up there for quite a long
+while--in fact, not for nearly ten days. 'Twas odd he chose to-night,
+when it was so foggy, to carry out an experiment.
+
+She groped her way to a chair and sat down. She felt very tired--
+strangely tired, as if she had gone through some great physical
+exertion.
+
+Yes, it was true that Mr. Sleuth had brought her and Bunting luck,
+and it was wrong, very wrong, of her ever to forget that.
+
+As she sat there she also reminded herself, and not for the first
+time, what the lodger's departure would mean. It would almost
+certainly mean ruin; just as his staying meant all sorts of good
+things, of which physical comfort was the least. If Mr. Sleuth
+stayed on with them, as he showed every intention of doing, it
+meant respectability, and, above all, security.
+
+Mrs. Bunting thought of Mr. Sleuth's money. He never received a
+letter, and yet he must have some kind of income--so much was
+clear. She supposed he went and drew his money, in sovereigns, out
+of a bank as he required it.
+
+Her mind swung round, consciously, deliberately, away from Mr.
+Sleuth.
+
+The Avenger? What a strange name! Again she assured herself that
+there would come a time when The Avenger, whoever he was, must feel
+satiated; when he would feel himself to be, so to speak, avenged.
+
+To go back to Mr. Sleuth; it was lucky that the lodger seemed so
+pleased, not only with the rooms, but with his landlord and landlady
+--indeed, there was no real reason why Mr. Sleuth should ever wish
+to leave such nice lodgings.
+
+******
+
+Mrs. Bunting suddenly stood up. She made a strong effort, and shook
+off her awful sense of apprehension and unease. Feeling for the
+handle of the door giving into the passage she turned it, and then,
+with light, firm steps, she went down into the kitchen.
+
+When they had first taken the house, the basement had been made by
+her care, if not into a pleasant, then, at any rate, into a very
+clean place. She had had it whitewashed, and against the still
+white walls the gas stove loomed up, a great square of black iron
+and bright steel. It was a large gas-stove, the kind for which one
+pays four shillings a quarter rent to the gas company, and here, in
+the kitchen, there was no foolish shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
+Mrs. Bunting was too shrewd a woman to have anything to do with that
+kind of business. There was a proper gas-meter, and she paid for
+what she consumed after she had consumed it.
+
+Putting her candle down on the well-scrubbed wooden table, she
+turned up the gas-jet, and blew out the candle.
+
+Then, lighting one of the gas-rings, she put a frying-pan on the
+stove, and once more her mind reverted, as if in spite of herself,
+to Mr. Sleuth. Never had there been a more confiding or trusting
+gentleman than the lodger, and yet in some ways he was so secret,
+so--so peculiar.
+
+She thought of the bag--that bag which had rumbled about so
+queerly in the chiffonnier. Something seemed to tell her that
+tonight the lodger had taken that bag out with him.
+
+And then she thrust away the thought of the bag almost violently
+from her mind, and went back to the more agreeable thought of Mr.
+Sleuth's income, and of how little trouble he gave. Of course,
+the lodger was eccentric, otherwise he wouldn't be their lodger
+at all--he would be living in quite a different sort of way with
+some of his relations, or with a friend in his own class.
+
+While these thoughts galloped disconnectedly through her mind,
+Mrs. Bunting went on with her cooking, preparing the cheese, cutting
+it up into little shreds, carefully measuring out the butter, doing
+everything, as was always her way, with a certain delicate and
+cleanly precision.
+
+And then, while in the middle of toasting the bread on which was to
+be poured the melted cheese, she suddenly heard sounds which startled
+her, made her feel uncomfortable.
+
+Shuffling, hesitating steps were creaking down the house.
+
+She looked up and listened.
+
+Surely the lodger was not going out again into the cold and foggy
+night--going out, as he had done the other evening, for a second
+time? But no; the sounds she heard, the sounds of now familiar
+footsteps, did not continue down the passage leading to the front
+door.
+
+Instead--Why, what was this she heard now? She began to listen
+so intently that the bread she was holding at the end of the
+toasting-fork grew quite black. With a start she became aware
+that this was so, and she frowned, vexed with herself. That came
+of not attending to one's work.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was evidently about to do what he had never yet done.
+He was coming down into the kitchen.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the thudding sounds, treading heavily on the
+kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Bunting's heart began to beat as if in
+response. She put out the flame of the gas-ring, unheedful of the
+fact that the cheese would stiffen and spoil in the cold air.
+
+Then she turned and faced the door.
+
+There came a fumbling at the handle, and a moment later the door
+opened, and revealed, as she had at once known and feared it would
+do, the lodger.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked even odder than usual. He was clad in a plaid
+dressing-gown, which she had never seen him wear before, though
+she knew that he had purchased it not long after his arrival. In
+his hand was a lighted candle.
+
+When he saw the kitchen all lighted up, and the woman standing in
+it, the lodger looked inexplicably taken aback, almost aghast.
+
+"Yes, sir? What can I do for you, sir? I hope you didn't ring, sir?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting held her ground in front of the stove. Mr. Sleuth had
+no business to come like this into her kitchen, and she intended to
+let him know that such was her view.
+
+"No, I--I didn't ring," he stammered awkwardly. "The truth is, I
+didn't know you were here, Mrs. Bunting. Please excuse my costume.
+My gas-stove has gone wrong, or, rather, that shilling-in-the-slot
+arrangement has done so. So I came down to see if you had a
+gas-stove. I am going to ask you to allow me to use it to-night for
+an important experiment I wish to make."
+
+Mrs. Bunting's heart was beating quickly--quickly. She felt
+horribly troubled, unnaturally so. Why couldn't Mr. Sleuth's
+experiment wait till the morning? She stared at him dubiously, but
+there was that in his face that made her at once afraid and pitiful.
+It was a wild, eager, imploring look.
+
+"Oh, certainly, sir; but you will find it very cold down here."
+
+"It seems most pleasantly warm," he observed, his voice full of
+relief, "warm and cosy, after my cold room upstairs."
+
+Warm and cosy? Mrs. Bunting stared at him in amazement. Nay, even
+that cheerless room at the top of the house must be far warmer and
+more cosy than this cold underground kitchen could possibly be.
+
+"I'll make you a fire, sir. We never use the grate, but it's in
+perfect order, for the first thing I did after I came into the house
+was to have the chimney swept. It was terribly dirty. It might
+have set the house on fire." Mrs. Bunting's housewifely instincts
+were roused. "For the matter of that, you ought to have a fire in
+your bedroom this cold night."
+
+"By no means--I would prefer not. I certainly do not want a fire
+there. I dislike an open fire, Mrs. Bunting. I thought I had told
+you as much."
+
+Mr. Sleuth frowned. He stood there, a strange-looking figure, his
+candle still alight, just inside the kitchen door.
+
+"I shan't be very long, sir. Just about a quarter of an hour. You
+could come down then. I'll have everything quite tidy for you. Is
+there anything I can do to help you?"
+
+"I do not require the use of your kitchen yet--thank you all the
+same, Mrs. Bunting. I shall come down later--altogether later--
+after you and your husband have gone to bed. But I should be much
+obliged if you would see that the gas people come to-morrow and
+put my stove in order. It might be done while I am out. That the
+shilling-in-the-slot machine should go wrong is very unpleasant.
+It has upset me greatly."
+
+"Perhaps Bunting could put it right for you, sir. For the matter
+of that, I could ask him to go up now."
+
+"No, no, I don't want anything of that sort done to-night. Besides,
+he couldn't put it right. I am something of an expert, Mrs. Bunting,
+and I have done all I could. The cause of the trouble is quite
+simple. The machine is choked up with shillings; a very foolish
+plan, so I always felt it to be."
+
+Mr. Sleuth spoke pettishly, with far more heat than he was wont to
+speak, but Mrs. Bunting sympathised with him in this matter. She
+had always suspected that those slot machines were as dishonest as
+if they were human. It was dreadful, the way they swallowed up
+the shillings! She had had one once, so she knew.
+
+And as if he were divining her thoughts, Mr. Sleuth walked forward
+and stared at the stove. "Then you haven't got a slot machine?" he
+said wonderingly. "I'm very glad of that, for I expect my experiment
+will take some time. But, of course, I shall pay you something for
+the use of the stove, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I wouldn't think of charging you anything for that.
+We don't use our stove very much, you know, sir. I'm never in the
+kitchen a minute longer than I can help this cold weather."
+
+Mrs. Bunting was beginning to feel better. When she was actually
+in Mr. Sleuth's presence her morbid fears would be lulled, perhaps
+because his manner almost invariably was gentle and very quiet.
+But still there came over her an eerie feeling, as, with him
+preceding her, they made a slow progress to the ground floor.
+
+Once there, the lodger courteously bade his landlady good-night,
+and proceeded upstairs to his own apartments.
+
+Mrs. Bunting returned to the kitchen. Again she lighted the stove;
+but she felt unnerved, afraid of she knew not what. As she was
+cooking the cheese, she tried to concentrate her mind on what she
+was doing, and on the whole she succeeded. But another part of her
+mind seemed to be working independently, asking her insistent
+questions.
+
+The place seemed to her alive with alien presences, and once she
+caught herself listening--which was absurd, for, of course, she
+could not hope to hear what Mr. Sleuth was doing two, if not three,
+flights upstairs. She wondered in what the lodger's experiments
+consisted. It was odd that she had never been able to discover what
+it was he really did with that big gas-stove. All she knew was
+that he used a very high degree of heat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The Buntings went to bed early that night. But Mrs. Bunting made
+up her mind to keep awake. She was set upon knowing at what hour
+of the night the lodger would come down into her kitchen to carry
+through his experiment, and, above all, she was anxious to know
+how long he would stay there.
+
+But she had had a long and a very anxious day, and presently she
+fell asleep.
+
+The church clock hard by struck two, and, suddenly Mrs. Bunting
+awoke. She felt put out, sharply annoyed with herself. How could
+she have dropped off like that? Mr. Sleuth must have been down
+and up again hours ago!
+
+Then, gradually, she became aware that there was a faint acrid
+odour in the room. Elusive, intangible, it yet seemed to encompass
+her and the snoring man by her side, almost as a vapour might have
+done.
+
+Mrs. Bunting sat up in bed and sniffed; and then, in spite of the
+cold, she quietly crept out of her nice, warm bedclothes, and
+crawled along to the bottom of the bed. When there, Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady did a very curious thing; she leaned over the brass rail
+and put her face close to the hinge of the door giving into the
+hall. Yes, it was from here that this strange, horrible odor was
+coming; the smell must be very strong in the passage.
+
+As, shivering, she crept back under the bedclothes, she longed to
+give her sleeping husband a good shake, and in fancy she heard
+herself saying, "Bunting, get up! There's something strange and
+dreadful going on downstairs which we ought to know about."
+
+But as she lay there, by her husband's side, listening with painful
+intentness for the slightest sound, she knew very well that she
+would do nothing of the sort.
+
+What if the lodger did make a certain amount of mess--a certain
+amount of smell--in her nice clean kitchen? Was he not--was he
+not an almost perfect lodger? If they did anything to upset him,
+where could they ever hope to get another like him?
+
+Three o'clock struck before Mrs. Bunting heard slow, heavy steps
+creaking up the kitchen stairs. But Mr. Sleuth did not go straight
+up to his own quarters, as she had expected him to do. Instead, he
+went to the front door, and, opening it, put on the chain. Then he
+came past her door, and she thought--but could not be sure--that
+he sat down on the stairs.
+
+At the end of ten minutes or so she heard him go down the passage
+again. Very softly he closed the front door. By then she had
+divined why the lodger had behaved in this funny fashion. He wanted
+to get the strong, acrid smell of burning--was it of burning wool?
+--out of the house.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting, lying there in the darkness, listening to the
+lodger creeping upstairs, felt as if she herself would never get
+rid of the horrible odour.
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt herself to be all smell.
+
+At last the unhappy woman fell into a deep, troubled sleep; and
+then she dreamed a most terrible and unnatural dream. Hoarse
+voices seemed to be shouting in her ear: "The Avenger close here!
+The Avenger close here!" "'Orrible murder off the Edgware Road!"
+"The Avenger at his work again!"
+
+And even in her dream Mrs. Bunting felt angered--angered and
+impatient. She knew so well why she was being disturbed by this
+horrid nightmare! It was because of Bunting--Bunting, who could
+think and talk of nothing else than those frightful murders, in
+which only morbid and vulgar-minded people took any interest.
+
+Why, even now, in her dream, she could hear her husband speaking
+to her about it:
+
+"Ellen"--so she heard Bunting murmur in her ear--"Ellen, my dear,
+I'm just going to get up to get a paper. It's after seven o'clock."
+
+The shouting--nay, worse, the sound of tramping, hurrying feet
+smote on her shrinking ears. Pushing back her hair off her forehead
+with both hands, she sat up and listened.
+
+It had been no nightmare, then, but something infinitely worse--
+reality.
+
+Why couldn't Bunting have lain quiet abed for awhile longer, and
+let his poor wife go on dreaming? The most awful dream would have
+been easier to bear than this awakening.
+
+She heard her husband go to the front door, and, as he bought the
+paper, exchange a few excited words with the newspaper-seller. Then
+he came back. There was a pause, and she heard him lighting the
+gas-ring in the sitting-room.
+
+Bunting always made his wife a cup of tea in the morning. He had
+promised to do this when they first married, and he had never yet
+broken his word. It was a very little thing and a very usual thing,
+no doubt, for a kind husband to do, but this morning the knowledge
+that he was doing it brought tears to Mrs. Bunting's pale blue eyes.
+This morning he seemed to be rather longer than usual over the job.
+
+When, at last, he came in with the little tray, Bunting found his
+wife lying with her face to the wall.
+
+"Here's your tea, Ellen," he said, and there was a thrill of eager,
+nay happy, excitement in his voice.
+
+She turned herself round and sat up. "Well?" she asked. "Well?
+Why don't you tell me about it?"
+
+"I thought you was asleep," he stammered out. "I thought, Ellen,
+you never heard nothing."
+
+"How could I have slept through all that din? Of course I heard.
+Why don't you tell me?"
+
+"I've hardly had time to glance at the paper myself," he said slowly.
+
+"You was reading it just now," she said severely, "for I heard the
+rustling. You begun reading it before you lit the gas-ring. Don't
+tell me! What was that they was shouting about the Edgware Road?"
+
+"Well," said Bunting, "as you do know, I may as well tell you. The
+Avenger's moving West--that's what he's doing. Last time 'twas
+King's Cross--now 'tis the Edgware Road. I said he'd come our way,
+and he has come our way!"
+
+"You just go and get me that paper," she commanded. "I wants to
+see for myself."
+
+Bunting went into the next room; then he came back and handed her
+silently the odd-looking, thin little sheet.
+
+"Why, whatever's this?" she asked. "This ain't our paper!"
+
+"'Course not," he answered, a trifle crossly. "It's a special early
+edition of the Sun, just because of The Avenger. Here's the bit
+about it"--he showed her the exact spot. But she would have found
+it, even by the comparatively bad light of the gas-jet now flaring
+over the dressing-table, for the news was printed in large, clear
+characters:--
+
+"Once more the murder fiend who chooses to call himself The Avenger
+has escaped detection. While the whole attention of the police,
+and of the great army of amateur detectives who are taking an
+interest in this strange series of atrocious crimes, were
+concentrating their attention round the East End and King's Cross,
+he moved swiftly and silently Westward. And, choosing a time when
+the Edgware Road is at its busiest and most thronged, did another
+human being to death with lightning-like quickness and savagery.
+
+"Within fifty yards of the deserted warehouse yard where he had
+lured his victim to destruction were passing up and down scores of
+happy, busy people, intent on their Christmas shopping. Into that
+cheerful throng he must have plunged within a moment of committing
+his atrocious crime. And it was only owing to the merest accident
+that the body was discovered as soon as it was--that is, just
+after midnight.
+
+"Dr. Dowtray, who was called to the spot at once, is of opinion that
+the woman had been dead at least three hours, if not four. It was at
+first thought--we were going to say, hoped--that this murder had
+nothing to do with the series which is now puzzling and horrifying
+the whole of the civilised world. But no--pinned on the edge of the
+dead woman's dress was the usual now familiar triangular piece of
+grey paper--the grimmest visiting card ever designed by the wit of
+man! And this time The Avenger has surpassed himself as regards his
+audacity and daring--so cold in its maniacal fanaticism and abhorrent
+wickedness."
+
+All the time that Mrs. Bunting was reading with slow, painful
+intentness, her husband was looking at her, longing, yet afraid, to
+burst out with a new idea which he was burning to confide even to his
+Ellen's unsympathetic ears.
+
+At last, when she had quite finished, she looked up defiantly.
+
+"Haven't you anything better to do than to stare at me like that?"
+she said irritably. "Murder or no murder, I've got to get up! Go
+away--do!"
+
+And Bunting went off into the next room.
+
+After he had gone, his wife lay back and closed her eyes. She tried
+to think of nothing. Nay, more--so strong, so determined was her
+will that for a few moments she actually did think of nothing. She
+felt terribly tired and weak, brain and body both quiescent, as does
+a person who is recovering from a long, wearing illness.
+
+Presently detached, puerile thoughts drifted across the surface of
+her mind like little clouds across a summer sky. She wondered if
+those horrid newspaper men were allowed to shout in Belgrave Square;
+she wondered if, in that case, Margaret, who was so unlike her
+brother-in-law, would get up and buy a paper. But no. Margaret
+was not one to leave her nice warm bed for such a silly reason as
+that.
+
+Was it to-morrow Daisy was coming back? Yes--to-morrow, not
+to-day. Well, that was a comfort, at any rate. What amusing things
+Daisy would be able to tell about her visit to Margaret! The girl
+had an excellent gift of mimicry. And Margaret, with her precise,
+funny ways, her perpetual talk about "the family," lent herself to
+the cruel gift.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting's mind--her poor, weak, tired mind--wandered
+off to young Chandler. A funny thing love was, when you came to
+think of it--which she, Ellen Bunting, didn't often do. There was
+Joe, a likely young fellow, seeing a lot of young women, and pretty
+young women, too,--quite as pretty as Daisy, and ten times more
+artful--and yet there! He passed them all by, had done so ever
+since last summer, though you might be sure that they, artful minxes,
+by no manner of means passed him by,--without giving them a thought!
+As Daisy wasn't here, he would probably keep away to-day. There
+was comfort in that thought, too.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful
+turgid flood. If Joe did come in, she must nerve herself to hear
+all that--that talk there'd be about The Avenger between him and
+Bunting.
+
+Slowly she dragged herself out of bed, feeling exactly as if she
+had just recovered from an illness which had left her very weak,
+very, very tired in body and soul.
+
+She stood for a moment listening--listening, and shivering, for
+it was very cold. Considering how early it still was, there
+seemed a lot of coming and going in the Marylebone Road. She could
+hear the unaccustomed sounds through her closed door and the tightly
+fastened windows of the sitting-room. There must be a regular
+crowd of men and women, on foot and in cabs, hurrying to the scene
+of The Avenger's last extraordinary crime.
+
+She heard the sudden thud made by their usual morning paper falling
+from the letter-box on to the floor of the hall, and a moment later
+came the sound of Bunting quickly, quietly going out and getting it.
+She visualised him coming back, and sitting down with a sigh of
+satisfaction by the newly-lit fire.
+
+Languidly she began dressing herself to the accompaniment of distant
+tramping and of noise of passing traffic, which increased in volume
+and in sound as the moments slipped by.
+
+******
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went down into her kitchen everything looked just
+as she had left it, and there was no trace of the acrid smell she
+had expected to find there. Instead, the cavernous, whitewashed
+room was full of fog, but she noticed that, though the shutters were
+bolted and barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had
+been widely opened to the air. She had left them shut.
+
+Making a "spill" out of a twist of newspaper--she had been taught
+the art as a girl by one of her old mistresses--she stooped and
+flung open the oven-door of her gas-stove. Yes, it was as she had
+expected, a fierce heat had been generated there since she had last
+used the oven, and through to the stone floor below had fallen a
+mass of black, gluey soot.
+
+Mrs. Bunting took the ham and eggs that she had bought the previous
+day for her own and Bunting's breakfast upstairs, and broiled them
+over the gas-ring in their sitting-room. Her husband watched her in
+surprised silence. She had never done such a thing before.
+
+"I couldn't stay down there," she said; "it was so cold and foggy.
+I thought I'd make breakfast up here, just for to-day."
+
+"Yes," he said kindly; "that's quite right, Ellen. I think you've
+done quite right, my dear."
+
+But, when it came to the point, his wife could not eat any of the
+nice breakfast she had got ready; she only had another cup of tea.
+
+"I'm afraid you're ill, Ellen?" Bunting asked solicitously.
+
+"No," she said shortly; "I'm not ill at all. Don't be silly! The
+thought of that horrible thing happening so close by has upset me,
+and put me off my food. Just hark to them now!"
+
+Through their closed windows penetrated the sound of scurrying feet
+and loud, ribald laughter. What a crowd; nay, what a mob, must be
+hastening busily to and from the spot where there was now nothing
+to be seen!
+
+Mrs. Bunting made her husband lock the front gate. "I don't want
+any of those ghouls in here!" she exclaimed angrily. And then,
+"What a lot of idle people there are in the world!" she said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Bunting began moving about the room restlessly. He would go to the
+window; stand there awhile staring out at the people hurrying past;
+then, coming back to the fireplace, sit down.
+
+But he could not stay long quiet. After a glance at his paper, up
+he would rise from his chair, and go to the window again.
+
+"I wish you'd stay still," his wife said at last. And then, a few
+minutes later, "Hadn't you better put your hat and coat on and go
+out?" she exclaimed.
+
+And Bunting, with a rather shamed expression, did put on his hat
+and coat and go out.
+
+As he did so he told himself that, after all, he was but human; it
+was natural that he should be thrilled and excited by the dreadful,
+extraordinary thing which had just happened close by. Ellen wasn't
+reasonable about such things. How queer and disagreeable she had
+been that very morning--angry with him because he had gone out
+to hear what all the row was about, and even more angry when he had
+come back and said nothing, because he thought it would annoy her
+to hear about it!
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Bunting forced herself to go down again into the
+kitchen, and as she went through into the low, whitewashed place,
+a tremor of fear, of quick terror, came over her. She turned and
+did what she had never in her life done before, and what she had
+never heard of anyone else doing in a kitchen. She bolted the door.
+
+But, having done this, finding herself at last alone, shut off from
+everybody, she was still beset by a strange, uncanny dread. She
+felt as if she were locked in with an invisible presence, which
+mocked and jeered, reproached and threatened her, by turns.
+
+Why had she allowed, nay encouraged, Daisy to go away for two days?
+Daisy, at any rate, was company--kind, young, unsuspecting company.
+With Daisy she could be her old sharp self. It was such a comfort
+to be with someone to whom she not only need, but ought to, say
+nothing. When with Bunting she was pursued by a sick feeling of
+guilt, of shame. She was the man's wedded wife--in his stolid way
+he was very kind to her, and yet she was keeping from him something
+he certainly had a right to know.
+
+Not for worlds, however, would she have told Bunting of her dreadful
+suspicion--nay, of her almost certainty.
+
+At last she went across to the door and unlocked it. Then she went
+upstairs and turned out her bedroom. That made her feel a little
+better.
+
+She longed for Bunting to return, and yet in a way she was relieved
+by his absence. She would have liked to feel him near by, and yet
+she welcomed anything that took her husband out of the house.
+
+And as Mrs. Bunting swept and dusted, trying to put her whole mind
+into what she was doing, she was asking herself all the time what
+was going on upstairs.
+
+What a good rest the lodger was having! But there, that was only
+natural. Mr. Sleuth, as she well knew, had been up a long time last
+night, or rather this morning.
+
+******
+
+Suddenly, the drawing-room bell rang. But Mr. Sleuth's landlady did
+not go up, as she generally did, before getting ready the simple meal
+which was the lodger's luncheon and breakfast combined. Instead, she
+went downstairs again and hurriedly prepared the lodger's food.
+
+Then, very slowly, with her heart beating queerly, she walked up, and
+just outside the sitting-room--for she felt sure that Mr. Sleuth had
+got up, that he was there already, waiting for her--she rested the
+tray on the top of the banisters and listened. For a few moments she
+heard nothing; then through the door came the high, quavering voice
+with which she had become so familiar:
+
+"'She saith to him, stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in
+secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there,
+and that her guests are in the depths of hell.'"
+
+There was a long pause. Mrs. Bunting could hear the leaves of
+her Bible being turned over, eagerly, busily; and then again Mr.
+Sleuth broke out, this time in a softer voice:
+
+"'She hath cast down many wounded from her; yea, many strong men
+have been slain by her.'" And in a softer, lower, plaintive tone
+came the words: "'I applied my heart to know, and to search, and
+to seek out wisdom and the reason of things; and to know the
+wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness.'"
+
+And as she stood there listening, a feeling of keen distress, of
+spiritual oppression, came over Mrs. Bunting. For the first time
+in her life she visioned the infinite mystery, the sadness and
+strangeness, of human life.
+
+Poor Mr. Sleuth--poor unhappy, distraught Mr. Sleuth! An
+overwhelming pity blotted out for a moment the fear, aye, and the
+loathing, she had been feeling for her lodger.
+
+She knocked at the door, and then she took up her tray.
+
+"Come in, Mrs. Bunting." Mr. Sleuth's voice sounded feebler, more
+toneless than usual.
+
+She turned the handle of the door and walked in. The lodger was
+not sitting in his usual place; he had taken the little round table
+on which his candle generally rested when he read in bed, out of
+his bedroom, and placed it over by the drawing-room window. On it
+were placed, open, the Bible and the Concordance. But as his
+landlady came in, Mr. Sleuth hastily closed the Bible, and began
+staring dreamily out of the window, down at the sordid, hurrying
+crowd of men and women which now swept along the Marylebone Road.
+
+"There seem a great many people out today," he observed, without
+looking round.
+
+"Yes, sir, there do."
+
+Mrs. Bunting began busying herself with laying the cloth and
+putting out the breakfast-lunch, and as she did so she was seized
+with a mortal, instinctive terror of the man sitting there.
+
+At last Mr. Sleuth got up and turned round. She forced herself to
+look at him. How tired, how worn, he looked, and--how strange!
+
+Walking towards the table on which lay his meal, he rubbed his hands
+together with a nervous gesture--it was a gesture he only made when
+something had pleased, nay, satisfied him. Mrs. Bunting, looking at
+him, remembered that he had rubbed his hands together thus when he
+had first seen the room upstairs, and realised that it contained a
+large gas-stove and a convenient sink.
+
+What Mr. Sleuth was doing now also reminded her in an odd way of a
+play she had once seen--a play to which a young man had taken her
+when she was a girl, unnumbered years ago, and which had thrilled
+and fascinated her. "Out, out, damned spot!" that was what the tall,
+fierce, beautiful lady who had played the part of a queen had said,
+twisting her hands together just as the lodger was doing now.
+
+"It's a fine day," said Mr. Sleuth, sitting down and unfolding his
+napkin. "The fog has cleared. I do not know if you will agree with
+me, Mrs. Bunting, but I always feel brighter when the sun is shining,
+as it is now, at any rate, trying to shine." He looked at her
+inquiringly, but Mrs. Bunting could not speak. She only nodded.
+However, that did not affect Mr. Sleuth adversely.
+
+He had acquired a great liking and respect for this well-balanced,
+taciturn woman. She was the first woman for whom he had experienced
+any such feeling for many years past.
+
+He looked down at the still covered dish, and shook his head. "I
+don't feel as if I could eat very much to-day," he said plaintively.
+And then he suddenly took a half-sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket.
+
+Already Mrs. Bunting had noticed that it was not the same waistcoat
+Mr. Sleuth had been wearing the day before.
+
+"Mrs. Bunting, may I ask you to come here?"
+
+And after a moment of hesitation his landlady obeyed him.
+
+"Will you please accept this little gift for the use you kindly
+allowed me to make of your kitchen last night?" he said quietly.
+"I tried to make as little mess as I could, Mrs. Bunting, but--
+well, the truth is I was carrying out a very elaborate experiment."
+
+Mrs. Bunting held out her hand, she hesitated, and then she took
+the coin. The fingers which for a moment brushed lightly against
+her palm were icy cold--cold and clammy. Mr. Sleuth was evidently
+not well.
+
+As she walked down the stairs, the winter sun, a scarlet ball
+hanging in the smoky sky, glinted in on Mr. Sleuth's landlady, and
+threw blood-red gleams, or so it seemed to her, on to the piece of
+gold she was holding in her hand.
+
+******
+
+The day went by, as other days had gone by in that quiet household,
+but, of course, there was far greater animation outside the little
+house than was usually the case.
+
+Perhaps because the sun was shining for the first time for some
+days, the whole of London seemed to be making holiday in that part
+of the town.
+
+When Bunting at last came back, his wife listened silently while he
+told her of the extraordinary excitement reigning everywhere. And
+then, after he had been talking a long while, she suddenly shot a
+strange look at him.
+
+"I suppose you went to see the place?" she said.
+
+And guiltily he acknowledged that he had done so.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, there wasn't anything much to see--not now. But, oh, Ellen,
+the daring of him! Why, Ellen, if the poor soul had had time to cry
+out--which they don't believe she had--it's impossible someone
+wouldn't 'a heard her. They say that if he goes on doing it like
+that--in the afternoon, like--he never will be caught. He must
+have just got mixed up with all the other people within ten seconds
+of what he'd done!"
+
+During the afternoon Bunting bought papers recklessly--in fact, he
+must have spent the best part of six-pence. But in spite of all the
+supposed and suggested clues, there was nothing--nothing at all new
+to read, less, in fact than ever before.
+
+The police, it was clear, were quite at a loss, and Mrs. Bunting
+began to feel curiously better, less tired, less ill, less--less
+terrified than she had felt through the morning.
+
+And then something happened which broke with dramatic suddenness the
+quietude of the day.
+
+They had had their tea, and Bunting was reading the last of the
+papers he had run out to buy, when suddenly there came a loud,
+thundering, double knock at the door.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. "Why, whoever can that be?" she
+said.
+
+But as Bunting got up she added quickly, "You just sit down again.
+I'll go myself. Sounds like someone after lodgings. I'll soon send
+them to the right-about!"
+
+And then she left the room, but not before there had come another
+loud double knock.
+
+Mrs. Bunting opened the front door. In a moment she saw that the
+person who stood there was a stranger to her. He was a big, dark
+man, with fierce, black moustaches. And somehow--she could not
+have told you why--he suggested a policeman to Mrs. Bunting's mind.
+
+This notion of hers was confirmed by the very first words he uttered.
+For, "I'm here to execute a warrant!" he exclaimed in a theatrical,
+hollow tone.
+
+With a weak cry of protest Mrs. Bunting suddenly threw out her arms
+as if to bar the way; she turned deadly white--but then, in an
+instant the supposed stranger's laugh rang out, with loud, jovial,
+familiar sound!
+
+"There now, Mrs. Bunting! I never thought I'd take you in as well
+as all that!"
+
+It was Joe Chandler--Joe Chandler dressed up, as she knew he
+sometimes, not very often, did dress up in the course of his work.
+
+Mrs. Bunting began laughing--laughing helplessly, hysterically,
+just as she had done on the morning of Daisy's arrival, when the
+newspaper-sellers had come shouting down the Marylebone Road.
+
+"What's all this about?" Bunting came out
+
+Young Chandler ruefully shut the front door. "I didn't mean to
+upset her like this," he said, looking foolish; "'twas just my silly
+nonsense, Mr. Bunting." And together they helped her into the
+sitting-room.
+
+But, once there, poor Mrs. Bunting went on worse than ever; she
+threw her black apron over her face, and began to sob hysterically.
+
+"I made sure she'd know who I was when I spoke," went on the young
+fellow apologetically. "But, there now, I have upset her. I am
+sorry!"
+
+"It don't matter!" she exclaimed, throwing the apron off her face,
+but the tears were still streaming from her eyes as she sobbed and
+laughed by turns. "Don't matter one little bit, Joe! 'Twas stupid
+of me to be so taken aback. But, there, that murder that's happened
+close by, it's just upset me--upset me altogether to-day."
+
+"Enough to upset anyone--that was," acknowledged the young man
+ruefully. "I've only come in for a minute, like. I haven't no
+right to come when I'm on duty like this--"
+
+Joe Chandler was looking longingly at what remains of the meal were
+still on the table.
+
+"You can take a minute just to have a bite and a sup," said Bunting
+hospitably; "and then you can tell us any news there is, Joe. We're
+right in the middle of everything now, ain't we?" He spoke with
+evident enjoyment, almost pride, in the gruesome fact.
+
+Joe nodded. Already his mouth was full of bread-and-butter. He
+waited a moment, and then: "Well I have got one piece of news--not
+that I suppose it'll interest you very much."
+
+They both looked at him--Mrs. Bunting suddenly calm, though her
+breast still heaved from time to time.
+
+"Our Boss has resigned!" said Joe Chandler slowly, impressively.
+
+"No! Not the Commissioner o' Police?" exclaimed Bunting.
+
+"Yes, he has. He just can't bear what's said about us any longer
+--and I don't wonder! He done his best, and so's we all. The
+public have just gone daft--in the West End, that is, to-day. As
+for the papers, well, they're something cruel--that's what they
+are. And the ridiculous ideas they print! You'd never believe the
+things they asks us to do--and quite serious-like."
+
+"What d'you mean?" questioned Mrs. Bunting. She really wanted to
+know.
+
+"Well, the Courier declares that there ought to be a house-to-house
+investigation--all over London. Just think of it! Everybody to
+let the police go all over their house, from garret to kitchen,
+just to see if The Avenger isn't concealed there. Dotty, I calls
+it! Why, 'twould take us months and months just to do that one
+job in a town like London."
+
+"I'd like to see them dare come into my house!" said Mrs. Bunting
+angrily.
+
+"It's all along of them blarsted papers that The Avenger went to
+work a different way this time," said Chandler slowly.
+
+Bunting had pushed a tin of sardines towards his guest, and was
+eagerly listening. "How d'you mean?" he asked. "I don't take
+your meaning, Joe."
+
+"Well, you see, it's this way. The newspapers was always saying
+how extraordinary it was that The Avenger chose such a peculiar
+time to do his deeds--I mean, the time when no one's about the
+streets. Now, doesn't it stand to reason that the fellow, reading
+all that, and seeing the sense of it, said to himself, 'I'll go on
+another tack this time'? Just listen to this!" He pulled a strip
+of paper, part of a column cut from a newspaper, out of his pocket:
+
+
+"'AN EX-LORD MAYOR OF LONDON ON THE AVENGER
+
+
+"'Will the murderer be caught? Yes,' replied Sir John, 'he will
+certainly be caught--probably when he commits his next crime. A
+whole army of bloodhounds, metaphorical and literal, will be on his
+track the moment he draws blood again. With the whole community
+against him, he cannot escape, especially when it be remembered that
+he chooses the quietest hour in the twenty-four to commit his crimes.
+
+"'Londoners are now in such a state of nerves--if I may use the
+expression, in such a state of funk--that every passer-by, however
+innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his
+avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one and
+three in the morning.'
+
+"I'd like to gag that ex-Lord Mayor!" concluded Joe Chandler
+wrathfully.
+
+Just then the lodger's bell rang.
+
+"Let me go up, my dear," said Bunting.
+
+His wife still looked pale and shaken by the fright she had had.
+
+"No, no," she said hastily. "You stop down here, and talk to Joe.
+I'll look after Mr. Sleuth. He may be wanting his supper just a
+bit earlier than usual to-day."
+
+Slowly, painfully, again feeling as if her legs were made of cotton
+wool, she dragged herself up to the first floor, knocked at the door,
+and then went in.
+
+"You did ring, sir?" she said, in her quiet, respectful way.
+
+And Mr. Sleuth looked up.
+
+She thought--but, as she reminded herself afterwards, it might have
+been just her idea, and nothing else--that for the first time the
+lodger looked frightened--frightened and cowed.
+
+"I heard a noise downstairs," he said fretfully, "and I wanted to
+know what it was all about. As I told you, Mrs. Bunting, when I
+first took these rooms, quiet is essential to me."
+
+"It was just a friend of ours, sir. I'm sorry you were disturbed.
+Would you like the knocker taken off to-morrow? Bunting'll be
+pleased to do it if you don't like to hear the sound of the knocks."
+
+"Oh, no, I wouldn't put you to such trouble as that." Mr. Sleuth
+looked quite relieved. "Just a friend of yours, was it, Mrs.
+Bunting? He made a great deal of noise."
+
+"Just a young fellow," she said apologetically. "The son of one of
+Bunting's old friends. He often comes here, sir; but he never did
+give such a great big double knock as that before. I'll speak to
+him about it."
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. Bunting. I would really prefer you did nothing of
+the kind. It was just a passing annoyance--nothing more!"
+
+She waited a moment. How strange that Mr. Sleuth said nothing of
+the hoarse cries which had made of the road outside a perfect Bedlam
+every hour or two throughout that day. But no, Mr. Sleuth made no
+allusion to what might well have disturbed any quiet gentleman at
+his reading.
+
+"I thought maybe you'd like to have supper a little earlier to-night,
+sir?"
+
+"Just when you like, Mrs. Bunting--just when it's convenient. I
+do not wish to put you out in any way."
+
+She felt herself dismissed, and going out quietly, closed the door.
+
+As she did so, she heard the front door banging to. She sighed
+--Joe Chandler was really a very noisy young fellow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mrs. Bunting slept well the night following that during which the
+lodger had been engaged in making his mysterious experiments in her
+kitchen. She was so tired, so utterly exhausted, that sleep came
+to her the moment she laid her head upon her pillow.
+
+Perhaps that was why she rose so early the next morning. Hardly
+giving herself time to swallow the tea Bunting had made and brought
+her, she got up and dressed.
+
+She had suddenly come to the conclusion that the hall and staircase
+required a thorough "doing down," and she did not even wait till
+they had eaten their breakfast before beginning her labours. It
+made Bunting feel quite uncomfortable. As he sat by the fire reading
+his morning paper--the paper which was again of such absorbing
+interest--he called out, "There's no need for so much hurry, Ellen.
+Daisy'll be back to-day. Why don't you wait till she's come home to
+help you?"
+
+But from the hall where she was busy dusting, sweeping, polishing,
+his wife's voice came back: "Girls ain't no good at this sort of
+work. Don't you worry about me. I feel as if I'd enjoy doing an
+extra bit of cleaning to-day. I don't like to feel as anyone could
+come in and see my place dirty."
+
+"No fear of that!" Bunting chuckled. And then a new thought struck
+him. "Ain't you afraid of waking the lodger?" he called out.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth slept most of yesterday, and all last night," she
+answered quickly. "As it is, I study him over-much; it's a long,
+long time since I've done this staircase down."
+
+All the time she was engaged in doing the hall, Mrs. Bunting left
+the sitting-room door wide open.
+
+That was a queer thing of her to do, but Bunting didn't like to get
+up and shut her out, as it were. Still, try as he would, he couldn't
+read with any comfort while all that noise was going on. He had
+never known Ellen make such a lot of noise before. Once or twice he
+looked up and frowned rather crossly.
+
+There came a sudden silence, and he was startled to see that. Ellen
+was standing in the doorway, staring at him, doing nothing.
+
+"Come in," he said, "do! Ain't you finished yet?"
+
+"I was only resting a minute," she said. "You don't tell me nothing.
+I'd like to know if there's anything--I mean anything new--in the
+paper this morning."
+
+She spoke in a muffled voice, almost as if she were ashamed of her
+unusual curiosity; and her look of fatigue, of pallor, made Bunting
+suddenly uneasy. "Come in--do!" he repeated sharply. "You've
+done quite enough--and before breakfast, too. 'Tain't necessary.
+Come in and shut that door."
+
+He spoke authoritatively, and his wife, for a wonder, obeyed him.
+
+She came in, and did what she had never done before--brought the
+broom with her, and put it up against the wall in the corner.
+
+Then she sat down.
+
+"I think I'll make breakfast up here," she said. "I--I feel cold,
+Bunting." And her husband stared at her surprised, for drops of
+perspiration were glistening on her forehead.
+
+He got up. "All right. I'll go down and bring the eggs up. Don't
+you worry. For the matter of that, I can cook them downstairs if
+you like."
+
+"No," she said obstinately. "I'd rather do my own work. You just
+bring them up here--that'll be all right. To-morrow morning we'll
+have Daisy to help see to things."
+
+"Come over here and sit down comfortable in my chair," he suggested
+kindly. "You never do take any bit of rest, Ellen. I never see'd
+such a woman!"
+
+And again she got up and meekly obeyed him, walking across the room
+with languid steps.
+
+He watched her, anxiously, uncomfortably.
+
+She took up the newspaper he had just laid down, and Bunting took
+two steps towards her.
+
+"I'll show you the most interesting bit" he said eagerly. "It's
+the piece headed, 'Our Special Investigator.' You see, they've
+started a special investigator of their own, and he's got hold of
+a lot of little facts the police seem to have overlooked. The man
+who writes all that--I mean the Special Investigator--was a
+famous 'tec in his time, and he's just come back out of his
+retirement o' purpose to do this bit of work for the paper. You
+read what he says--I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he ends by
+getting that reward! One can see he just loves the work of
+tracking people down."
+
+"There's nothing to be proud of in such a job," said his wife
+listlessly.
+
+"He'll have something to be proud of if he catches The Avenger!"
+cried Bunting. He was too keen about this affair to be put off
+by Ellen's contradictory remarks. "You just notice that bit about
+the rubber soles. Now, no one's thought o' that. I'll just tell
+Chandler--he don't seem to me to be half awake, that young man
+don't."
+
+"He's quite wide awake enough without you saying things to him!
+How about those eggs, Bunting? I feel quite ready for my breakfast
+even if you don't--"
+
+Mrs. Bunting now spoke in what her husband sometimes secretly
+described to himself as "Ellen's snarling voice."
+
+He turned away and left the room, feeling oddly troubled. There
+was something queer about her, and he couldn't make it out. He
+didn't mind it when she spoke sharply and nastily to him. He was
+used to that. But now she was so up and down; so different from
+what she used to be! In old days she had always been the same, but
+now a man never knew where to have her.
+
+And as he went downstairs he pondered uneasily over his wife's
+changed ways and manner.
+
+Take the question of his easy chair. A very small matter, no doubt,
+but he had never known Ellen sit in that chair--no, not even once,
+for a minute, since it had been purchased by her as a present for him.
+
+They had been so happy, so happy, and so--so restful, during that
+first week after Mr. Sleuth had come to them. Perhaps it was the
+sudden, dramatic change from agonising anxiety to peace and security
+which had been too much for Ellen--yes, that was what was the matter
+with her, that and the universal excitement about these Avenger
+murders, which were shaking the nerves of all London. Even Bunting,
+unobservant as he was, had come to realise that his wife took a
+morbid interest in these terrible happenings. And it was the more
+queer of her to do so that at first she refused to discuss them, and
+said openly that she was utterly uninterested in murder or crime of
+any sort.
+
+He, Bunting, had always had a mild pleasure in such things. In his
+time he had been a great reader of detective tales, and even now he
+thought there was no pleasanter reading. It was that which had first
+drawn him to Joe Chandler, and made him welcome the young chap as
+cordially as he had done when they first came to London.
+
+But though Ellen had tolerated, she had never encouraged, that sort
+of talk between the two men. More than once she had exclaimed
+reproachfully: "To hear you two, one would think there was no nice,
+respectable, quiet people left in the world!"
+
+But now all that was changed. She was as keen as anyone could be
+to hear the latest details of an Avenger crime. True, she took her
+own view of any theory suggested. But there! Ellen always had had
+her own notions about everything under the sun. Ellen was a woman
+who thought for herself--a clever woman, not an everyday woman by
+any manner of means.
+
+While these thoughts were going disconnectedly through his mind,
+Bunting was breaking four eggs into a basin. He was going to give
+Ellen a nice little surprise--to cook an omelette as a French chef
+had once taught him to do, years and years ago. He didn't know how
+she would take his doing such a thing after what she had said; but
+never mind, she would enjoy the omelette when done. Ellen hadn't
+been eating her food properly of late.
+
+And when he went up again, his wife, to his relief, and, it must be
+admitted, to his surprise, took it very well. She had not even
+noticed how long he had been downstairs, for she had been reading
+with intense, painful care the column that the great daily paper
+they took in had allotted to the one-time famous detective.
+
+According to this Special Investigator's own account he had
+discovered all sorts of things that had escaped the eye of the
+police and of the official detectives. For instance, owing, he
+admitted, to a fortunate chance, he had been at the place where
+the two last murders had been committed very soon after the double
+crime had been discovered--in fact within half an hour, and he
+had found, or so he felt sure, on the slippery, wet pavement
+imprints of the murderer's right foot.
+
+The paper reproduced the impression of a half-worn rubber sole.
+At the same time, he also admitted--for the Special Investigator
+was very honest, and he had a good bit of space to fill in the
+enterprising paper which had engaged him to probe the awful
+mystery--that there were thousands of rubber soles being worn in
+London. . . .
+
+And when she came to that statement Mrs. Bunting looked up, and
+there came a wan smile over her thin, closely-shut lips. It was
+quite true--that about rubber soles; there were thousands of
+rubber soles being worn just now. She felt grateful to the Special
+Investigator for having stated the fact so clearly.
+
+The column ended up with the words:
+
+"And to-day will take place the inquest on the double crime of ten
+days ago. To my mind it would be well if a preliminary public
+inquiry could be held at once. Say, on the very day the discovery
+of a fresh murder is made. In that way alone would it be possible
+to weigh and sift the evidence offered by members of the general
+public. For when a week or more has elapsed, and these same people
+have been examined and cross-examined in private by the police,
+their impressions have had time to become blurred and hopelessly
+confused. On that last occasion but one there seems no doubt
+that several people, at any rate two women and one man, actually
+saw the murderer hurrying from the scene of his atrocious double
+crime--this being so, to-day's investigation may be of the highest
+value and importance. To-morrow I hope to give an account of
+the impression made on me by the inquest, and by any statements
+made during its course."
+
+Even when her husband had come in with the tray Mrs. Bunting had
+gone on reading, only lifting up her eyes for a moment. At last he
+said rather crossly, "Put down that paper, Ellen, this minute! The
+omelette I've cooked for you will be just like leather if you don't
+eat it."
+
+But once his wife had eaten her breakfast--and, to Bunting's
+mortification, she left more than half the nice omelette untouched
+--she took the paper up again. She turned over the big sheets,
+until she found, at the foot of one of the ten columns devoted to
+The Avenger and his crimes, the information she wanted, and then
+uttered an exclamation under her breath.
+
+What Mrs. Bunting had been looking for--what at last she had found
+--was the time and place of the inquest which was to be held that
+day. The hour named was a rather odd time--two o'clock in the
+afternoon, but, from Mrs. Bunting's point of view, it was most
+convenient.
+
+By two o'clock, nay, by half-past one, the lodger would have had
+his lunch; by hurrying matters a little she and Bunting would have
+had their dinner, and--and Daisy wasn't coming home till tea-time.
+
+She got up out of her husband's chair. "I think you're right," she
+said, in a quick, hoarse tone. "I mean about me seeing a doctor,
+Bunting. I think I will go and see a doctor this very afternoon."
+
+"Wouldn't you like me to go with you?" he asked.
+
+"No, that I wouldn't. In fact I wouldn't go at all you was to go
+with me."
+
+"All right," he said vexedly. "Please yourself, my dear; you know
+best."
+
+"I should think I did know best where my own health is concerned."
+
+Even Bunting was incensed by this lack of gratitude. "'Twas I said,
+long ago, you ought to go and see the doctor; 'twas you said you
+wouldn't!" he exclaimed pugnaciously.
+
+"Well, I've never said you was never right, have I? At any rate,
+I'm going."
+
+"Have you a pain anywhere?" He stared at her with a look of real
+solicitude on his fat, phlegmatic face.
+
+Somehow Ellen didn't look right, standing there opposite him. Her
+shoulders seemed to have shrunk; even her cheeks had fallen in a
+little. She had never looked so bad--not even when they had been
+half starving, and dreadfully, dreadfully worked.
+
+"Yes," she said briefly, "I've a pain in my head, at the back of
+my neck. It doesn't often leave me; it gets worse when anything
+upsets me, like I was upset last night by Joe Chandler."
+
+"He was a silly ass to come and do a thing like that!" said Bunting
+crossly. "I'd a good mind to tell him so, too. But I must say,
+Ellen, I wonder he took you in--he didn't me!"
+
+"Well, you had no chance he should--you knew who it was," she said
+slowly.
+
+And Bunting remained silent, for Ellen was right. Joe Chandler had
+already spoken when he, Bunting, came out into the hall, and saw
+their cleverly disguised visitor.
+
+"Those big black moustaches," he went on complainingly, "and that
+black wig--why, 'twas too ridic'lous--that's what I call it!"
+
+"Not to anyone who didn't know Joe," she said sharply.
+
+"Well, I don't know. He didn't look like a real man--nohow. If
+he's a wise lad, he won't let our Daisy ever see him looking like
+that!" and Bunting laughed, a comfortable laugh.
+
+He had thought a good deal about Daisy and young Chandler the last
+two days, and, on the whole, he was well pleased.  It was a dull,
+unnatural life the girl was leading with Old Aunt. And Joe was
+earning good money. They wouldn't have long to wait, these two
+young people, as a beau and his girl often have to wait, as he,
+Bunting, and Daisy's mother had had to do, for ever so long before
+they could be married. No, there was no reason why they shouldn't
+be spliced quite soon--if so the fancy took them. And Bunting
+had very little doubt that so the fancy would take Joe, at any rate.
+
+But there was plenty of time. Daisy wouldn't be eighteen till the
+week after next. They might wait till she was twenty. By that
+time Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might have come into quite
+a tidy little bit of money.
+
+"What are you smiling at?" said his wife sharply.
+
+And he shook himself. "I--smiling? At nothing that I knows of."
+Then he waited a moment. "Well, if you will know, Ellen, I was
+just thinking of Daisy and that young chap Joe Chandler. He is
+gone on her, ain't he?"
+
+"Gone?" And then Mrs. Bunting laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly
+laugh. "Gone, Bunting?" she repeated. "Why, he's out o' sight
+--right, out of sight!"
+
+Then hesitatingly, and looking narrowly at her husband, she went on,
+twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke:--
+"I suppose he'll be going over this afternoon to fetch her? Or--or
+d'you think he'll have to be at that inquest, Bunting?"
+
+"Inquest? What inquest?" He looked at her puzzled.
+
+"Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by King's
+Cross."
+
+"Oh, no; he'd have no call to be at the inquest. For the matter o'
+that, I know he's going over to fetch Daisy. He said so last night
+--just when you went up to the lodger."
+
+"That's just as well." Mrs. Bunting spoke with considerable
+satisfaction. "Otherwise I suppose you'd ha' had to go. I wouldn't
+like the house left--not with us out of it. Mr. Sleuth would be
+upset if there came a ring at the door."
+
+"Oh, I won't leave the house, don't you be afraid, Ellen--not while
+you're out."
+
+"Not even if I'm out a good while, Bunting."
+
+"No fear. Of course, you'll be a long time if it's your idea to see
+that doctor at Ealing?"
+
+He looked at her questioningly, and Mrs. Bunting nodded. Somehow
+nodding didn't seem as bad as speaking a lie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Any ordeal is far less terrifying, far easier to meet with courage,
+when it is repeated, than is even a milder experience which is
+entirely novel.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had already attended an inquest, in the character of a
+witness, and it was one of the few happenings of her life which was
+sharply etched against the somewhat blurred screen of her memory.
+
+In a country house where the then Ellen Green had been staying for
+a fortnight with her elderly mistress, there had occurred one of
+those sudden, pitiful tragedies which occasionally destroy the
+serenity, the apparent decorum, of a large, respectable household.
+
+The under-housemaid, a pretty, happy-natured girl, had drowned
+herself for love of the footman, who had given his sweetheart cause
+for bitter jealousy. The girl had chosen to speak of her troubles
+to the strange lady's maid rather than to her own fellow-servants,
+and it was during the conversation the two women had had together
+that the girl had threatened to take her own life.
+
+As Mrs. Bunting put on her outdoor clothes, preparatory to going
+out, she recalled very clearly all the details of that dreadful
+affair, and of the part she herself had unwillingly played in it.
+
+She visualised the country inn where the inquest on that poor,
+unfortunate creature had been held.
+
+The butler had escorted her from the Hall, for he also was to give
+evidence, and as they came up there had been a look of cheerful
+animation about the inn yard; people coming and going, many women
+as well as men, village folk, among whom the dead girl's fate had
+aroused a great deal of interest, and the kind of horror which those
+who live on a dull countryside welcome rather than avoid.
+
+Everyone there had been particularly nice and polite to her, to
+Ellen Green; there had been a time of waiting in a room upstairs in
+the old inn, and the witnesses had been accommodated, not only with
+chairs, but with cake and wine.
+
+She remembered how she had dreaded being a witness, how she had
+felt as if she would like to run away from her nice, easy place,
+rather than have to get up and tell the little that she knew of the
+sad business.
+
+But it had not been so very dreadful after all. The coroner had
+been a kindly-spoken gentleman; in fact he had complimented her on
+the clear, sensible way she had given her evidence concerning the
+exact words the unhappy girl had used.
+
+One thing Ellen Green had said, in answer to a question put by
+an inquisitive juryman, had raised a laugh in the crowded,
+low-ceilinged room. "Ought not Miss Ellen Green," so the man had
+asked, "to have told someone of the girl's threat? If she had done
+so, might not the girl have been prevented from throwing herself
+into the lake?" And she, the witness, had answered, with some
+asperity--for by that time the coroner's kind manner had put her
+at her ease--that she had not attached any importance to what the
+girl had threatened to do, never believing that any young woman
+could be so silly as to drown herself for love!
+
+******
+
+Vaguely Mrs. Bunting supposed that the inquest at which she was
+going to be present this afternoon would be like that country
+inquest of long ago.
+
+It had been no mere perfunctory inquiry; she remembered very well
+how little by little that pleasant-spoken gentleman, the coroner,
+had got the whole truth out--the story, that is, of how that
+horrid footman, whom she, Ellen Green, had disliked from the first
+minute she had set eyes on him, had taken up with another young
+woman. It had been supposed that this fact would not be elicited
+by the coroner; but it had been, quietly, remorselessly; more, the
+dead girl's letters had been read out--piteous, queerly expressed
+letters, full of wild love and bitter, threatening jealousy. And
+the jury had censured the young man most severely; she remembered
+the look on his face when the people, shrinking back, had made a
+passage for him to slink out of the crowded room.
+
+Come to think of it now, it was strange she had never told Bunting
+that long-ago tale. It had occurred years before she knew him, and
+somehow nothing had ever happened to make her tell him about it.
+
+She wondered whether Bunting had ever been to an inquest. She longed
+to ask him. But if she asked him now, this minute, he might guess
+where she was thinking of going.
+
+And then, while still moving about her bedroom, she shook her head
+--no, no, Bunting would never guess such a thing; he would never,
+never suspect her of telling him a lie.
+
+Stop--had she told a lie? She did mean to go to the doctor after
+the inquest was finished--if there was time, that is. She wondered
+uneasily how long such an inquiry was likely to last. In this case,
+as so very little had been discovered, the proceedings would surely
+be very formal--formal and therefore short.
+
+She herself had one quite definite object--that of hearing the
+evidence of those who believed they had seen the murderer leaving
+the spot where his victims lay weltering in their still flowing
+blood. She was filled with a painful, secret, and, yes, eager
+curiosity to hear how those who were so positive about the matter
+would describe the appearance of The Avenger. After all, a lot of
+people must have seen him, for, as Bunting had said only the day
+before to young Chandler, The Avenger was not a ghost; he was a
+living man with some kind of hiding-place where he was known, and
+where he spent his time between his awful crimes.
+
+As she came back to the sitting-room, her extreme pallor struck her
+husband.
+
+"Why, Ellen," he said, "it is time you went to the doctor. You
+looks just as if you was going to a funeral. I'll come along with
+you as far as the station. You're going by train, ain't you? Not
+by bus, eh? It's a very long way to Ealing, you know."
+
+"There you go! Breaking your solemn promise to me the very first
+minute!" But somehow she did not speak unkindly, only fretfully
+and sadly.
+
+And Bunting hung his head. "Why, to be sure I'd gone and clean
+forgot the lodger! But will you be all right, Ellen? Why not wait
+till to-morrow, and take Daisy with you?"
+
+"I like doing my own business in my own way, and not in someone
+else's way!" she snapped out; and then more gently, for Bunting
+really looked concerned, and she did feel very far from well, "I'll
+be all right, old man. Don't you worry about me!"
+
+As she turned to go across to the door, she drew the black shawl
+she had put over her long jacket more closely round her.
+
+She felt ashamed, deeply ashamed, of deceiving so kind a husband.
+And yet, what could she do? How could she share her dreadful burden
+with poor Bunting? Why, 'twould be enough to make a man go daft.
+Even she often felt as if she could stand it no longer--as if she
+would give the world to tell someone--anyone--what it was that she
+suspected, what deep in her heart she so feared to be the truth.
+
+But, unknown to herself, the fresh outside air, fog-laden though it
+was, soon began to do her good. She had gone out far too little the
+last few days, for she had had a nervous terror of leaving the house
+unprotected, as also a great unwillingness to allow Bunting to come
+into contact with the lodger.
+
+When she reached the Underground station she stopped short. There
+were two ways of getting to St. Pancras--she could go by bus, or
+she could go by train. She decided on the latter. But before
+turning into the station her eyes strayed over the bills of the
+early afternoon papers lying on the ground.
+
+Two words,
+
+  THE AVENGER,
+
+stared up at her in varying type.
+
+Drawing her black shawl yet a little closer about her shoulders,
+Mrs. Bunting looked down at the placards. She did not feel inclined
+to buy a paper, as many of the people round her were doing. Her eyes
+were smarting, even now, from their unaccustomed following of the
+close print in the paper Bunting took in.
+
+Slowly she turned, at last, into the Underground station.
+
+And now a piece of extraordinary good fortune befell Mrs. Bunting.
+
+The third-class carriage in which she took her place happened to be
+empty, save for the presence of a police inspector. And once they
+were well away she summoned up courage, and asked him the question
+she knew she would have to ask of someone within the next few minutes.
+
+"Can you tell me," she said, in a low voice, "where death inquests
+are held"--she moistened her lips, waited a moment, and then
+concluded--"in the neighbourhood of King's Cross?"
+
+The man turned and, looked at her attentively. She did not look at
+all the sort of Londoner who goes to an inquest--there are many
+such--just for the fun of the thing. Approvingly, for he was a
+widower, he noted her neat black coat and skirt; and the plain
+Princess bonnet which framed her pale, refined face.
+
+"I'm going to the Coroner's Court myself." he said good-naturedly.
+"So you can come along of me. You see there's that big Avenger
+inquest going on to-day, so I think they'll have had to make other
+arrangements for--hum, hum--ordinary cases." And as she looked
+at him dumbly, he went on, "There'll be a mighty crowd of people at
+The Avenger inquest--a lot of ticket folk to be accommodated, to
+say nothing of the public."
+
+"That's the inquest I'm going to," faltered Mrs. Bunting. She could
+scarcely get the words out. She realised with acute discomfort,
+yes, and shame, how strange, how untoward, was that which she was
+going to do. Fancy a respectable woman wanting to attend a murder
+inquest!
+
+During the last few days all her perceptions had become sharpened
+by suspense and fear. She realised now, as she looked into the
+stolid face of her unknown friend, how she herself would have
+regarded any woman who wanted to attend such an inquiry from a
+simple, morbid feeling of curiosity. And yet--and yet that was
+just what she was about to do herself.
+
+"I've got a reason for wanting to go there," she murmured. It was
+a comfort to unburden herself this little way even to a stranger.
+
+"Ah!" he said reflectively. "A--a relative connected with one of
+the two victims' husbands, I presume?"
+
+And Mrs. Bunting bent her head.
+
+"Going to give evidence?" he asked casually, and then he turned and
+looked at Mrs. Bunting with far more attention than he had yet done.
+
+"Oh, no!" There was a world of horror, of fear in the speaker's voice.
+
+And the inspector felt concerned and sorry. "Hadn't seen her for
+quite a long time, I suppose?"
+
+"Never had, seen her. I'm from the country." Something impelled
+Mrs. Bunting to say these words. But she hastily corrected herself,
+"At least, I was."
+
+"Will he be there?"
+
+She looked at him dumbly; not in the least knowing to whom he was
+alluding.
+
+"I mean the husband," went on the inspector hastily. "I felt sorry
+for the last poor chap--I mean the husband of the last one--he
+seemed so awfully miserable. You see, she'd been a good wife and a
+good mother till she took to the drink."
+
+"It always is so," breathed out Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"Aye." He waited a moment. "D'you know anyone about the court?" he
+asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, don't you worry. I'll take you in along o' me. You'd never
+get in by yourself."
+
+They got out; and oh, the comfort of being in some one's charge, of
+having a determined man in uniform to look after one! And yet even
+now there was to Mrs. Bunting something dream-like, unsubstantial
+about the whole business.
+
+"If he knew--if he only knew what I know!" she kept saying over
+and over again to herself as she walked lightly by the big, burly
+form of the police inspector.
+
+"'Tisn't far--not three minutes," he said suddenly. "Am I walking
+too quick for you, ma'am?"'
+
+"No, not at all. I'm a quick walker."
+
+And then suddenly they turned a corner and came on a mass of people,
+a densely packed crowd of men and women, staring at a mean-looking
+little door sunk into a high wall.
+
+"Better take my arm," the inspector suggested. "Make way there!
+Make way!" he cried authoritatively; and he swept her through the
+serried ranks which parted at the sound of his voice, at the sight
+of his uniform.
+
+"Lucky you met me," he said, smiling. "You'd never have got
+through alone. And 'tain't a nice crowd, not by any manner of
+means."
+
+The small door opened just a little way, and they found themselves
+on a narrow stone-flagged path, leading into a square yard. A few
+men were out there, smoking.
+
+Before preceding her into the building which rose at the back of
+the yard, Mrs. Bunting's kind new friend took out his watch.
+"There's another twenty minutes before they'll begin," he said.
+"There's the mortuary"--he pointed with his thumb to a low room
+built out to the right of the court. "Would you like to go in and
+see them?" he whispered.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried, in a tone of extreme horror. And he looked
+down at her with sympathy, and with increased respect. She was a
+nice, respectable woman, she was. She had not come here imbued
+with any morbid, horrible curiosity, but because she thought it
+her duty to do so. He suspected her of being sister-in-law to
+one of The Avenger's victims.
+
+They walked through into a big room or hall, now full of men
+talking in subdued yet eager, animated tones.
+
+"I think you'd better sit down here," he said considerately, and,
+leading her to one of the benches that stood out from the whitewashed
+walls--"unless you'd rather be with the witnesses, that is."
+
+But again she said, "Oh, no!" And then, with an effort, "Oughtn't
+I to go into the court now, if it's likely to be so full?"
+
+"Don't you worry," he said kindly. "I'll see you get a proper place.
+I must leave you now for a minute, but I'll come back in good time
+and look after you."
+
+She raised the thick veil she had pulled down over her face while
+they were going through that sinister, wolfish-looking crowd outside,
+and looked about her.
+
+Many of the gentlemen--they mostly wore tall hats and good overcoats
+--standing round and about her looked vaguely familiar. She picked
+out one at once. He was a famous journalist, whose shrewd, animated
+face was familiar to her owing to the fact that it was widely
+advertised in connection with a preparation for the hair--the
+preparation which in happier, more prosperous days Bunting had had
+great faith in, and used, or so he always said, with great benefit to
+himself. This gentleman was the centre of an eager circle; half a
+dozen men were talking to him, listening deferentially when he spoke,
+and each of these men, so Mrs. Bunting realised, was a Somebody.
+
+How strange, how amazing, to reflect that from all parts of London,
+from their doubtless important avocations, one unseen, mysterious
+beckoner had brought all these men here together, to this sordid
+place, on this bitterly cold, dreary day. Here they were, all
+thinking of, talking of, evoking one unknown, mysterious personality
+--that of the shadowy and yet terribly real human being who chose
+to call himself The Avenger. And somewhere, not so very far away
+from them all The Avenger was keeping these clever, astute, highly
+trained minds--aye, and bodies, too--at bay.
+
+Even Mrs. Bunting, sitting here unnoticed, realised the irony of her
+presence among them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that she had been sitting there a long
+time--it was really about a quarter of an hour--when her official
+friend came back.
+
+"Better come along now," he whispered; "it'll begin soon."
+
+She followed him out into a passage, up a row of steep stone steps,
+and so into the Coroner's Court.
+
+The court was big, well-lighted room, in some ways not unlike a
+chapel, the more so that a kind of gallery ran half-way round, a
+gallery evidently set aside for the general public, for it was now
+crammed to its utmost capacity.
+
+Mrs. Bunting glanced timidly towards the serried row of faces. Had
+it not been for her good fortune in meeting the man she was now
+following, it was there that she would have had to try and make her
+way. And she would have failed. Those people had rushed in the
+moment the doors were opened, pushing, fighting their way in a way
+she could never have pushed or fought.
+
+There were just a few women among them, set, determined-looking
+women, belonging to every class, but made one by their love of
+sensation and their power of forcing their way in where they wanted
+to be. But the women were few; the great majority of those standing
+there were men--men who were also representative of every class of
+Londoner.
+
+The centre of the court was like an arena; it was sunk two or three
+steps below the surrounding gallery. Just now it was comparatively
+clear of people, save for the benches on which sat the men who were
+to compose the jury. Some way from these men, huddled together in
+a kind of big pew, stood seven people--three women and four men.
+
+"D'you see the witnesses?" whispered the inspector, pointing these
+out to her. He supposed her to know one of them with familiar
+knowledge, but, if that were so, she made no sign.
+
+Between the windows, facing the whole room, was a kind of little
+platform, on which stood a desk and an arm-chair. Mrs. Bunting
+guessed rightly that it was there the coroner would sit. And to
+the left of the platform was the witness-stand, also raised
+considerably above the jury.
+
+Amazingly different, and far, far more grim and awe-inspiring than
+the scene of the inquest which had taken place so long ago, on that
+bright April day, in the village inn. There the coroner had sat on
+the same level as the jury, and the witnesses had simply stepped
+forward one by one, and taken their place before him.
+
+Looking round her fearfully, Mrs. Bunting thought she would surely
+die if ever she were exposed to the ordeal of standing in that
+curious box-like stand, and she stared across at the bench where sat
+the seven witnesses with a feeling of sincere pity in her heart.
+
+But even she soon realised that her pity was wasted. Each woman
+witness looked eager, excited, and animated; well pleased to be the
+centre of attention and attraction to the general public. It was
+plain each was enjoying her part of important, if humble, actress
+in the thrilling drama which was now absorbing the attention of all
+London--it might almost be said of the whole world.
+
+Looking at these women, Mrs. Bunting wondered vaguely which was
+which. Was it that rather draggle-tailed-looking young person who
+had certainly, or almost certainly, seen The Avenger within ten
+seconds of the double crime being committed? The woman who, aroused
+by one of his victims' cry of terror, had rushed to her window and
+seen the murderer's shadowy form pass swiftly by in the fog?
+
+Yet another woman, so Mrs. Bunting now remembered, had given a most
+circumstantial account of what The Avenger looked like, for he, it
+was supposed, had actually brushed by her as he passed.
+
+Those two women now before her had been interrogated and
+cross-examined again and again, not only by the police, but by
+representatives of every newspaper in London. It was from what they
+had both said--unluckily their accounts materially differed--that
+that official description of The Avenger had been worked up--that
+which described him as being a good-looking, respectable young fellow
+of twenty-eight, carrying a newspaper parcel.
+
+As for the third woman, she was doubtless an acquaintance, a boon
+companion of the dead.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked away from the witnesses, and focused her gaze
+on another unfamiliar sight. Specially prominent, running indeed
+through the whole length of the shut-in space, that is, from the
+coroner's high dais right across to the opening in the wooden barrier,
+was an ink-splashed table at which, when she had first taken her
+place, there had been sitting three men busily sketching; but now
+every seat at the table was occupied by tired, intelligent-looking
+men, each with a notebook, or with some loose sheets of paper,
+before him.
+
+"Them's the reporters," whispered her friend. "They don't like
+coming till the last minute, for they has to be the last to go.
+At an ordinary inquest there are only two--maybe three--attending,
+but now every paper in the kingdom has pretty well applied for a
+pass to that reporters' table."
+
+He looked consideringly down into the well of the court. "Now let
+me see what I can do for you--"
+
+Then he beckoned to the coroner's officer: "Perhaps you could put
+this lady just over there, in a corner by herself? Related to a
+relation of the deceased, but doesn't want to be--" He whispered
+a word or two, and the other nodded sympathetically, and looked at
+Mrs. Bunting with interest. "I'll put her just here," he muttered.
+"There's no one coming there to-day. You see, there are only seven
+witnesses--sometimes we have a lot more than that."
+
+And he kindly put her on a now empty bench opposite to where the
+seven witnesses stood and sat with their eager, set faces, ready
+--aye, more than ready--to play their part.
+
+For a moment every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but
+soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised
+that she had nothing to do with the case. She was evidently there
+as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a "friend at
+court," and so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having to
+stand in the crowd.
+
+But she was not long left in isolation. Very soon some of the
+important-looking gentlemen she had seen downstairs came into the
+court, and were ushered over to her seat while two or three among
+them, including the famous writer whose face was so familiar that
+it almost seemed to Mrs. Bunting like that of a kindly acquaintance,
+were accommodated at the reporters' table.
+
+"Gentlemen, the Coroner."
+
+The jury stood up, shuffling their feet, and then sat down again;
+over the spectators there fell a sudden silence.
+
+And then what immediately followed recalled to Mrs. Bunting, for the
+first time, that informal little country inquest of long ago.
+
+First came the "Oyez! Oyez!" the old Norman-French summons to all
+whose business it is to attend a solemn inquiry into the death
+--sudden, unexplained, terrible--of a fellow-being.
+
+The jury--there were fourteen of them--all stood up again. They
+raised their hands and solemnly chanted together the curious words
+of their oath.
+
+Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences 'twixt the coroner
+and his officer.
+
+Yes, everything was in order. The jury had viewed the bodies--he
+quickly corrected himself--the body, for, technically speaking, the
+inquest just about to be held only concerned one body.
+
+And then, amid a silence so absolute that the slightest rustle could
+be heard through the court, the coroner--a clever-looking gentleman,
+though not so old as Mrs. Bunting thought he ought to have been to
+occupy so important a position on so important a day--gave a little
+history, as it were, of the terrible and mysterious Avenger crimes.
+
+He spoke very clearly, warming to his work as he went on.
+
+He told them that he had been present at the inquest held on one of
+The Avenger's former victims. "I only went through professional
+curiosity," he threw in by way of parenthesis, "little thinking,
+gentlemen, that the inquest on one of these unhappy creatures would
+ever be held in my court."
+
+On and on, he went, though he had, in truth, but little to say, and
+though that little was known to every one of his listeners.
+
+Mrs. Bunting heard one of the older gentlemen sitting near her
+whisper to another: "Drawing it out all he can; that's what he's
+doing. Having the time of his life, evidently!" And then the other
+whispered back, so low that she could only just catch the words,
+"Aye, aye. But he's a good chap--I knew his father; we were at
+school together. Takes his job very seriously, you know--he does
+to-day, at any rate."
+
+******
+
+She was listening intently, waiting for a word, a sentence, which
+would relieve her hidden terrors, or, on the other hand, confirm
+them. But the word, the sentence, was never uttered.
+
+And yet, at the very end of his long peroration, the coroner did
+throw out a hint which might mean anything--or nothing.
+
+"I am glad to say that we hope to obtain such evidence to-day as
+will in time lead to the apprehension of the miscreant who has
+committed, and is still committing, these terrible crimes."
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared uneasily up into the coroner's firm,
+determined-looking face. What did he mean by that? Was there any
+new evidence--evidence of which Joe Chandler, for instance, was
+ignorant? And, as if in answer to the unspoken question, her heart
+gave a sudden leap, for a big, burly man had taken his place in the
+witness-box--a policeman who had not been sitting with the other
+witnesses.
+
+But soon her uneasy terror became stilled. This witness was simply
+the constable who had found the first body. In quick, business-like
+tones he described exactly what had happened to him on that cold,
+foggy morning ten days ago. He was shown a plan, and he marked it
+slowly, carefully, with a thick finger. That was the exact place
+--no, he was making a mistake--that was the place where the other
+body had lain. He explained apologetically that he had got rather
+mixed up between the two bodies--that of Johanna Cobbett and Sophy
+Hurtle.
+
+And then the coroner intervened authoritatively: "For the purpose
+of this inquiry," he said, "we must, I think, for a moment consider
+the two murders together."
+
+After that, the witness went on far more comfortably; and as he
+proceeded, in a quick monotone, the full and deadly horror of
+The Avenger's acts came over Mrs. Bunting in a great seething flood
+of sick fear and--and, yes, remorse.
+
+Up to now she had given very little thought--if, indeed, any thought
+--to the drink-sodden victims of The Avenger. It was he who had
+filled her thoughts,--he and those who were trying to track him down.
+But now? Now she felt sick and sorry she had come here to-day. She
+wondered if she would ever be able to get the vision the policeman's
+words had conjured up out of her mind--out of her memory.
+
+And then there came an eager stir of excitement and of attention
+throughout the whole court, for the policeman had stepped down out of
+the witness-box, and one of the women witnesses was being conducted to
+his place.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked with interest and sympathy at the woman,
+remembering how she herself had trembled with fear, trembled as that
+poor, bedraggled, common-looking person was trembling now. The woman
+had looked so cheerful, so--so well pleased with herself till a
+minute ago, but now she had become very pale, and she looked round
+her as a hunted animal might have done.
+
+But the coroner was very kind, very soothing and gentle in his
+manner, just as that other coroner had been when dealing with Ellen
+Green at the inquest on that poor drowned girl.
+
+After the witness had repeated in a toneless voice the solemn words
+of the oath, she began to be taken, step by step, though her story.
+At once Mrs. Bunting realised that this was the woman who claimed
+to have seen The Avenger from her bedroom window. Gaining confidence,
+as she went on, the witness described how she had heard a long-drawn,
+stifled screech, and, aroused from deep sleep, had instinctively
+jumped out of bed and rushed to her window.
+
+The coroner looked down at something lying on his desk. "Let me
+see! Here is the plan. Yes--I think I understand that the house
+in which you are lodging exactly faces the alley where the two crimes
+were committed?"
+
+And there arose a quick, futile discussion. The house did not face
+the alley, but the window of the witness's bedroom faced the alley.
+
+"A distinction without a difference," said the coroner testily.
+"And now tell us as clearly and quickly as you can what you saw when
+you looked out."
+
+There fell a dead silence on the crowded court. And then the woman
+broke out, speaking more volubly and firmly than she had yet done.
+"I saw 'im!" she cried. "I shall never forget it--no, not till my
+dying day!" And she looked round defiantly.
+
+Mrs. Bunting suddenly remembered a chat one of the newspaper men had
+had with a person who slept under this woman's room. That person
+had unkindly said she felt sure that Lizzie Cole had not got up that
+night--that she had made up the whole story. She, the speaker, slept
+lightly, and that night had been tending a sick child. Accordingly,
+she would have heard if there had been either the scream described
+by Lizzie Cole, or the sound of Lizzie Cole jumping out of bed.
+
+"We quite understand that you think you saw the"--the coroner
+hesitated--"the individual who had just perpetrated these terrible
+crimes. But what we want to have from you is a description of him.
+In spite of the foggy atmosphere about which all are agreed, you
+say you saw him distinctly, walking along for some yards below your
+window. Now, please, try and tell us what he was like."
+
+The woman began twisting and untwisting the corner of a coloured
+handkerchief she held in her hand.
+
+"Let us begin at the beginning," said the coroner patiently. "What
+sort of a hat was this man wearing when you saw him hurrying from
+the passage?"
+
+"It was just a black 'at" said the witness at last, in a husky,
+rather anxious tone.
+
+"Yes--just a black hat. And a coat--were you able to see what
+sort of a coat he was wearing?"
+
+"'E 'adn't got no coat" she said decidedly. "No coat at all! I
+remembers that very perticulerly. I thought it queer, as it was
+so cold--everybody as can wears some sort o' coat this weather!"
+
+A juryman who had been looking at a strip of newspaper, and
+apparently not attending at all to what the witness was saying, here
+jumped up and put out his hand.
+
+"Yes?" the coroner turned to him.
+
+"I just want to say that this 'ere witness--if her name is Lizzie
+Cole, began by saying The Avenger was wearing a coat--a big, heavy
+coat. I've got it here, in this bit of paper."
+
+"I never said so!" cried the woman passionately. "I was made to
+say all those things by the young man what came to me from the
+Evening Sun. Just put in what 'e liked in 'is paper, 'e did--not
+what I said at all!"
+
+At this there was some laughter, quickly suppressed.
+
+"In future," said the coroner severely, addressing the juryman, who
+had now sat down again, "you must ask any question you wish to ask
+through your foreman, and please wait till I have concluded my
+examination of the witness."
+
+But this interruption, this--this accusation, had utterly upset
+the witness. She began contradicting herself hopelessly. The man
+she had seen hurrying by in the semi-darkness below was tall--no,
+he was short. He was thin--no, he was a stoutish young man. And
+as to whether he was carrying anything, there was quite an
+acrimonious discussion.
+
+Most positively, most confidently, the witness declared that she had
+seen a newspaper parcel under his arm; it had bulged out at the back
+--so she declared. But it was proved, very gently and firmly, that
+she had said nothing of the kind to the gentleman from Scotland Yard
+who had taken down her first account--in fact, to him she had
+declared confidently that the man had carried nothing--nothing at
+all; that she had seen his arms swinging up and down.
+
+One fact--if fact it could be called--the coroner did elicit.
+Lizzie Cole suddenly volunteered the statement that as he had passed
+her window he had looked up at her. This was quite a new statement.
+
+"He looked up at you?" repeated the coroner. "You said nothing of
+that in your examination."
+
+"I said nothink because I was scared--nigh scared to death!"
+
+"If you could really see his countenance, for we know the night was
+dark and foggy, will you please tell me what he was like?"
+
+But the coroner was speaking casually, his hand straying over his
+desk; not a creature in that court now believed the woman's story.
+
+"Dark!" she answered dramatically. "Dark, almost black! If you can
+take my meaning, with a sort of nigger look."
+
+And then there was a titter. Even the jury smiled. And sharply the
+coroner bade Lizzie Cole stand down.
+
+Far more credence was given to the evidence of the next witness.
+
+This was an older, quieter-looking woman, decently dressed in black.
+Being the wife of a night watchman whose work lay in a big warehouse
+situated about a hundred yards from the alley or passage where the
+crimes had taken place, she had gone out to take her husband some
+food he always had at one in the morning. And a man had passed her,
+breathing hard and walking very quickly. Her attention had been
+drawn to him because she very seldom met anyone at that hour, and
+because he had such an odd, peculiar look and manner.
+
+Mrs. Bunting, listening attentively, realised that it was very much
+from what this witness had said that the official description of The
+Avenger had been composed--that description which had brought such
+comfort to her, Ellen Bunting's, soul.
+
+This witness spoke quietly, confidently, and her account of the
+newspaper parcel the man was carrying was perfectly clear and
+positive.
+
+"It was a neat parcel," she said, "done up with string."
+
+She had thought it an odd thing for a respectably dressed young man
+to carry such a parcel--that was what had made her notice it. But
+when pressed, she had to admit that it had been a very foggy night
+--so foggy that she herself had been afraid of losing her way,
+though every step was familiar.
+
+When the third woman went into the box, and with sighs and tears
+told of her acquaintance with one of the deceased, with Johanna
+Cobbett, there was a stir of sympathetic attention. But she had
+nothing to say throwing any light on the investigation, save that
+she admitted reluctantly that "Anny" would have been such a nice,
+respectable young woman if it hadn't been for the drink.
+
+Her examination was shortened as much as possible; and so was that
+of the next witness, the husband of Johanna Cobbett. He was a very
+respectable-looking man, a foreman in a big business house at Croydon.
+He seemed to feel his position most acutely. He hadn't seen his
+wife for two years; he hadn't had news of her for six months. Before
+she took to drink she had been an admirable wife, and--and yes,
+mother.
+
+Yet another painful few minutes, to anyone who had a heart, or
+imagination to understand, was spent when the father of the murdered
+woman was in the box. He had had later news of his unfortunate
+daughter than her husband had had, but of course he could throw no
+light at all on her murder or murderer.
+
+A barman, who had served both the women with drink just before the
+public-house closed for the night, was handled rather roughly. He
+had stepped with a jaunty air into the box, and came out of it
+looking cast down, uneasy.
+
+And then there took place a very dramatic, because an utterly
+unexpected, incident. It was one of which the evening papers made
+the utmost much to Mrs. Bunting's indignation. But neither coroner
+nor jury--and they, after all, were the people who mattered--
+thought a great deal of it.
+
+There had come a pause in the proceedings. All seven witnesses had
+been heard, and a gentleman near Mrs. Bunting whispered, "They are
+now going to call Dr. Gaunt. He's been in every big murder case for
+the last thirty years. He's sure to have something interesting to
+say. It was really to hear him I came."
+
+But before Dr. Gaunt had time even to get up from the seat with
+which he had been accommodated close to the coroner, there came a
+stir among the general public, or, rather, among those spectators
+who stood near the low wooden door which separated the official
+part of the court from the gallery.
+
+The coroner's officer, with an apologetic air, approached the
+coroner, and handed him up an envelope. And again in an instant,
+there fell absolute silence on the court.
+
+Looking rather annoyed, the coroner opened the envelope. He glanced
+down the sheet of notepaper it contained. Then he looked up.
+
+"Mr.--" then he glanced down again. "Mr.--ah--Mr.--is it Cannot?"
+he said doubtfully, "may come forward."
+
+There ran a titter though the spectators, and the coroner frowned.
+
+A neat, jaunty-looking old gentleman, in a nice fur-lined overcoat,
+with a fresh, red face and white side-whiskers, was conducted from
+the place where he had been standing among the general public, to
+the witness-box.
+
+"This is somewhat out of order, Mr.--er--Cannot," said the
+coroner severely. "You should have sent me this note before the
+proceedings began. This gentleman," he said, addressing the jury,
+"informs me that he has something of the utmost importance to
+reveal in connection with our investigation."
+
+"I have remained silent--I have locked what I knew within my own
+breast"--began Mr. Cannot in a quavering voice, "because I am so
+afraid of the Press! I knew if I said anything, even to the police,
+that my house would be besieged by reporters and newspaper men. . . .
+I have a delicate wife, Mr. Coroner. Such a state of things--the
+state of things I imagine--might cause her death--indeed, I hope
+she will never read a report of these proceedings. Fortunately, she
+has an excellent trained nurse--"
+
+"You will now take the oath," said the coroner sharply. He already
+regretted having allowed this absurd person to have his say.
+
+Mr. Cannot took the oath with a gravity and decorum which had been
+lacking in most of those who had preceded him.
+
+"I will address myself to the jury," he began.
+
+"You will do nothing of the sort," broke in the coroner. "Now,
+please attend to me. You assert in your letter that you know who
+is the--the--"
+
+"The Avenger," put in Mr. Cannot promptly.
+
+"The perpetrator of these crimes. You further declare that you met
+him on the very night he committed the murder we are now
+investigating?"
+
+"I do so declare," said Mr. Cannot confidently. "Though in the best
+of health myself,"--he beamed round the court, a now amused,
+attentive court--"it is my fate to be surrounded by sick people, to
+have only ailing friends. I have to trouble you with my private
+affairs, Mr. Coroner, in order to explain why I happened to be out
+at so undue an hour as one o'clock in the morning--"
+
+Again a titter ran through the court. Even the jury broke into
+broad smiles.
+
+"Yes," went on the witness solemnly, "I was with a sick friend--in
+fact, I may say a dying friend, for since then he has passed away.
+I will not reveal my exact dwelling-place; you, sir, have it on my
+notepaper. It is not necessary to reveal it, but you will understand
+me when I say that in order to come home I had to pass through a
+portion of the Regent's Park; and it was there--to be exact, about
+the middle of Prince's Terrace--when a very peculiar-looking
+individual stopped and accosted me."
+
+Mrs. Bunting's hand shot up to her breast. A feeling of deadly fear
+took possession of her.
+
+"I mustn't faint," she said to herself hurriedly. "I mustn't faint!
+Whatever's the matter with me?" She took out her bottle of
+smelling-salts, and gave it a good, long sniff.
+
+"He was a grim, gaunt man, was this stranger, Mr. Coroner, with a
+very odd-looking face. I should say an educated man--in common
+parlance, a gentleman. What drew my special attention to him was
+that he was talking aloud to himself--in fact, he seemed to be
+repeating poetry. I give you my word, I had no thought of The
+Avenger, no thought at all. To tell you the truth, I thought this
+gentleman was a poor escaped lunatic, a man who'd got away from his
+keeper. The Regent's Park, sir, as I need hardly tell you, is a
+most quiet and soothing neighbourhood--"
+
+And then a member of the general public gave a loud guffaw.
+
+"I appeal to you; sir," the old gentleman suddenly cried out "to
+protect me from this unseemly levity! I have not come here with
+any other object than that of doing my duty as a citizen!"
+
+"I must ask you to keep to what is strictly relevant," said the
+coroner stiffly. "Time is going on, and I have another important
+witness to call--a medical witness. Kindly tell me, as shortly as
+possible, what made you suppose that this stranger could possibly
+be--" with an effort he brought out for the first time since the
+proceedings began, the words, "The Avenger?"
+
+"I am coming to that!" said Mr. Cannot hastily. "I am coming to
+that! Bear with me a little longer, Mr. Coroner. It was a foggy
+night, but not as foggy as it became later. And just when we were
+passing one another, I and this man, who was talking aloud to
+himself--he, instead of going on, stopped and turned towards
+me. That made me feel queer and uncomfortable, the more so that
+there was a very wild, mad look on his face. I said to him, as
+soothingly as possible, 'A very foggy night, sir.' And he said,
+'Yes--yes, it is a foggy night, a night fit for the commission of
+dark and salutary deeds.' A very strange phrase, sir, that--'dark
+and salutary deeds.'" He looked at the coroner expectantly--
+
+"Well? Well, Mr. Cannot? Was that all? Did you see this person
+go off in the direction of--of King's Cross, for instance?"
+
+"No." Mr. Cannot reluctantly shook his head. "No, I must honestly
+say I did not. He walked along a certain way by my side, and then
+he crossed the road and was lost in the fog."
+
+"That will do," said the coroner. He spoke more kindly. "I thank
+you, Mr. Cannot, for coming here and giving us what you evidently
+consider important information."
+
+Mr. Cannot bowed, a funny, little, old-fashioned bow, and again some
+of those present tittered rather foolishly.
+
+As he was stepping down from the witness-box, he turned and looked
+up at the coroner, opening his lips as he did so. There was a
+murmur of talking going on, but Mrs. Bunting, at any rate, heard
+quite distinctly what it was that he said:
+
+"One thing I have forgotten, sir, which may be of importance. The
+man carried a bag--a rather light-coloured leather bag, in his left
+hand. It was such a bag, sir, as might well contain a long-handled
+knife."
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked at the reporters' table. She remembered suddenly
+that she had told Bunting about the disappearance of Mr. Sleuth's bag.
+And then a feeling of intense thankfulness came over her; not a
+single reporter at the long, ink-stained table had put down that last
+remark of Mr. Cannot. In fact, not one of them had heard it.
+
+Again the last witness put up his hand to command attention. And
+then silence did fall on the court.
+
+"One word more," he said in a quavering voice. "May I ask to be
+accommodated with a seat for the rest of the proceedings? I see
+there is some room left on the witnesses' bench." And, without
+waiting for permission, he nimbly stepped across and sat down.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. Her friend, the inspector, was
+bending over her.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to come along now," he said urgently.--"I
+don't suppose you want to hear the medical evidence. It's always
+painful for a female to hear that. And there'll be an awful rush
+when the inquest's over. I could get you away quietly now."
+
+She rose, and, pulling her veil down over her pale face, followed
+him obediently.
+
+Down the stone staircase they went, and through the big, now empty,
+room downstairs.
+
+"I'll let you out the back way," he said. "I expect you're tired,
+ma'am, and will like to get home to a cup o' tea."
+
+"I don't know how to thank you!" There were tears in her eyes.
+She was trembling with excitement and emotion. "You have been good
+to me."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," he said a little awkwardly. "I expect you
+went though a pretty bad time, didn't you?"
+
+"Will they be having that old gentleman again?" she spoke in a
+whisper, and looked up at him with a pleading, agonised look.
+
+"Good Lord, no! Crazy old fool! We're troubled with a lot of
+those sort of people, you know, ma'am, and they often do have funny
+names, too. You see, that sort is busy all their lives in the City,
+or what not; then they retires when they gets about sixty, and
+they're fit to hang themselves with dulness. Why, there's hundreds
+of lunies of the sort to be met in London. You can't go about at
+night and not meet 'em. Plenty of 'em!"
+
+"Then you don't think there was anything in what he said?" she
+ventured.
+
+"In what that old gent said? Goodness--no!" he laughed
+good-naturedly. "But I'll tell you what I do think. If it wasn't
+for the time that had gone by, I should believe that the second
+witness had seen that crafty devil--" he lowered his voice. "But,
+there, Dr. Gaunt declares most positively--so did two other medical
+gentlemen--that the poor creatures had been dead hours when they
+was found. Medical gentlemen are always very positive about their
+evidence. They have to be--otherwise who'd believe 'em? If we'd
+time I could tell you of a case in which--well, 'twas all because
+of Dr. Gaunt that the murderer escaped. We all knew perfectly well
+the man we caught did it, but he was able to prove an alibi as to
+the time Dr. Gaunt said the poor soul was killed."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+It was not late even now, for the inquest had begun very punctually,
+but Mrs. Bunting felt that no power on earth should force her to go
+to Ealing. She felt quite tired out and as if she could think of
+nothing.
+
+Pacing along very slowly, as if she were an old, old woman, she
+began listlessly turning her steps towards home. Somehow she felt
+that it would do her more good to stay out in the air than take the
+train. Also she would thus put off the moment--the moment to which
+she looked forward with dread and dislike--when she would have to
+invent a circumstantial story as to what she had said to the doctor,
+and what the doctor had said to her.
+
+Like most men and women of his class, Bunting took a great interest
+in other people's ailments, the more interest that he was himself so
+remarkably healthy. He would feel quite injured if Ellen didn't
+tell him everything that had happened; everything, that is, that the
+doctor had told her.
+
+As she walked swiftly along, at every corner, or so it seemed to her,
+and outside every public-house, stood eager boys selling the latest
+edition of the afternoon papers to equally eager buyers. "Avenger
+Inquest?" they shouted exultantly. "All the latest evidence!" At
+one place, where there were a row of contents-bills pinned to the
+pavement by stones, she stopped and looked down. "Opening of the
+Avenger Inquest. What is he really like? Full description." On yet
+another ran the ironic query: "Avenger Inquest. Do you know him?"
+
+And as that facetious question stared up at her in huge print, Mrs.
+Bunting turned sick--so sick and faint that she did what she had
+never done before in her life--she pushed her way into a
+public-house, and, putting two pennies down on the counter, asked
+for, and received, a glass of cold water.
+
+As she walked along the now gas-lit streets, she found her mind
+dwelling persistently--not on the inquest at which she had been
+present, not even on The Avenger, but on his victims.
+
+Shudderingly, she visualised the two cold bodies lying in the
+mortuary. She seemed also to see that third body, which, though
+cold, must yet be warmer than the other two, for at this time
+yesterday The Avenger's last victim had been alive, poor soul--
+alive and, according to a companion of hers whom the papers had
+already interviewed, particularly merry and bright.
+
+Hitherto Mrs. Bunting had been spared in any real sense a vision of
+The Avenger's victims. Now they haunted her, and she wondered
+wearily if this fresh horror was to be added to the terrible fear
+which encompassed her night and day.
+
+As she came within sight of home, her spirit suddenly lightened.
+The narrow, drab-coloured little house, flanked each side by others
+exactly like it in every single particular, save that their front
+yards were not so well kept, looked as if it could, aye, and would,
+keep any secret closely hidden.
+
+For a moment, at any rate, The Avenger's victims receded from her
+mind. She thought of them no more. All her thoughts were
+concentrated on Bunting--Bunting and Mr. Sleuth. She wondered what
+had happened during her absence--whether the lodger had rung his
+bell, and, if so, how he had got on with Bunting, and Bunting with
+him?
+
+She walked up the little flagged path wearily, and yet with a
+pleasant feeling of home-coming. And then she saw that Bunting must
+have been watching for her behind the now closely drawn curtains,
+for before she could either knock or ring he had opened the door.
+
+"I was getting quite anxious about you," he exclaimed. "Come in,
+Ellen, quick! You must be fair perished a day like now--and you
+out so little as you are. Well? I hope you found the doctor all
+right?" He looked at her with affectionate anxiety.
+
+And then there came a sudden, happy thought to Mrs. Bunting. "No,"
+she said slowly, "Doctor Evans wasn't in. I waited, and waited, and
+waited, but he never came in at all. 'Twas my own fault," she added
+quickly. Even at such a moment as this she told herself that though
+she had, in a sort of way, a kind of right to lie to her husband,
+she had no sight to slander the doctor who had been so kind to her
+years ago. "I ought to have sent him a card yesterday night," she
+said. "Of course, I was a fool to go all that way, just on chance
+of finding a doctor in. It stands to reason they've got to go out
+to people at all times of day."
+
+"I hope they gave you a cup of tea?" he said.
+
+And again she hesitated, debating a point with herself: if the
+doctor had a decent sort of servant, of course, she, Ellen Bunting,
+would have been offered a cup of tea, especially if she explained
+she'd known him a long time.
+
+She compromised. "I was offered some," she said, in a weak, tired
+voice. "But there, Bunting, I didn't feel as if I wanted it. I'd
+be very grateful for a cup now--if you'd just make it for me over
+the ring."
+
+"'Course I will," he said eagerly. "You just come in and sit down,
+my dear. Don't trouble to take your things off now--wait till
+you've had tea."
+
+And she obeyed him. "Where's Daisy?" she asked suddenly. "I thought
+the girl would be back by the time I got home."
+
+"She ain't coming home to-day"--there was an odd, sly, smiling look
+on Bunting's face.
+
+"Did she send a telegram?" asked Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"No. Young Chandler's just come in and told me. He's been over
+there and,--would you believe it, Ellen?--he's managed to make
+friends with Margaret. Wonderful what love will do, ain't it? He
+went over there just to help Daisy carry her bag back, you know,
+and then Margaret told him that her lady had sent her some money
+to go to the play, and she actually asked Joe to go with them this
+evening--she and Daisy--to the pantomime. Did you ever hear o'
+such a thing?"
+
+"Very nice for them, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bunting absently. But
+she was pleased--pleased to have her mind taken off herself. "Then
+when is that girl coming home?" she asked patiently.
+
+"Well, it appears that Chandler's got to-morrow morning off too--
+this evening and to-morrow morning. He'll be on duty all night,
+but he proposes to go over and bring Daisy back in time for early
+dinner. Will that suit you, Ellen?"
+
+"Yes. That'll be all right," she said. "I don't grudge the girl
+her bit of pleasure. One's only young once. By the way, did the
+lodger ring while I was out?"
+
+Bunting turned round from the gas-ring, which he was watching to
+see the kettle boil. "No," he said. "Come to think of it, it's
+rather a funny thing, but the truth is, Ellen, I never gave Mr.
+Sleuth a thought. You see, Chandler came in and was telling me all
+about Margaret, laughing-like, and then something else happened
+while you was out, Ellen."
+
+"Something else happened?" she said in a startled voice. Getting
+up from her chair she came towards her husband: "What happened?
+Who came?"
+
+"Just a message for me, asking if I could go to-night to wait at a
+young lady's birthday party. In Hanover Terrace it is. A waiter
+--one of them nasty Swiss fellows as works for nothing--fell out
+just at the last minute and so they had to send for me."
+
+His honest face shone with triumph. The man who had taken over his
+old friend's business in Baker Street had hitherto behaved very
+badly to Bunting, and that though Bunting had been on the books for
+ever so long, and had always given every satisfaction. But this new
+man had never employed him--no, not once.
+
+"I hope you didn't make yourself too cheap?" said his wife jealously.
+
+"No, that I didn't! I hum'd and haw'd a lot; and I could see the
+fellow was quite worried--in fact, at the end he offered me
+half-a-crown more. So I graciously consented!"
+
+Husband and wife laughed more merrily than they had done for a long
+time.
+
+"You won't mind being alone, here? I don't count the lodger--he's
+no good--" Bunting looked at her anxiously. He was only prompted
+to ask the question because lately Ellen had been so queer, so
+unlike herself. Otherwise it never would have occurred to him that
+she could be afraid of being alone in the house. She had often been
+so in the days when he got more jobs.
+
+She stared at him, a little suspiciously. "I be afraid?" she echoed.
+"Certainly not. Why should I be? I've never been afraid before.
+What d'you exactly mean by that, Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. I only thought you might feel funny-like, all alone
+on this ground floor. You was so upset yesterday when that young
+fool Chandler came, dressed up, to the door."
+
+"I shouldn't have been frightened if he'd just been an ordinary
+stranger," she said shortly. "He said something silly to me--just
+in keeping with his character-like, and it upset me. Besides, I
+feel better now."
+
+As she was sipping gratefully her cup of tea, there came a noise
+outside, the shouts of newspaper-sellers.
+
+"I'll just run out," said Bunting apologetically, "and see what
+happened at that inquest to-day. Besides, they may have a clue
+about the horrible affair last night. Chandler was full of it--
+when he wasn't talking about Daisy and Margaret, that is. He's
+on to-night, luckily not till twelve o'clock; plenty of time to
+escort the two of 'em back after the play. Besides, he said
+he'll put them into a cab and blow the expense, if the panto'
+goes on too long for him to take 'em home."
+
+"On to-night?" repeated Mrs. Bunting. "Whatever for?"
+
+"Well, you see, The Avenger's always done 'em in couples, so to
+speak. They've got an idea that he'll have a try again to-night.
+However, even so, Joe's only on from midnight till five o'clock.
+Then he'll go and turn in a bit before going off to fetch Daisy,
+Fine thing to be young, ain't it, Ellen?"
+
+"I can't believe that he'd go out on such a night as this!"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Bunting, staring at her. Ellen had spoken
+so oddly, as if to herself, and in so fierce and passionate a tone.
+
+"What do I mean?" she repeated--and a great fear clutched at her
+heart. What had she said? She had been thinking aloud.
+
+"Why, by saying he won't go out. Of course, he has to go out.
+Besides, he'll have been to the play as it is. 'Twould be a pretty
+thing if the police didn't go out, just because it was cold!"
+
+"I--I was thinking of The Avenger," said Mrs. Bunting. She looked
+at her husband fixedly. Somehow she had felt impelled to utter
+those true words.
+
+"He don't take no heed of heat nor cold," said Bunting sombrely.
+"I take it the man's dead to all human feeling--saving, of
+course, revenge."
+
+"So that's your idea about him, is it?" She looked across at her
+husband. Somehow this dangerous, this perilous conversation between
+them attracted her strangely. She felt as if she must go on with it.
+"D'you think he was the man that woman said she saw? That young
+man what passed her with a newspaper parcel?"
+
+"Let me see," he said slowly. "I thought that 'twas from the bedroom
+window a woman saw him?"
+
+"No, no. I mean the other woman, what was taking her husband's
+breakfast to him in the warehouse. She was far the most
+respectable-looking woman of the two," said Mrs. Bunting impatiently.
+
+And then, seeing her husband's look of utter, blank astonishment,
+she felt a thrill of unreasoning terror. She must have gone suddenly
+mad to have said what she did! Hurriedly she got up from her chair.
+"There, now," she said; "here I am gossiping all about nothing when
+I ought to be seeing about the lodger's supper. It was someone in
+the train talked to me about that person as thinks she saw The
+Avenger."
+
+Without waiting for an answer, she went into her bedroom, lit the
+gas, and shut the door. A moment later she heard Bunting go out to
+buy the paper they had both forgotten during their dangerous
+discussion.
+
+As she slowly, languidly took off her nice, warm coat and shawl,
+Mrs. Bunting found herself shivering. It was dreadfully cold, quite
+unnaturally cold even for the time of year.
+
+She looked longingly towards the fireplace. It was now concealed
+by the washhand-stand, but how pleasant it would be to drag that
+stand aside and light a bit of fire, especially as Bunting was going
+to be out to-night. He would have to put on his dress clothes, and
+she didn't like his dressing in the sitting-room. It didn't suit
+her ideas that he should do so. How if she did light the fire here,
+in their bedroom? It would be nice for her to have bit of fire to
+cheer her up after he had gone.
+
+Mrs. Bunting knew only too well that she would have very little
+sleep the coming night. She looked over, with shuddering distaste,
+at her nice, soft bed. There she would lie, on that couch of little
+ease, listening--listening. . . .
+
+She went down to the kitchen. Everything was ready for Mr. Sleuth's
+supper, for she had made all her preparations before going out so
+as not to have to hurry back before it suited her to do so.
+
+Leaning the tray for a moment on the top of the banisters, she
+listened. Even in that nice warm drawing-room, and with a good
+fire, how cold the lodger must feel sitting studying at the table!
+But unwonted sounds were coming through the door. Mr. Sleuth was
+moving restlessly about the room, not sitting reading, as was his
+wont at this time of the evening.
+
+She knocked, and then waited a moment.
+
+There came the sound of a sharp click, that of the key turning in
+the lock of the chiffonnier cupboard--or so Mr. Sleuth's landlady
+could have sworn.
+
+There was a pause--she knocked again.
+
+"Come in," said Mr. Sleuth loudly, and she opened the door and
+carried in the tray.
+
+"You are a little earlier than usual, are you not Mrs. Bunting?"
+he said, with a touch of irritation in his voice.
+
+"I don't think so, sir, but I've been out. Perhaps I lost count of
+the time. I thought you'd like your breakfast early, as you had
+dinner rather sooner than usual."
+
+"Breakfast? Did you say breakfast, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure! I meant supper." He looked at
+her fixedly. It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that there was a terrible
+questioning look in his dark, sunken eyes.
+
+"Aren't you well?" he said slowly. "You don't look well, Mrs.
+Bunting."
+
+"No, sir," she said. "I'm not well. I went over to see a doctor
+this afternoon, to Ealing, sir."
+
+"I hope he did you good, Mrs. Bunting"--the lodger's voice had
+become softer, kinder in quality.
+
+"It always does me good to see the doctor," said Mrs. Bunting
+evasively.
+
+And then a very odd smile lit up Mr. Sleuth's face. "Doctors are a
+maligned body of men," he said. "I'm glad to hear you speak well of
+them. They do their best, Mrs. Bunting. Being human they are liable
+to err, but I assure you they do their best."
+
+"That I'm sure they do, sir"--she spoke heartily, sincerely.
+Doctors had always treated her most kindly, and even generously.
+
+And then, having laid the cloth, and put the lodger's one hot dish
+upon it, she went towards the door. "Wouldn't you like me to bring
+up another scuttleful of coals, sir? it's bitterly cold--getting
+colder every minute. A fearful night to have to go out in--" she
+looked at him deprecatingly.
+
+And then Mr. Sleuth did something which startled her very much.
+Pushing his chair back, he jumped up and drew himself to his full
+height.
+
+"What d'you mean?" he stammered. "Why did you say that, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She stared at him, fascinated, affrighted. Again there came an
+awful questioning look over his face.
+
+"I was thinking of Bunting, sir. He's got a job to-night. He's
+going to act as waiter at a young lady's birthday party. I was
+thinking it's a pity he has to turn out, and in his thin clothes,
+too"--she brought out her words jerkily.
+
+Mr. Sleuth seemed somewhat reassured, and again he sat down. "Ah!"
+he said. "Dear me--I'm sorry to hear that! I hope your husband
+will not catch cold, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+And then she shut the door, and went downstairs.
+
+******
+
+Without telling Bunting what she meant to do, she dragged the heavy
+washhand-stand away from the chimneypiece, and lighted the fire.
+
+Then in some triumph she called Bunting in.
+
+"Time for you to dress," she cried out cheerfully, "and I've got a
+little bit of fire for you to dress by."
+
+As he exclaimed at her extravagance, "Well, 'twill be pleasant for
+me, too; keep me company-like while you're out; and make the room
+nice and warm when you come in. You'll be fair perished, even
+walking that short way," she said.
+
+And then, while her husband was dressing, Mrs. Bunting went upstairs
+and cleared away Mr. Sleuth's supper.
+
+The lodger said no word while she was so engaged--no word at all.
+
+He was sitting away from the table, rather an unusual thing for him
+to do, and staring into the fire, his hands on his knees.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked lonely, very, very lonely and forlorn. Somehow, a
+great rush of pity, as well as of horror, came over Mrs. Bunting's
+heart. He was such a--a--she searched for a word in her mind, but
+could only find the word "gentle"--he was such a nice, gentle
+gentleman, was Mr. Sleuth. Lately he had again taken to leaving his
+money about, as he had done the first day or two, and with some
+concern his landlady had seen that the store had diminished a good
+deal. A very simple calculation had made her realise that almost the
+whole of that missing money had come her way, or, at any rate, had
+passed through her hands.
+
+Mr. Sleuth never stinted himself as to food, or stinted them, his
+landlord and his landlady, as to what he had said he would pay.
+And Mrs. Bunting's conscience pricked her a little, for he hardly
+ever used that room upstairs--that room for which he had paid extra
+so generously. If Bunting got another job or two through that nasty
+man in Baker Street,--and now that the ice had been broken between
+them it was very probable that he would do so, for he was a very
+well-trained, experienced waiter--then she thought she would tell
+Mr. Sleuth that she no longer wanted him to pay as much as he was
+now doing.
+
+She looked anxiously, deprecatingly, at his long, bent back.
+
+"Good-night, sir," she said at last.
+
+Mr. Sleuth turned round. His face looked sad and worn.
+
+"I hope you'll sleep well, sir."
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I shall sleep well. But perhaps I shall take a
+little turn first. Such is my way, Mrs. Bunting; after I have been
+studying all day I require a little exercise."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't go out to-night," she said deprecatingly. "'Tisn't
+fit for anyone to be out in the bitter cold."
+
+"And yet--and yet"--he looked at her attentively--"there will
+probably be many people out in the streets to-night."
+
+"A many more than usual, I fear, sir."
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Sleuth quickly. "Is it not a strange thing,
+Mrs. Bunting, that people who have all day in which to amuse
+themselves should carry their revels far into the night?"
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking of revellers, sir; I was thinking"--she
+hesitated, then, with a gasping effort Mrs. Bunting brought out the
+words, "of the police."
+
+"The police?" He put up his right hand and stroked his chin two or
+three times with a nervous gesture. "But what is man--what is man's
+puny power or strength against that of God, or even of those over
+whose feet God has set a guard?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked at his landlady with a kind of triumph lighting up
+his face, and Mrs. Bunting felt a shuddering sense of relief. Then
+she had not offended her lodger? She had not made him angry by that,
+that--was it a hint she had meant to convey to him?
+
+"Very true, sir," she said respectfully. "But Providence means us
+to take care o' ourselves too." And then she closed the door behind
+her and went downstairs.
+
+But Mr. Sleuth's landlady did not go on, down to the kitchen. She
+came into her sitting-room, and, careless of what Bunting would think
+the next morning, put the tray with the remains of the lodger's meal on
+her table. Having done that, and having turned out the gas in the
+passage and the sitting-room, she went into her bedroom and closed the
+door.
+
+The fire was burning brightly and clearly. She told herself that
+she did not need any other light to undress by.
+
+What was it made the flames of the fire shoot up, shoot down, in
+that queer way? But watching it for awhile, she did at last doze
+off a bit.
+
+And then--and then Mrs. Bunting woke with a sudden thumping of her
+heart. Woke to see that the fire was almost out--woke to hear a
+quarter to twelve chime out--woke at last to the sound she had been
+listening for before she fell asleep--the sound of Mr. Sleuth,
+wearing his rubber-soled shoes, creeping downstairs, along the
+passage, and so out, very, very quietly by the front door.
+
+But once she was in bed Mrs. Bunting turned restless. She tossed
+this way and that, full of discomfort and unease. Perhaps it was
+the unaccustomed firelight dancing on the walls, making queer shadows
+all round her, which kept her so wide awake.
+
+She lay thinking and listening--listening and thinking. It even
+occurred to her to do the one thing that might have quieted her
+excited brain--to get a book, one of those detective stories of
+which Bunting had a slender store in the next room, and then,
+lighting the gas, to sit up and read.
+
+No, Mrs. Bunting had always been told it was very wrong to read in
+bed, and she was not in a mood just now to begin doing anything that
+she had been told was wrong. . . .
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+It was a very cold night--so cold, so windy, so snow-laden was the
+atmosphere, that everyone who could do so stayed indoors.
+
+Bunting, however, was now on his way home from what had proved a
+really pleasant job. A remarkable piece of luck had come his way
+this evening, all the more welcome because it was quite unexpected!
+The young lady at whose birthday party he had been present in
+capacity of waiter had come into a fortune that day, and she had had
+the gracious, the surprising thought of presenting each of the hired
+waiters with a sovereign!
+
+This gift, which had been accompanied by a few kind words, had gone
+to Bunting's heart. It had confirmed him in his Conservative
+principles; only gentlefolk ever behaved in that way; quiet,
+old-fashioned, respectable, gentlefolk, the sort of people of whom
+those nasty Radicals know nothing and care less!
+
+But the ex-butler was not as happy as he should have been.
+Slackening his footsteps, he began to think with puzzled concern of
+how queer his wife had seemed lately. Ellen had become so nervous,
+so "jumpy," that he didn't know what to make of her sometimes. She
+had never been really good-tempered--your capable, self-respecting
+woman seldom is--but she had never been like what she was now. And
+she didn't get better as the days went on; in fact she got worse.
+Of late she had been quite hysterical, and for no reason at all!
+Take that little practical joke of young Joe Chandler. Ellen knew
+quite well he often had to go about in some kind of disguise, and yet
+how she had gone on, quite foolish-like--not at all as one would
+have expected her to do.
+
+There was another queer thing about her which disturbed him in more
+senses than one. During the last three weeks or so Ellen had taken
+to talking in her sleep. "No, no, no!" she had cried out, only the
+night before. "It isn't true--I won't have it said--it's a lie!"
+And there had been a wail of horrible fear and revolt in her usually
+quiet, mincing voice.
+
+******
+
+Whew! it was cold; and he had stupidly forgotten his gloves.
+
+He put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and began walking
+more quickly.
+
+As he tramped steadily along, the ex-butler suddenly caught sight
+of his lodger walking along the opposite side of the solitary street
+--one of those short streets leading off the broad road which
+encircles Regent's Park.
+
+Well! This was a funny time o' night to be taking a stroll for
+pleasure, like!
+
+Glancing across, Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth's tall, thin figure
+was rather bowed, and that his head was bent toward the ground. His
+left arm was thrust into his long Inverness cape, and so was quite
+hidden, but the other side of the cape bulged out, as if the lodger
+were carrying a bag or parcel in the hand which hung down straight.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was walking rather quickly, and as he walked he talked
+aloud, which, as Bunting knew, is not unusual with gentlemen who live
+much alone. It was clear that he had not yet become aware of the
+proximity of his landlord.
+
+Bunting told himself that Ellen was right. Their lodger was
+certainly a most eccentric, peculiar person. Strange, was it not,
+that that odd, luny-like gentleman should have made all the
+difference to his, Bunting's, and Mrs. Bunting's happiness and
+comfort in life?
+
+Again glancing across at Mr. Sleuth, he reminded himself, not for
+the first time, of this perfect lodger's one fault--his odd dislike
+to meat, and to what Bunting vaguely called to himself, sensible food.
+
+But there, you can't have everything! The more so that the lodger
+was not one of those crazy vegetarians who won't eat eggs and cheese.
+No, he was reasonable in this, as in everything else connected with
+his dealings with the Buntings.
+
+As we know, Bunting saw far less of the lodger than did his wife.
+Indeed, he had been upstairs only three or four times since Mr.
+Sleuth had been with them, and when his landlord had had occasion
+to wait on him the lodger had remained silent. Indeed, their
+gentleman had made it very clear that he did not like either the
+husband or wife to come up to his rooms without being definitely
+asked to do so.
+
+Now, surely, would be a good opportunity for a little genial
+conversation? Bunting felt pleased to see his lodger; it increased
+his general comfortable sense of satisfaction.
+
+So it was that the butler, still an active man for his years,
+crossed over the road, and, stepping briskly forward, began trying
+to overtake Mr. Sleuth. But the more he hurried along, the more the
+other hastened, and that without ever turning round to see whose
+steps he could hear echoing behind him on the now freezing pavement.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's own footsteps were quite inaudible--an odd circumstance,
+when you came to think of it--as Bunting did think of it later,
+lying awake by Mrs. Bunting's side in the pitch darkness. What it
+meant of course, was that the lodger had rubber soles on his shoes.
+Now Bunting had never had a pair of rubber-soled shoes sent down to
+him to clean. He had always supposed the lodger had only one pair of
+outdoor boots.
+
+The two men--the pursued and the pursuer--at last turned into the
+Marylebone Road; they were now within a few hundred yards of home.
+Plucking up courage, Bunting called out, his voice echoing freshly
+on the still air:
+
+"Mr. Sleuth, sir? Mr. Sleuth!"
+
+The lodger stopped and turned round.
+
+He had been walking so quickly, and he was in so poor a physical
+condition, that the sweat was pouring down his face.
+
+"Ah! So it's you, Mr. Bunting? I heard footsteps behind me, and
+I hurried on. I wish I'd known that it was you; there are so many
+queer characters about at night in London."
+
+"Not on a night like this, sir. Only honest folk who have business
+out of doors would be out such a night as this. It is cold, sir!"
+
+And then into Bunting's slow and honest mind there suddenly crept
+the query as to what on earth Mr. Sleuth's own business out could be
+on this bitter night.
+
+"Cold?" the lodger repeated; he was panting a little, and his words
+came out sharp and quick through his thin lips. "I can't say that
+I find it cold, Mr. Bunting. When the snow falls, the air always
+becomes milder."
+
+"Yes, sir; but to-night there's such a sharp east wind. Why, it
+freezes the very marrow in one's bones! Still, there's nothing like
+walking in cold weather to make one warm, as you seem to have found,
+sir."
+
+Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth kept his distance in a rather strange
+way; he walked at the edge of the pavement, leaving the rest of it,
+on the wall side, to his landlord.
+
+"I lost my way," he said abruptly. "I've been over Primrose Hill to
+see a friend of mine, a man with whom I studied when I was a lad,
+and then, coming back, I lost my way."
+
+Now they had come right up to the little gate which opened on the
+shabby, paved court in front of the house--that gate which now was
+never locked.
+
+Mr. Sleuth, pushing suddenly forward, began walking up the flagged
+path, when, with a "By your leave, sir," the ex-butler, stepping
+aside, slipped in front of his lodger, in order to open the front
+door for him.
+
+As he passed by Mr. Sleuth, the back of Bunting's bare left hand
+brushed lightly against the long Inverness cape the lodger was
+wearing, and, to Bunting's surprise, the stretch of cloth against
+which his hand lay for a moment was not only damp, damp maybe from
+stray flakes of snow which had settled upon it, but wet--wet and
+gluey.
+
+Bunting thrust his left hand into his pocket; it was with the other
+that he placed the key in the lock of the door.
+
+The two men passed into the hall together.
+
+The house seemed blackly dark in comparison with the lighted-up
+road outside, and as he groped forward, closely followed by the
+lodger, there came over Bunting a sudden, reeling sensation of
+mortal terror, an instinctive, assailing knowledge of frightful
+immediate danger.
+
+A stuffless voice--the voice of his first wife, the long-dead
+girl to whom his mind so seldom reverted nowadays--uttered into
+his ear the words, "Take care!"
+
+And then the lodger spoke. His voice was harsh and grating,
+though not loud.
+
+"I'm afraid, Mr. Bunting, that you must have felt something dirty,
+foul, on my coat? It's too long a story to tell you now, but I
+brushed up against a dead animal, a creature to whose misery some
+thoughtful soul had put an end, lying across a bench on Primrose
+Hill."
+
+"No, sir, no. I didn't notice nothing. I scarcely touched you,
+sir."
+
+It seemed as if a power outside himself compelled Bunting to utter
+these lying words. "And now, sir, I'll be saying good-night to you,"
+he said.
+
+Stepping back he pressed with all the strength that was in him
+against the wall, and let the other pass him. There was a pause,
+and then--"Good-night," returned Mr. Sleuth, in a hollow voice.
+Bunting waited until the lodger had gone upstairs, and then,
+lighting the gas, he sat down there, in the hall. Mr. Sleuth's
+landlord felt very queer--queer and sick.
+
+He did not draw his left hand out of his pocket till he heard Mr.
+Sleuth shut the bedroom door upstairs. Then he held up his left
+hand and looked at it curiously; it was flecked, streaked with
+pale reddish blood.
+
+Taking off his boots, he crept into the room where his wife lay
+asleep. Stealthily he walked across to the wash-hand-stand, and
+dipped a hand into the water-jug.
+
+"Whatever are you doing? What on earth are you doing?" came a
+voice from the bed, and Bunting started guiltily.
+
+"I'm just washing my hands."
+
+"Indeed, you're doing nothing of the sort! I never heard of such
+a thing--putting your hand into the water in which I was going to
+wash my face to-morrow morning!"
+
+"I'm very sorry, Ellen," he said meekly; "I meant to throw it away.
+You don't suppose I would have let you wash in dirty water, do you?"
+
+She said no more, but, as he began undressing himself, Mrs. Bunting
+lay staring at him in a way that made her husband feel even more
+uncomfortable than he was already.
+
+At last he got into bed. He wanted to break the oppressive silence
+by telling Ellen about the sovereign the young lady had given him,
+but that sovereign now seemed to Bunting of no more account than if
+it had been a farthing he had picked up in the road outside.
+
+Once more his wife spoke, and he gave so great a start that it shook
+the bed.
+
+"I suppose that you don't know that you've left the light burning in
+the hall, wasting our good money?" she observed tartly.
+
+He got up painfully and opened the door into the passage. It was as
+she had said; the gas was flaring away, wasting their good money--or,
+rather, Mr. Sleuth's good money. Since he had come to be their lodger
+they had not had to touch their rent money.
+
+Bunting turned out the light and groped his way back to the room, and
+so to bed. Without speaking again to each other, both husband and
+wife lay awake till dawn.
+
+The next morning Mr. Sleuth's landlord awoke with a start; he felt
+curiously heavy about the limbs, and tired about the eyes.
+
+Drawing his watch from under his pillow, he saw that it was seven
+o'clock. Without waking his wife, he got out of bed and pulled the
+blind a little to one side. It was snowing heavily, and, as is the
+way when it snows, even in London, everything was strangely,
+curiously still. After he had dressed he went out into the passage.
+As he had at once dreaded and hoped, their newspaper was already
+lying on the mat. It was probably the sound of its being pushed
+through the letter-box which had waked him from his unrestful
+sleep.
+
+He picked the paper up and went into the sitting-room then,
+shutting the door behind him carefully, he spread the newspaper
+wide open on the table, and bent over it.
+
+As Bunting at last looked up and straightened himself, an expression
+of intense relief shone upon his stolid face. The item of news he
+had felt certain would be printed in big type on the middle sheet
+was not there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Feeling amazingly light-hearted, almost light-headed, Bunting lit
+the gas-ring to make his wife her morning cup of tea.
+
+While he was doing it, he suddenly heard her call out:
+
+"Bunting!" she cried weakly. "Bunting!" Quickly he hurried in
+response to her call. "Yes," he said. "What is it, my dear? I
+won't be a minute with your tea." And he smiled broadly, rather
+foolishly.
+
+She sat up and looked at him, a dazed expression on her face.
+
+"What are you grinning at?" she asked suspiciously.
+
+"I've had a wonderful piece of luck," he explained. "But you was
+so cross last night that I simply didn't dare tell you about it."
+
+"Well, tell me now," she said in a low voice.
+
+"I had a sovereign given me by the young lady. You see, it was her
+birthday party, Ellen, and she'd come into a nice bit of money, and
+she gave each of us waiters a sovereign."
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no comment. Instead, she lay back and closed her
+eyes.
+
+"What time d'you expect Daisy?" she asked languidly. "You didn't
+say what time Joe was going to fetch her, when we was talking about
+it yesterday."
+
+"Didn't I? Well, I expect they'll be in to dinner."
+
+"I wonder, how long that old aunt of hers expects us to keep her?"
+said Mrs. Bunting thoughtfully. All the cheer died out of Bunting's
+round face. He became sullen and angry. It would be a pretty thing
+if he couldn't have his own daughter for a bit--especially now that
+they were doing so well!
+
+"Daisy'll stay here just as long as she can," he said shortly.
+"It's too bad of you, Ellen, to talk like that! She helps you all
+she can; and she brisks us both up ever so much. Besides, 'twould
+be cruel--cruel to take the girl away just now, just as she and
+that young chap are making friends-like. One would suppose that
+even you would see the justice o' that!"
+
+But Mrs. Bunting made no answer.
+
+Bunting went off, back into the sitting-room. The water was boiling
+now, so he made the tea; and then, as he brought the little tray in,
+his heart softened. Ellen did look really ill--ill and wizened.
+He wondered if she had a pain about which she wasn't saying anything.
+She had never been one to grouse about herself.
+
+"The lodger and me came in together last night," he observed
+genially. "He's certainly a funny kind of gentleman. It wasn't
+the sort of night one would have chosen to go out for a walk, now
+was it? And yet he must 'a been out a long time if what he said
+was true."
+
+"I don't wonder a quiet gentleman like Mr. Sleuth hates the
+crowded streets," she said slowly. "They gets worse every day--
+that they do! But go along now; I want to get up."
+
+He went back into their sitting-room, and, having laid the fire
+and put a match to it, he sat down comfortably with his newspaper.
+
+Deep down in his heart Bunting looked back to this last night with
+a feeling of shame and self-rebuke. Whatever had made such horrible
+thoughts and suspicions as had possessed him suddenly come into his
+head? And just because of a trifling thing like that blood. No
+doubt Mr. Sleuth's nose had bled--that was what had happened;
+though, come to think of it, he had mentioned brushing up against
+a dead animal.
+
+Perhaps Ellen was right after all. It didn't do for one to be
+always thinking of dreadful subjects, of murders and such-like. It
+made one go dotty--that's what it did.
+
+And just as he was telling himself that, there came to the door a
+loud knock, the peculiar rat-tat-tat of a telegraph boy. But before
+he had time to get across the room, let alone to the front door,
+Ellen had rushed through the room, clad only in a petticoat and
+shawl.
+
+"I'll go," she cried breathlessly. "I'll go, Bunting; don't you
+trouble."
+
+He stared at her, surprised, and followed her into the hall.
+
+She put out a hand, and hiding herself behind the door, took the
+telegram from the invisible boy. "You needn't wait," she said.
+"If there's an answer we'll send it out ourselves." Then she tore
+the envelope open--"Oh!" she said with a gasp of relief. "It's
+only from Joe Chandler, to say he can't go over to fetch Daisy this
+morning. Then you'll have to go."
+
+She walked back into their sitting-room. "There!" she said.
+"There it is, Bunting. You just read it."
+
+"Am on duty this morning. Cannot fetch Miss Daisy as arranged.--
+Chandler."
+
+"I wonder why he's on duty?" said Bunting slowly, uncomfortably.
+"I thought Joe's hours was as regular as clockwork--that nothing
+could make any difference to them. However, there it is. I suppose
+it'll do all right if I start about eleven o'clock? It may have
+left off snowing by then. I don't feel like going out again just
+now. I'm pretty tired this morning."
+
+"You start about twelve," said his wife quickly.
+
+"That'll give plenty of time."
+
+The morning went on quietly, uneventfully. Bunting received a
+letter from Old Aunt saying Daisy must come back next Monday, a
+little under a week from now. Mr. Sleuth slept soundly, or, at
+any rate, he made no sign of being awake; and though Mrs. Bunting
+often, stopped to listen, while she was doing her room, there
+came no sounds at all from overhead.
+
+Scarcely aware that it was so, both Bunting and his wife felt more
+cheerful than they had done for a long time. They had quite a
+pleasant little chat when Mrs. Bunting came and sat down for a bit,
+before going down to prepare Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
+
+"Daisy will be surprised to see you--not to say disappointed!" she
+observed, and she could not help laughing a little to herself at
+the thought. And when, at eleven, Bunting got up to go, she made
+him stay on a little longer. "There's no such great hurry as that,"
+she said good-temperedly. "It'll do quite well if you're there by
+half-past twelve. I'll get dinner ready myself. Daisy needn't help
+with that. I expect Margaret has worked her pretty hard."
+
+But at last there came the moment when Bunting had to start, and
+his wife went with him to the front door. It was still snowing,
+less heavily, but still snowing. There were very few people coming
+and going, and only just a few cabs and carts dragging cautiously
+along through the slush.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was still in the kitchen when there came a ring and a
+knock at the door--a now very familiar ring and knock. "Joe thinks
+Daisy's home again by now!" she said, smiling to herself.
+
+Before the door was well open, she heard Chandler's voice. "Don't
+be scared this time, Mrs. Bunting!" But though not exactly scared,
+she did give a gasp of surprise. For there stood Joe, made up to
+represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection,
+with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his
+seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, and greenish-black pot hat.
+
+"I haven't a minute," he said a little breathlessly. "But I thought
+I'd just run in to know if Miss Daisy was safe home again. You got
+my telegram all right? I couldn't send no other kind of message."
+
+"She's not back yet. Her father hasn't been gone long after her."
+Then, struck by a look in his eyes, "Joe, what's the matter?" she
+asked quickly.
+
+There came a thrill of suspense in her voice, her face grew drawn,
+while what little colour there was in it receded, leaving it very
+pale.
+
+"Well," he said. "Well, Mrs. Bunting, I've no business to say
+anything about it--but I will tell you!"
+
+He walked in and shut the door of the sitting-room carefully behind
+him. "There's been another of 'em!" he whispered. "But this time
+no one is to know anything about it--not for the present, I mean,"
+he corrected himself hastily. "The Yard thinks we've got a clue--
+and a good clue, too, this time."
+
+"But where--and how?" faltered Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"Well, 'twas just a bit of luck being able to keep it dark for the
+present"--he still spoke in that stifled, hoarse whisper. "The
+poor soul was found dead on a bench on Primrose Hill. And just by
+chance 'twas one of our fellows saw the body first. He was on his
+way home, over Hampstead way. He knew where he'd be able to get an
+ambulance quick, and he made a very clever, secret job of it. I
+'spect he'll get promotion for that!"
+
+"What about the clue?" asked Mrs. Bunting, with dry lips. "You said
+there was a clue?"
+
+"Well, I don't rightly understand about the clue myself. All I
+knows is it's got something to do with a public-house, 'The Hammer
+and Tongs,' which isn't far off there. They feels sure The Avenger
+was in the bar just on closing-time."
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting sat down. She felt better now. It was natural
+the police should suspect a public-house loafer. "Then that's why you
+wasn't able to go and fetch Daisy, I suppose?"
+
+He nodded. "Mum's the word, Mrs. Bunting! It'll all be in the last
+editions of the evening newspapers--it can't be kep' out. There'd be
+too much of a row if 'twas!"
+
+"Are you going off to that public-house now?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I am. I've got a awk'ard job--to try and worm something out
+of the barmaid."
+
+"Something out of the barmaid?" repeated Mrs. Bunting nervously.
+"Why, whatever for?"
+
+He came and stood close to her. "They think 'twas a gentleman," he
+whispered.
+
+"A gentleman?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared at Chandler with a scared expression. "Whatever
+makes them think such a silly thing as that?"
+
+"Well, just before closing-time a very peculiar-looking gent, with a
+leather bag in his hand, went into the bar and asked for a glass of
+milk. And what d'you think he did? Paid for it with a sovereign!
+He wouldn't take no change--just made the girl a present of it!
+That's why the young woman what served him seems quite unwilling to
+give him away. She won't tell now what he was like. She doesn't
+know what he's wanted for, and we don't want her to know just yet.
+That's one reason why nothing's being said public about it. But
+there! I really must be going now. My time'll be up at three
+o'clock. I thought of coming in on the way back, and asking you for
+a cup o' tea, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Do," she said. "Do, Joe. You'll be welcome," but there was no
+welcome in her tired voice.
+
+She let him go alone to the door, and then she went down to her
+kitchen, and began cooking Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
+
+The lodger would be sure to ring soon; and then any minute Bunting
+and Daisy might be home, and they'd want something, too. Margaret
+always had breakfast even when "the family" were away, unnaturally
+early.
+
+As she bustled about Mrs. Bunting tried to empty her mind of all
+thought. But it is very difficult to do that when one is in a state
+of torturing uncertainty. She had not dared to ask Chandler what
+they supposed that man who had gone into the public-house was really
+like. It was fortunate, indeed, that the lodger and that inquisitive
+young chap had never met face to face.
+
+At last Mr. Sleuth's bell rang--a quiet little tinkle. But when
+she went up with his breakfast the lodger was not in his sitting-room.
+
+Supposing him to be still in his bedroom, Mrs. Bunting put the cloth
+on the table, and then she heard the sound of his footsteps coming
+down the stairs, and her quick ears detected the slight whirring
+sound which showed that the gas-stove was alight. Mr. Sleuth had
+already lit the stove; that meant that he would carry out some
+elaborate experiment this afternoon.
+
+"Still snowing?" he said doubtfully. "How very, very quiet and
+still London is when under snow, Mrs. Bunting. I have never known
+it quite as quiet as this morning. Not a sound, outside or in. A
+very pleasant change from the shouting which sometimes goes on in
+the Marylebone Road."
+
+"Yes," she said dully. "It's awful quiet to-day--too quiet to my
+thinking. 'Tain't natural-like."
+
+The outside gate swung to, making a noisy clatter in the still air.
+
+"Is that someone coming in here?" asked Mr. Sleuth, drawing a quick,
+hissing breath. "Perhaps you will oblige me by going to the window
+and telling me who it is, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+And his landlady obeyed him.
+
+"It's only Bunting, sir--Bunting and his daughter."
+
+"Oh! Is that all?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth hurried after her, and she shrank back a little. She
+had never been quite so near to the lodger before, save on that
+first day when she had been showing him her rooms.
+
+Side by side they stood, looking out of the window. And, as if
+aware that someone was standing there, Daisy turned her bright face
+up towards the window and smiled at her stepmother, and at the
+lodger, whose face she could only dimly discern.
+
+"A very sweet-looking young girl," said Mr. Sleuth thoughtfully.
+And then he quoted a little bit of poetry, and this took Mrs.
+Bunting very much aback.
+
+"Wordsworth," he murmured dreamily. "A poet too little read
+nowadays, Mrs. Bunting; but one with a beautiful feeling for nature,
+for youth, for innocence."
+
+"Indeed, sir?" Mrs. Bunting stepped back a little. "Your breakfast
+will be getting cold, sir, if you don't have it now."
+
+He went back to the table, obediently, and sat down as a child
+rebuked might have done.
+
+And then his landlady left him.
+
+"Well?" said Bunting cheerily. "Everything went off quite all right.
+And Daisy's a lucky girl--that she is! Her Aunt Margaret gave her
+five shillings."
+
+But Daisy did not look as pleased as her father thought she ought
+to do.
+
+"I hope nothing's happened to Mr. Chandler," she said a little
+disconsolately. "The very last words he said to me last night was
+that he'd be there at ten o'clock. I got quite fidgety as the time
+went on and he didn't come."
+
+"He's been here," said Mrs. Bunting slowly.
+
+"Been here?" cried her husband. "Then why on earth didn't he go and
+fetch Daisy, if he'd time to come here?"
+
+"He was on the way to his job," his wife answered. "You run along,
+child, downstairs. Now that you are here you can make yourself
+useful."
+
+And Daisy reluctantly obeyed. She wondered what it was her
+stepmother didn't want her to hear.
+
+"I've something to tell you, Bunting."
+
+"Yes?" He looked across uneasily. "Yes, Ellen?"
+
+"There's been another o' those murders. But the police don't want
+anyone to know about it--not yet. That's why Joe couldn't go over
+and fetch Daisy. They're all on duty again."
+
+Bunting put out his hand and clutched hold of the edge of the
+mantelpiece. He had gone very red, but his wife was far too much
+concerned with her own feelings and sensations to notice it.
+
+There was a long silence between them. Then he spoke, making a
+great effort to appear unconcerned.
+
+"And where did it happen?" he asked. "Close to the other one?"
+
+She hesitated, then: "I don't know. He didn't say. But hush!"
+she added quickly. "Here's Daisy! Don't let's talk of that horror
+in front of her-like. Besides, I promised Chandler I'd be mum."
+
+And he acquiesced.
+
+"You can be laying the cloth, child, while I go up and clear away
+the lodger's breakfast." Without waiting for an answer, she hurried
+upstairs.
+
+Mr. Sleuth had left the greater part of the nice lemon sole untouched.
+"I don't feel well to-day," he said fretfully. "And, Mrs. Bunting?
+I should be much obliged if your husband would lend me that paper I
+saw in his hand. I do not often care to look at the public prints,
+but I should like to do so now."
+
+She flew downstairs. "Bunting," she said a little breathlessly,
+"the lodger would like you just to lend him the Sun."
+
+Bunting handed it over to her. "I've read it through," he observed.
+"You can tell him that I don't want it back again."
+
+On her way up she glanced down at the pink sheet. Occupying a third
+of the space was an irregular drawing, and under it was written, in
+rather large characters:
+
+"We are glad to be able to present our readers with an authentic
+reproduction of the footprint of the half-worn rubber sole which
+was almost certainly worn by The Avenger when he committed his
+double murder ten days ago."
+
+She went into the sitting-room. To her relief it was empty.
+
+"Kindly put the paper down on the table," came Mr. Sleuth's muffled
+voice from the upper landing.
+
+She did so. "Yes, sir. And Bunting don't want the paper back
+again, sir. He says he's read it." And then she hurried out of
+the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+All afternoon it went on snowing; and the three of them sat there,
+listening and waiting--Bunting and his wife hardly knew for what;
+Daisy for the knock which would herald Joe Chandler.
+
+And about four there came the now familiar sound.
+
+Mrs. Bunting hurried out into the passage, and as she opened the
+front door she whispered, "We haven't said anything to Daisy yet.
+Young girls can't keep secrets."
+
+Chandler nodded comprehendingly. He now looked the low character
+he had assumed to the life, for he was blue with cold, disheartened,
+and tired out.
+
+Daisy gave a little cry of shocked surprise, of amusement, of
+welcome, when she saw how cleverly he was disguised.
+
+"I never!" she exclaimed. "What a difference it do make, to be
+sure! Why, you looks quite horrid, Mr. Chandler."
+
+And, somehow, that little speech of hers amused her father so much
+that he quite cheered up. Bunting had been very dull and quiet
+all that afternoon.
+
+"It won't take me ten minutes to make myself respectable again,"
+said the young man rather ruefully.
+
+His host and hostess, looking at him eagerly, furtively, both came
+to the conclusion that he had been unsuccessful--that he had failed,
+that is, in getting any information worth having. And though, in a
+sense, they all had a pleasant tea together, there was an air of
+constraint, even of discomfort, over the little party.
+
+Bunting felt it hard that he couldn't ask the questions that were
+trembling on his lips; he would have felt it hard any time during
+the last month to refrain from knowing anything Joe could tell him,
+but now it seemed almost intolerable to be in this queer kind of
+half suspense. There was one important fact he longed to know,
+and at last came his opportunity of doing so, for Joe Chandler rose
+to leave, and this time it was Bunting who followed him out into
+the hall.
+
+"Where did it happen?" he whispered. "Just tell me that, Joe?"
+
+"Primrose Hill," said the other briefly. "You'll know all about it
+in a minute or two, for it'll be all in the last editions of the
+evening papers. That's what's been arranged."
+
+"No arrest I suppose?"
+
+Chandler shook his head despondently. "No," he said, "I'm inclined
+to think the Yard was on a wrong tack altogether this time. But one
+can only do one's best. I don't know if Mrs. Bunting told you I'd
+got to question a barmaid about a man who was in her place just
+before closing-time. Well, she's said all she knew, and it's as
+clear as daylight to me that the eccentric old gent she talks about
+was only a harmless luny. He gave her a sovereign just because she
+told him she was a teetotaller!" He laughed ruefully.
+
+Even Bunting was diverted at the notion. "Well, that's a queer
+thing for a barmaid to be!" he exclaimed. "She's niece to the people
+what keeps the public," explained Chandler; and then he went out of
+the front door with a cheerful "So long!"
+
+When Bunting went back into the sitting-room Daisy had disappeared.
+She had gone downstairs with the tray. "Where's my girl?" he said
+irritably.
+
+"She's just taken the tray downstairs."
+
+He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called out sharply,
+"Daisy! Daisy, child! Are you down there?"
+
+"Yes, father," came her eager, happy voice.
+
+"Better come up out of that cold kitchen."
+
+He turned and came back to his wife. "Ellen, is the lodger in? I
+haven't heard him moving about. Now mind what I says, please! I
+don't want Daisy to be mixed up with him."
+
+"Mr. Sleuth don't seem very well to-day," answered Mrs. Bunting
+quietly. "'Tain't likely I should let Daisy have anything to do
+with him. Why, she's never even seen him. 'Tain't likely I should
+allow her to begin waiting on him now."
+
+But though she was surprised and a little irritated by the tone in
+which Bunting had spoken, no glimmer of the truth illumined her mind.
+So accustomed had she become to bearing alone the burden of her awful
+secret, that it would have required far more than a cross word or
+two, far more than the fact that Bunting looked ill and tired, for
+her to have come to suspect that her secret was now shared by another,
+and that other her husband.
+
+Again and again the poor soul had agonised and trembled at the
+thought of her house being invaded by the police, but that was only
+because she had always credited the police with supernatural powers
+of detection. That they should come to know the awful fact she kept
+hidden in her breast would have seemed to her, on the whole, a
+natural thing, but that Bunting should even dimly suspect it appeared
+beyond the range of possibility.
+
+And yet even Daisy noticed a change in her father. He sat cowering
+over the fire--saying nothing, doing nothing.
+
+"Why, father, ain't you well?" the girl asked more than once.
+
+And, looking up, he would answer, "Yes, I'm well enough, my girl,
+but I feels cold. It's awful cold. I never did feel anything like
+the cold we've got just now."
+
+    *    *    *
+
+At eight the now familiar shouts and cries began again outside.
+
+"The Avenger again!" "Another horrible crime!" "Extra speshul
+edition!"--such were the shouts, the exultant yells, hurled through
+the clear, cold air. They fell, like bombs into the quiet room.
+
+Both Bunting and his wife remained silent, but Daisy's cheeks grew
+pink with excitement, and her eye sparkled.
+
+"Hark, father! Hark, Ellen! D'you hear that?" she exclaimed
+childishly, and even clapped her hands. "I do wish Mr. Chandler
+had been here. He would 'a been startled!"
+
+"Don't, Daisy!" and Bunting frowned.
+
+Then, getting up, he stretched himself. "It's fair getting on my
+mind," he said, "these horrible things happening. I'd like to get
+right away from London, just as far as I could--that I would!"
+
+"Up to John-o'-Groat's?" said Daisy, laughing. And then, "Why,
+father, ain't you going out to get a paper?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose I must."
+
+Slowly he went out of the room, and, lingering a moment in the hall,
+he put on his greatcoat and hat. Then he opened the front door,
+and walked down the flagged path. Opening the iron gate, he stepped
+out on the pavement, then crossed the road to where the newspaper-boys
+now stood.
+
+The boy nearest to him only had the Sun--a late edition of the paper
+he had already read. It annoyed Bunting to give a penny for a
+ha'penny rag of which he already knew the main contents. But there
+was nothing else to do.
+
+Standing under a lamp-post, he opened out the newspaper. It was
+bitingly cold; that, perhaps, was why his hand shook as he looked
+down at the big headlines. For Bunting had been very unfair to the
+enterprise of the editor of his favourite evening paper. This
+special edition was full of new matter--new matter concerning
+The Avenger.
+
+First, in huge type right across the page, was the brief statement
+that The Avenger had now committed his ninth crime, and that he had
+chosen quite a new locality, namely, the lonely stretch of rising
+ground known to Londoners as Primrose Hill.
+
+"The police," so Bunting read, "are very reserved as to the
+circumstances which led to the finding of the body of The Avenger's
+latest victim. But we have reason to believe that they possess
+several really important clues, and that one of them is concerned
+with the half-worn rubber sole of which we are the first to reproduce
+an outline to-day. (See over page.)"
+
+And Bunting, turning the sheet round about, saw the irregular outline
+he had already seen in the early edition of the Sun, that purporting
+to be a facsimile of the imprint left by The Avenger's rubber sole.
+
+He stared down at the rough outline which took up so much of the
+space which should have been devoted to reading matter with a queer,
+sinking feeling of terrified alarm. Again and again criminals had
+been tracked by the marks their boots or shoes had made at or near
+the scenes of their misdoings.
+
+Practically the only job Bunting did in his own house of a menial
+kind was the cleaning of the boots and shoes. He had already
+visualised early this very afternoon the little row with which he
+dealt each morning--first came his wife's strong, serviceable
+boots, then his own two pairs, a good deal patched and mended, and
+next to his own Mr. Sleuth's strong, hardly worn, and expensive
+buttoned boots. Of late a dear little coquettish high-heeled pair
+of outdoor shoes with thin, paperlike soles, bought by Daisy for
+her trip to London, had ended the row. The girl had worn these
+thin shoes persistently, in defiance of Ellen's reproof and advice,
+and he, Bunting, had only once had to clean her more sensible
+country pair, and that only because the others had become wet though
+the day he and she had accompanied young Chandler to Scotland Yard.
+
+Slowly he returned across the road. Somehow the thought of going
+in again, of hearing his wife's sarcastic comments, of parrying
+Daisy's eager questions, had become intolerable. So he walked
+slowly, trying to put off the evil moment when he would have to tell
+them what was in his paper.
+
+The lamp under which he had stood reading was not exactly opposite
+the house. It was rather to the right of it. And when, having
+crossed over the roadway, he walked along the pavement towards his
+own gate, he heard odd, shuffling sounds coming from the inner side
+of the low wall which shut off his little courtyard from the pavement.
+
+Now, under ordinary circumstances Bunting would have rushed forward
+to drive out whoever was there. He and his wife had often had
+trouble, before the cold weather began, with vagrants seeking shelter
+there. But to-night he stayed outside, listening intently, sick
+with suspense and fear.
+
+Was it possible that their place was being watched--already? He
+thought it only too likely. Bunting, like Mrs. Bunting, credited
+the police with almost supernatural powers, especially since he
+had paid that visit to Scotland Yard.
+
+But to Bunting's amazement, and, yes, relief, it was his lodger who
+suddenly loomed up in the dim light.
+
+Mr. Sleuth must have been stooping down, for his tall, lank form
+had been quite concealed till he stepped forward from behind the
+low wall on to the flagged path leading to the front door.
+
+The lodger was carrying a brown paper parcel, and, as he walked
+along, the new boots he was wearing creaked, and the tap-tap of
+hard nail-studded heels rang out on the flat-stones of the narrow
+path.
+
+Bunting, still standing outside the gate, suddenly knew what it was
+his lodger had been doing on the other side of the low wall. Mr.
+Sleuth had evidently been out to buy himself another pair of new
+boots, and then he had gone inside the gate and had put them on,
+placing his old footgear in the paper in which the new pair had
+been wrapped.
+
+The ex-butler waited--waited quite a long time, not only until Mr.
+Sleuth had let himself into the house, but till the lodger had had
+time to get well away, upstairs.
+
+Then he also walked up the flagged pathway, and put his latchkey in
+the door. He lingered as long over the job of hanging his hat and
+coat up in the hall as he dared, in fact till his wife called out
+to him. Then he went in, and throwing the paper down on the table,
+he said sullenly: "There it is! You can see it all for yourself--
+not that there's very much to see," and groped his way to the fire.
+
+His wife looked at him in sharp alarm. "Whatever have you done to
+yourself?" she exclaimed. "You're ill--that's what it is, Bunting.
+You got a chill last night!"
+
+"I told you I'd got a chill," he muttered. "'Twasn't last night,
+though; 'twas going out this morning, coming back in the bus.
+Margaret keeps that housekeeper's room o' hers like a hothouse--
+that's what she does. 'Twas going out from there into the biting
+wind, that's what did for me. It must be awful to stand about in
+such weather; 'tis a wonder to me how that young fellow, Joe Chandler,
+can stand the life--being out in all weathers like he is."
+
+Bunting spoke at random, his one anxiety being to get away from what
+was in the paper, which now lay, neglected, on the table.
+
+"Those that keep out o' doors all day never do come to no harm,"
+said his wife testily. "But if you felt so bad, whatever was you
+out so long for, Bunting? I thought you'd gone away somewhere!
+D'you mean you only went to get the paper?"
+
+"I just stopped for a second to look at it under the lamp," he
+muttered apologetically.
+
+"That was a silly thing to do!"
+
+"Perhaps it was," he admitted meekly.
+
+Daisy had taken up the paper. "Well, they don't say much," she
+said disappointedly. "Hardly anything at all! But perhaps Mr.
+Chandler 'll be in soon again. If so, he'll tell us more about it."
+
+"A young girl like you oughtn't to want to know anything about
+murders," said her stepmother severely. "Joe won't think any the
+better of you for your inquisitiveness about such things. If I
+was you, Daisy, I shouldn't say nothing about it if he does come in
+--which I fair tell you I hope he won't. I've seen enough of that
+young chap to-day."
+
+"He didn't come in for long--not to-day," said Daisy, her lip
+trembling.
+
+"I can tell you one thing that'll surprise you, my dear"--Mrs.
+Bunting looked significantly at her stepdaughter. She also wanted
+to get away from that dread news--which yet was no news.
+
+"Yes?" said Daisy, rather defiantly. "What is it, Ellen?"
+
+"Maybe you'll be surprised to hear that Joe did come in this morning.
+He knew all about that affair then, but he particular asked that
+you shouldn't be told anything about it."
+
+"Never!" cried Daisy, much mortified.
+
+"Yes," went on her stepmother ruthlessly. "You just ask your father
+over there if it isn't true."
+
+"'Tain't a healthy thing to speak overmuch about such happenings,"
+said Bunting heavily.
+
+"If I was Joe," went on Mrs. Bunting, quickly pursuing her advantage,
+"I shouldn't want to talk about such horrid things when I comes in
+to have a quiet chat with friends. But the minute he comes in that
+poor young chap is set upon--mostly, I admit, by your father," she
+looked at her husband severely. "But you does your share, too,
+Daisy! You asks him this, you asks him that--he's fair puzzled
+sometimes. It don't do to be so inquisitive."
+
+******
+
+And perhaps because of this little sermon on Mrs. Bunting's part
+when young Chandler did come in again that evening, very little was
+said of the new Avenger murder.
+
+Bunting made no reference to it at all, and though Daisy said a
+word, it was but a word. And Joe Chandler thought he had never
+spent a pleasanter evening in his life--for it was he and Daisy
+who talked all the time, their elders remaining for the most part
+silent.
+
+Daisy told of all that she had done with Aunt Margaret. She
+described the long, dull hours and the queer jobs her aunt set her
+to do--the washing up of all the fine drawing-room china in a big
+basin lined with flannel, and how terrified she (Daisy) had been
+lest there should come even one teeny little chip to any of it.
+Then she went on to relate some of the funny things Aunt Margaret
+had told her about "the family."
+
+There came a really comic tale, which hugely interested and delighted
+Chandler. This was of how Aunt Margaret's lady had been taken in by
+an impostor--an impostor who had come up, just as she was stepping
+out of her carriage, and pretended to have a fit on the doorstep.
+Aunt Margaret's lady, being a soft one, had insisted on the man
+coming into the hall, where he had been given all kinds of
+restoratives. When the man had at last gone off, it was found that
+he had "wolfed" young master's best walking-stick, one with a fine
+tortoise-shell top to it. Thus had Aunt Margaret proved to her lady
+that the man had been shamming, and her lady had been very angry--
+near had a fit herself!
+
+"There's a lot of that about," said Chandler, laughing.
+"Incorrigible rogues and vagabonds--that's what those sort of people
+are!"
+
+And then he, in his turn, told an elaborate tale of an exceptionally
+clever swindler whom he himself had brought to book. He was very
+proud of that job, it had formed a white stone in his career as a
+detective. And even Mrs. Bunting was quite interested to hear about
+it.
+
+Chandler was still sitting there when Mr. Sleuth's bell rang. For
+awhile no one stirred; then Bunting looked questioningly at his wife.
+
+"Did you hear that?" he said. "I think, Ellen, that was the lodger's
+bell."
+
+She got up, without alacrity, and went upstairs.
+
+"I rang," said Mr. Sleuth weakly, "to tell you I don't require any
+supper to-night, Mrs. Bunting. Only a glass of milk, with a lump
+of sugar in it. That is all I require--nothing more. I feel very
+very far from well"--and he had a hunted, plaintive expression on
+his face. "And then I thought your husband would like his paper
+back again, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+Mrs. Bunting, looking at him fixedly, with a sad intensity of gaze
+of which she was quite unconscious, answered, "Oh, no, sir!
+Bunting don't require that paper now. He read it all through."
+Something impelled her to add, ruthlessly, "He's got another paper
+by now, sir. You may have heard them come shouting outside. Would
+you like me to bring you up that other paper, sir?"
+
+And Mr. Sleuth shook his head. "No," he said querulously. "I much
+regret now having asked for the one paper I did read, for it
+disturbed me, Mrs. Bunting. There was nothing of any value in it--
+there never is in any public print. I gave up reading newspapers
+years ago, and I much regret that I broke though my rule to-day."
+
+As if to indicate to her that he did not wish for any more
+conversation, the lodger then did what he had never done before in
+his landlady's presence. He went over to the fireplace and
+deliberately turned his back on her.
+
+She went down and brought up the glass of milk and the lump of
+sugar he had asked for.
+
+Now he was in his usual place, sitting at the table, studying the
+Book.
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went back to the others they were chatting
+merrily. She did not notice that the merriment was confined to the
+two young people.
+
+"Well?" said Daisy pertly. "How about the lodger, Ellen? Is he
+all right?"
+
+"Yes," she said stiffly. "Of course he is!"
+
+"He must feel pretty dull sitting up there all by himself--awful
+lonely-like, I call it," said the girl.
+
+But her, stepmother remained silent.
+
+"Whatever does he do with himself all day?" persisted Daisy.
+
+"Just now he's reading the Bible," Mrs. Bunting answered, shortly
+and dryly.
+
+"Well, I never! That's a funny thing for a gentleman to do!"
+
+And Joe, alone of her three listeners, laughed--a long hearty peal
+of amusement.
+
+"There's nothing to laugh at," said Mrs. Bunting sharply. "I should
+feel ashamed of being caught laughing at anything connected with the
+Bible."
+
+And poor Joe became suddenly quite serious. This was the first time
+that Mrs. Bunting had ever spoken really nastily to him, and he
+answered very humbly, "I beg pardon. I know I oughtn't to have
+laughed at anything to do with the Bible, but you see, Miss Daisy
+said it so funny-like, and, by all accounts, your lodger must be a
+queer card, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"He's no queerer than many people I could mention," she said quickly;
+and with these enigmatic words she got up, and left the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Each hour of the days that followed held for Bunting its full meed
+of aching fear and suspense.
+
+The unhappy man was ever debating within himself what course he
+should pursue, and, according to his mood and to the state of his
+mind at any particular moment, he would waver between various
+widely-differing lines of action.
+
+He told himself again and again, and with fretful unease, that the
+most awful thing about it all was that he wasn't sure. If only he
+could have been sure, he might have made up his mind exactly what
+it was he ought to do.
+
+But when telling himself this he was deceiving himself, and he was
+vaguely conscious of the fact; for, from Bunting's point of view,
+almost any alternative would have been preferable to that which to
+some, nay, perhaps to most, householders would have seemed the only
+thing to do, namely, to go to the police. But Londoners of Bunting's
+class have an uneasy fear of the law. To his mind it would be ruin
+for him and for his Ellen to be mixed up publicly in such a terrible
+affair. No one concerned in the business would give them and their
+future a thought, but it would track them to their dying day, and,
+above all, it would make it quite impossible for them ever to get
+again into a good joint situation. It was that for which Bunting,
+in his secret soul, now longed with all his heart.
+
+No, some other way than going to the police must be found--and he
+racked his slow brain to find it.
+
+The worst of it was that every hour that went by made his future
+course more difficult and more delicate, and increased the awful
+weight on his conscience.
+
+If only he really knew! If only he could feel quite sure! And
+then he would tell himself that, after all, he had very little to
+go upon; only suspicion--suspicion, and a secret, horrible
+certainty that his suspicion was justified.
+
+And so at last Bunting began to long for a solution which he knew
+to be indefensible from every point of view; he began to hope, that
+is, in the depths of his heart, that the lodger would again go out
+one evening on his horrible business and be caught--red-handed.
+
+But far from going out on any business, horrible or other, Mr.
+Sleuth now never went out at all. He kept upstairs, and often spent
+quite a considerable part of his day in bed. He still felt, so he
+assured Mrs. Bunting, very far from well. He had never thrown off
+the chill he had caught on that bitter night he and his landlord
+had met on their several ways home.
+
+Joe Chandler, too, had become a terrible complication to Daisy's
+father. The detective spent every waking hour that he was not on
+duty with the Buntings; and Bunting, who at one time had liked him
+so well and so cordially, now became mortally afraid of him.
+
+But though the young man talked of little else than The Avenger,
+and though on one evening he described at immense length the
+eccentric-looking gent who had given the barmaid a sovereign,
+picturing Mr. Sleuth with such awful accuracy that both Bunting and
+Mrs. Bunting secretly and separately turned sick when they listened
+to him, he never showed the slightest interest in their lodger.
+
+At last there came a morning when Bunting and Chandler held a strange
+conversation about The Avenger. The young fellow had come in earlier
+than usual, and just as he arrived Mrs. Bunting and Daisy were
+starting out to do some shopping. The girl would fain have stopped
+behind, but her stepmother had given her a very peculiar, disagreeable
+look, daring her, so to speak, to be so forward, and Daisy had gone
+on with a flushed, angry look on her pretty face.
+
+And then, as young Chandler stepped through into the sitting-room,
+it suddenly struck Bunting that the young man looked unlike himself
+--indeed, to the ex-butler's apprehension there was something almost
+threatening in Chandler's attitude.
+
+"I want a word with you, Mr. Bunting," he began abruptly, falteringly.
+"And I'm glad to have the chance now that Mrs. Bunting and Miss Daisy
+are out."
+
+Bunting braced himself to hear the awful words--the accusation of
+having sheltered a murderer, the monster whom all the world was
+seeking, under his roof. And then he remembered a phrase, a
+horrible legal phrase--"Accessory after the fact." Yes, he had
+been that, there wasn't any doubt about it!
+
+"Yes?" he said. "What is it, Joe?" and then the unfortunate man
+sat down in his chair. "Yes?" he said again uncertainly; for young
+Chandler had now advanced to the table, he was looking at Bunting
+fixedly--the other thought threateningly. "Well, out with it,
+Joe! Don't keep me in suspense."
+
+And then a slight smile broke over the young man's face. "I don't
+think what I've got to say can take you by surprise, Mr. Bunting."
+
+And Bunting wagged his head in a way that might mean anything--yes
+or no, as the case might be.
+
+The two men looked at one another for what seemed a very, very long
+time to the elder of them. And then, making a great effort, Joe
+Chandler brought out the words, "Well, I suppose you know what it
+is I want to talk about. I'm sure Mrs. Bunting would, from a look
+or two she's lately cast on me. It's your daughter--it's Miss
+Daisy."
+
+And then Bunting gave a kind of cry, 'twixt a sob and a laugh.
+"My girl?" he cried. "Good Lord, Joe! Is that all you wants to
+talk about? Why, you fair frightened me--that you did!"
+
+And, indeed, the relief was so great that the room swam round as
+he stared across it at his daughter's lover, that lover who was
+also the embodiment of that now awful thing to him, the law. He
+smiled, rather foolishly, at his visitor; and Chandler felt a sharp
+wave of irritation, of impatience sweep over his good-natured soul.
+Daisy's father was an old stupid--that's what he was.
+
+And then Bunting grew serious. The room ceased to go round. "As
+far as I'm concerned," he said, with a good deal of solemnity, even
+a little dignity, "you have my blessing, Joe. You're a very likely
+young chap, and I had a true respect for your father."
+
+"Yes," said Chandler, "that's very kind of you, Mr. Bunting. But
+how about her--her herself?"
+
+Bunting stared at him. It pleased him to think that Daisy hadn't
+given herself away, as Ellen was always hinting the girl was doing.
+
+"I can't answer for Daisy," he said heavily. "You'll have to ask
+her yourself--that's not a job any other man can do for you, my lad."
+
+"I never gets a chance. I never sees her, not by our two selves,"
+said Chandler, with some heat. "You don't seem to understand, Mr.
+Bunting, that I never do see Miss Daisy alone," he repeated. "I
+hear now that she's going away Monday, and I've only once had the
+chance of a walk with her. Mrs. Bunting's very particular, not to
+say pernickety in her ideas, Mr. Bunting--"
+
+"That's a fault on the right side, that is--with a young girl,"
+said Bunting thoughtfully.
+
+And Chandler nodded. He quite agreed that as regarded other young
+chaps Mrs. Bunting could not be too particular.
+
+"She's been brought up like a lady, my Daisy has," went on Bunting,
+with some pride. "That Old Aunt of hers hardly lets her out of her
+sight."
+
+"I was coming to the old aunt," said Chandler heavily. "Mrs.
+Bunting she talks as if your daughter was going to stay with that
+old woman the whole of her natural life--now is that right? That's
+what I wants to ask you, Mr. Bunting,--is that right?"
+
+"I'll say a word to Ellen, don't you fear," said Bunting abstractedly.
+
+His mind had wandered off, away from Daisy and this nice young chap,
+to his now constant anxious preoccupation. "You come along
+to-morrow," he said, "and I'll see you gets your walk with Daisy.
+It's only right you and she should have a chance of seeing one
+another without old folk being by; else how's the girl to tell
+whether she likes you or not! For the matter of that, you hardly
+knows her, Joe--" He looked at the young man consideringly.
+
+Chandler shook his head impatiently. "I knows her quite as well as
+I wants to know her," he said. "I made up my mind the very first
+time I see'd her, Mr. Bunting."
+
+"No! Did you really?" said Bunting. "Well, come to think of it,
+I did so with her mother; aye, and years after, with Ellen, too.
+But I hope you'll never want no second, Chandler."
+
+"God forbid!" said the young man under his breath. And then he
+asked, rather longingly, "D'you think they'll be out long now, Mr.
+Bunting?"
+
+And Bunting woke up to a due sense of hospitality. "Sit down, sit
+down; do!" he said hastily. "I don't believe they'll be very long.
+They've only got a little bit of shopping to do."
+
+And then, in a changed, in a ringing, nervous tone, he asked, "And
+how about your job, Joe? Nothing new, I take it? I suppose you're
+all just waiting for the next time?"
+
+"Aye--that's about the figure of it." Chandler's voice had also
+changed; it was now sombre, menacing. "We're fair tired of it--
+beginning to wonder when it'll end, that we are!"
+
+"Do you ever try and make to yourself a picture of what the master's
+like?" asked Bunting. Somehow, he felt he must ask that.
+
+"Yes," said Joe slowly. "I've a sort of notion--a savage,
+fierce-looking devil, the chap must be. It's that description that
+was circulated put us wrong. I don't believe it was the man that
+knocked up against that woman in the fog--no, not one bit I don't.
+But I wavers, I can't quite make up my mind. Sometimes I think it's
+a sailor--the foreigner they talks about, that goes away for eight
+or nine days in between, to Holland maybe, or to France. Then,
+again, I says to myself that it's a butcher, a man from the Central
+Market. Whoever it is, it's someone used to killing, that's flat."
+
+"Then it don't seem to you possible--?" (Bunting got up and walked
+over to the window.) "You don't take any stock, I suppose, in that
+idea some of the papers put out, that the man is"--then he
+hesitated and brought out, with a gasp--"a gentleman?"
+
+Chandler looked at him, surprised. "No," he said deliberately.
+"I've made up my mind that's quite a wrong tack, though I knows that
+some of our fellows--big pots, too--are quite sure that the fellow
+what gave the girl the sovereign is the man we're looking for. You
+see, Mr. Bunting, if that's the fact--well, it stands to reason the
+fellow's an escaped lunatic; and if he's an escaped lunatic he's got
+a keeper, and they'd be raising a hue and cry after him; now,
+wouldn't they?"
+
+"You don't think," went on Bunting, lowering his voice, "that he
+could be just staying somewhere, lodging like?"
+
+"D'you mean that The Avenger may be a toff, staying in some
+West-end hotel, Mr. Bunting? Well, things almost as funny as that
+'ud be have come to pass." He smiled as if the notion was a funny
+one.
+
+"Yes, something o' that sort," muttered Bunting.
+
+"Well, if your idea's correct, Mr. Bunting--"
+
+"I never said 'twas my idea," said Bunting, all in a hurry.
+
+"Well, if that idea's correct then, 'twill make our task more
+difficult than ever. Why, 'twould be looking for a needle in a
+field of hay, Mr. Bunting! But there! I don't think it's
+anything quite so unlikely as that--not myself I don't." He
+hesitated. "There's some of us"--he lowered his voice--"that
+hopes he'll betake himself off--The Avenger, I mean--to another
+big city, to Manchester or to Edinburgh. There'd be plenty of
+work for him to do there," and Chandler chuckled at his own grim
+joke.
+
+And then, to both men's secret relief, for Bunting was now
+mortally afraid of this discussion concerning The Avenger and
+his doings, they heard Mrs. Bunting's key in the lock.
+
+Daisy blushed rosy-red with pleasure when she saw that young
+Chandler was still there. She had feared that when they got home
+he would be gone, the more so that Ellen, just as if she was doing
+it on purpose, had lingered aggravatingly long over each small
+purchase.
+
+"Here's Joe come to ask if he can take Daisy out for a walk,"
+blurted out Bunting.
+
+"My mother says as how she'd like you to come to tea, over at
+Richmond," said Chandler awkwardly, "I just come in to see whether
+we could fix it up, Miss Daisy." And Daisy looked imploringly at
+her stepmother.
+
+"D'you mean now--this minute?" asked Mrs. Bunting tartly.
+
+"No, o' course not"--Bunting broke in hastily. "How you do go on,
+Ellen!"
+
+"What day did your mother mention would be convenient to her?"
+asked Mrs. Bunting, looking at the young man satirically.
+
+Chandler hesitated. His mother had not mentioned any special day
+--in fact, his mother had shown a surprising lack of anxiety to
+see Daisy at all. But he had talked her round.
+
+"How about Saturday?" suggested Bunting. "That's Daisy's birthday.
+'Twould be a birthday treat for her to go to Richmond, and she's
+going back to Old Aunt on Monday."
+
+"I can't go Saturday," said Chandler disconsolately. "I'm on duty
+Saturday."
+
+"Well, then, let it be Sunday," said Bunting firmly. And his wife
+looked at him surprised; he seldom asserted himself so much in her
+presence.
+
+"What do you say, Miss Daisy?" said Chandler.
+
+"Sunday would be very nice," said Daisy demurely. And then, as the
+young man took up his hat, and as her stepmother did not stir, Daisy
+ventured to go out into the hall with him for a minute.
+
+Chandler shut the door behind them, and so was spared the hearing
+of Mrs. Bunting's whispered remark: "When I was a young woman folk
+didn't gallivant about on Sunday; those who was courting used to
+go to church together, decent-like--"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Daisy's eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully. Her father gave
+her what he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth
+birthday--a watch. It was a pretty little silver watch, which
+Bunting had bought secondhand on the last day he had been happy--
+it seemed a long, long time ago now.
+
+Mrs. Bunting thought a silver watch a very extravagant present but
+she was far too wretched, far too absorbed in her own thoughts, to
+trouble much about it. Besides, in such matters she had generally
+had the good sense not to interfere between her husband and his
+child.
+
+In the middle of the birthday morning Bunting went out to buy
+himself some more tobacco. He had never smoked so much as in the
+last four days, excepting, perhaps, the week that had followed on
+his leaving service. Smoking a pipe had then held all the exquisite
+pleasure which we are told attaches itself to the eating of forbidden
+fruit.
+
+His tobacco had now become his only relaxation; it acted on his
+nerves as an opiate, soothing his fears and helping him to think.
+But he had been overdoing it, and it was that which now made him
+feel so "jumpy," so he assured himself, when he found himself
+starting at any casual sound outside, or even when his wife spoke
+to him suddenly.
+
+Just now Ellen and Daisy were down in the kitchen, and Bunting
+didn't quite like the sensation of knowing that there was only
+one pair of stairs between Mr. Sleuth and himself. So he quietly
+slipped out of the house without telling Ellen that he was going
+out.
+
+In the last four days Bunting had avoided his usual haunts; above
+all, he had avoided even passing the time of day to his
+acquaintances and neighbours. He feared, with a great fear, that
+they would talk to him of a subject which, because it filled his
+mind to the exclusion of all else, might make him betray the
+knowledge--no, not knowledge, rather the--the suspicion--that
+dwelt within him.
+
+But to-day the unfortunate man had a curious, instinctive longing
+for human companionship--companionship, that is, other than that
+of his wife and of his daughter.
+
+This longing for a change of company finally led him into a small,
+populous thoroughfare hard by the Edgware Road. There were more
+people there than usual just now, for the housewives of the
+neighbourhood were doing their Saturday marketing for Sunday. The
+ex-butler turned into a small old-fashioned shop where he generally
+bought his tobacco.
+
+Bunting passed the time of day with the tobacconist, and the two
+fell into desultory talk, but to his customer's relief and surprise
+the man made no allusion to the subject of which all the
+neighbourhood must still be talking.
+
+And then, quite suddenly, while still standing by the counter, and
+before he had paid for the packet of tobacco he held in his hand,
+Bunting, through the open door, saw with horrified surprise that
+Ellen, his wife, was standing, alone, outside a greengrocer's shop
+just opposite.
+
+Muttering a word of apology, he rushed out of the shop and across
+the road.
+
+"Ellen!" he gasped hoarsely, "you've never gone and left my little
+girl alone in the house with the lodger?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting's face went yellow with fear. "I thought you was
+indoors," she cried. "You was indoors! Whatever made you come out
+for, without first making sure I'd stay in?"
+
+Bunting made no answer; but, as they stared at each other in
+exasperated silence, each now knew that the other knew.
+
+They turned and scurried down the crowded street. "Don't run," he
+said suddenly; "we shall get there just as quickly if we walk fast.
+People are noticing you, Ellen. Don't run."
+
+He spoke breathlessly, but it was breathlessness induced by fear
+and by excitement, not by the quick pace at which they were walking.
+
+At last they reached their own gate, and Bunting pushed past in
+front of his wife.
+
+After all, Daisy was his child; Ellen couldn't know how he was
+feeling.
+
+He seemed to take the path in one leap, then fumbled for a moment
+with his latchkey.
+
+Opening wide the door, "Daisy!" he called out, in a wailing voice,
+"Daisy, my dear! where are you?"
+
+"Here I am, father. What is it?"
+
+"She's all right." Bunting turned a grey face to his wife. "She's
+all right, Ellen."
+
+He waited a moment, leaning against the wall of the passage. "It
+did give me a turn," he said, and then, warningly, "Don't frighten
+the girl, Ellen."
+
+Daisy was standing before the fire in their sitting room, admiring
+herself in the glass.
+
+"Oh, father," she exclaimed, without turning round, "I've seen the
+lodger! He's quite a nice gentleman, though, to be sure, he does
+look a cure. He rang his bell, but I didn't like to go up; and so
+he came down to ask Ellen for something. We had quite a nice
+little chat--that we had. I told him it was my birthday, and he
+asked me and Ellen to go to Madame Tussaud's with him this
+afternoon." She laughed, a little self-consciously. "Of course,
+I could see he was 'centric, and then at first he spoke so funnily.
+'And who be you?' he says, threatening-like. And I says to him,
+'I'm Mr. Bunting's daughter, sir.' 'Then you're a very fortunate
+girl'--that's what he says, Ellen--'to 'ave such a nice
+stepmother as you've got. That's why,' he says, 'you look such
+a good, innocent girl.' And then he quoted a bit of the Prayer
+Book. 'Keep innocency,' he says, wagging his head at me. Lor'!
+It made me feel as if I was with Old Aunt again."
+
+"I won't have you going out with the lodger--that's flat."
+
+Bunting spoke in a muffled, angry tone. He was wiping his forehead
+with one hand, while with the other he mechanically squeezed the
+little packet of tobacco, for which, as he now remembered, he had
+forgotten to pay.
+
+Daisy pouted. "Oh, father, I think you might let me have a treat
+on my birthday! I told him that Saturday wasn't a very good day--
+at least, so I'd heard--for Madame Tussaud's. Then he said we
+could go early, while the fine folk are still having their dinners."
+She turned to her stepmother, then giggled happily. "He particularly
+said you was to come, too. The lodger has a wonderful fancy for you,
+Ellen; if I was father, I'd feel quite jealous!"
+
+Her last words were cut across by a tap-tap on the door.
+
+Bunting and his wife looked at each other apprehensively. Was it
+possible that, in their agitation, they had left the front door
+open, and that someone, some merciless myrmidon of the law, had
+crept in behind them?
+
+Both felt a curious thrill of satisfaction when they saw that it
+was only Mr. Sleuth--Mr. Sleuth dressed for going out; the tall
+hat he had worn when he had first come to them was in his hand, but
+he was wearing a coat instead of his Inverness cape.
+
+"I heard you come in"--he addressed Mrs. Bunting in his high,
+whistling, hesitating voice--"and so I've come down to ask you if
+you and Miss Bunting will come to Madame Tussaud's now. I have
+never seen those famous waxworks, though I've heard of the place
+all my life."
+
+As Bunting forced himself to look fixedly at his lodger, a sudden
+doubt bringing with it a sense of immeasurable relief, came to
+Mr. Sleuth's landlord.
+
+Surely it was inconceivable that this gentle, mild-mannered
+gentleman could be the monster of cruelty and cunning that Bunting
+had now for the terrible space of four days believed him to be!
+
+He tried to catch his wife's eye, but Mrs. Bunting was looking away,
+staring into vacancy. She still, of course, wore the bonnet and
+cloak in which she had just been out to do her marketing. Daisy
+was already putting on her hat and coat.
+
+"Well?" said Mr. Sleuth. Then Mrs. Bunting turned, and it seemed
+to his landlady that he was looking at her threateningly. "Well?"
+
+"Yes, sir. We'll come in a minute," she said dully.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Madame Tussaud's had hitherto held pleasant memories for Mrs. Bunting.
+In the days when she and Bunting were courting they often spent there
+part of their afternoon-out.
+
+The butler had an acquaintance, a man named Hopkins, who was one of
+the waxworks staff, and this man had sometimes given him passes for
+"self and lady." But this was the first time Mrs. Bunting had been
+inside the place since she had come to live almost next door, as it
+were, to the big building.
+
+They walked in silence to the familiar entrance, and then, after
+the ill-assorted trio had gone up the great staircase and into the
+first gallery, Mr. Sleuth suddenly stopped short. The presence of
+those curious, still, waxen figures which suggest so strangely death
+in life, seemed to surprise and affright him.
+
+Daisy took quick advantage of the lodger's hesitation and unease.
+
+"Oh, Ellen," she cried, "do let us begin by going into the Chamber
+of Horrors! I've never been in there. Old Aunt made father promise
+he wouldn't take me the only time I've ever been here. But now that
+I'm eighteen I can do just as I like; besides, Old Aunt will never
+know."
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked down at her, and a smile passed for a moment over
+his worn, gaunt face.
+
+"Yes," he said, "let us go into the Chamber of Horrors; that's a
+good idea, Miss Bunting. I've always wanted to see the Chamber of
+Horrors."
+
+They turned into the great room in which the Napoleonic relics were
+then kept, and which led into the curious, vault-like chamber where
+waxen effigies of dead criminals stand grouped in wooden docks.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was at once disturbed and relieved to see her husband's
+old acquaintance, Mr. Hopkins, in charge of the turnstile admitting
+the public to the Chamber of Horrors.
+
+"Well, you are a stranger," the man observed genially. "I do believe
+that this is the very first time I've seen you in here, Mrs. Bunting,
+since you was married!"
+
+"Yes," she said, "that is so. And this is my husband's daughter,
+Daisy; I expect you've heard of her, Mr. Hopkins. And this"--she
+hesitated a moment--"is our lodger, Mr. Sleuth."
+
+But Mr. Sleuth frowned and shuffled away. Daisy, leaving her
+stepmother's side, joined him.
+
+Two, as all the world knows, is company, three is none. Mrs.
+Bunting put down three sixpences.
+
+"Wait a minute," said Hopkins; "you can't go into the Chamber of
+Horrors just yet. But you won't have to wait more than four or
+five minutes, Mrs. Bunting. It's this way, you see; our boss is
+in there, showing a party round." He lowered his voice. "It's
+Sir John Burney--I suppose you know who Sir John Burney is?"
+
+"No," she answered indifferently, "I don't know that I ever heard
+of him."
+
+She felt slightly--oh, very sightly--uneasy about Daisy. She
+would have liked her stepdaughter to keep well within sight and
+sound, but Mr. Sleuth was now taking the girl down to the other
+end of the room.
+
+"Well, I hope you never will know him--not in any personal sense,
+Mrs. Bunting." The man chuckled. "He's the Commissioner of Police
+--the new one--that's what Sir John Burney is. One of the
+gentlemen he's showing round our place is the Paris Police boss--
+whose job is on all fours, so to speak, with Sir John's. The
+Frenchy has brought his daughter with him, and there are several
+other ladies. Ladies always likes horrors, Mrs. Bunting; that's
+our experience here. 'Oh, take me to the Chamber of Horrors'--
+that's what they say the minute they gets into this here building!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked at him thoughtfully. It occurred to Mr. Hopkins
+that she was very wan and tired; she used to look better in the old
+days, when she was still in service, before Bunting married her.
+
+"Yes," she said; "that's just what my stepdaughter said just now.
+'Oh, take me to the Chamber of Horrors'--that's exactly what she
+did say when we got upstairs."
+
+******
+
+A group of people, all talking and laughing together; were advancing,
+from within the wooden barrier, toward the turnstile.
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared at them nervously. She wondered which of them
+was the gentleman with whom Mr. Hopkins had hoped she would never be
+brought into personal contact; she thought she could pick him out
+among the others. He was a tall, powerful, handsome gentleman, with
+a military appearance.
+
+Just now he was smiling down into the face of a young lady.
+"Monsieur Barberoux is quite right," he was saying in a loud,
+cheerful voice, "our English law is too kind to the criminal,
+especially to the murderer. If we conducted our trials in the
+French fashion, the place we have just left would be very much
+fuller than it is to-day. A man of whose guilt we are absolutely
+assured is oftener than not acquitted, and then the public taunt
+us with 'another undiscovered crime!'"
+
+"D'you mean, Sir John, that murderers sometimes escape scot-free?
+Take the man who has been committing all these awful murders this
+last month? I suppose there's no doubt he'll be hanged--if he's
+ever caught, that is!"
+
+Her girlish voice rang out, and Mrs. Bunting could hear every word
+that was said.
+
+The whole party gathered round, listening eagerly. "Well, no."
+He spoke very deliberately. "I doubt if that particular murderer
+ever will be hanged."
+
+"You mean that you'll never catch him?" the girl spoke with a touch
+of airy impertinence in her clear voice.
+
+"I think we shall end by catching him--because"--he waited a moment,
+then added in a lower voice--"now don't give me away to a newspaper
+fellow, Miss Rose--because now I think we do know who the murderer
+in question is--"
+
+Several of those standing near by uttered expressions of surprise and
+incredulity.
+
+"Then why don't you catch him?" cried the girl indignantly.
+
+"I didn't say we knew where he was; I only said we knew who he was,
+or, rather, perhaps I ought to say that I personally have a very
+strong suspicion of his identity."
+
+Sir John's French colleague looked up quickly. "De Leipsic and
+Liverpool man?" he said interrogatively.
+
+The other nodded. "Yes, I suppose you've had the case turned up?"
+
+Then, speaking very quickly, as if he wished to dismiss the subject
+from his own mind, and from that of his auditors, he went on:
+
+"Four murders of the kind were committed eight years ago--two in
+Leipsic, the others, just afterwards, in Liverpool,--and there were
+certain peculiarities connected with the crimes which made it clear
+they were committed by the same hand. The perpetrator was caught,
+fortunately for us, red-handed, just as he was leaving the house of
+his last victim, for in Liverpool the murder was committed in a
+house. I myself saw the unhappy man--I say unhappy, for there is
+no doubt at all that he was mad"--he hesitated, and added in a
+lower tone--"suffering from an acute form of religious mania.
+I myself saw him, as I say, at some length. But now comes the really
+interesting point. I have just been informed that a month ago this
+criminal lunatic, as we must of course regard him, made his escape
+from the asylum where he was confined. He arranged the whole
+thing with extraordinary cunning and intelligence, and we should
+probably have caught him long ago, were it not that he managed, when
+on his way out of the place, to annex a considerable sum of money
+in gold, with which the wages of the asylum staff were about to be
+paid. It is owing to that fact that his escape was, very wrongly,
+concealed--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, as if sorry he had said so much, and a moment
+later the party were walking in Indian file through the turnstile,
+Sir John Burney leading the way.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked straight before her. She felt--so she
+expressed it to her husband later--as if she had been turned to
+stone.
+
+Even had she wished to do so, she had neither the time nor the power
+to warn her lodger of his danger, for Daisy and her companion were
+now coming down the room, bearing straight for the Commissioner of
+Police. In another moment Mrs. Bunting's lodger and Sir John Burney
+were face to face.
+
+Mr. Sleuth swerved to one side; there came a terrible change over
+his pale, narrow face; it became discomposed, livid with rage and
+terror.
+
+But, to Mrs. Bunting's relief--yes, to her inexpressible relief
+--Sir John Burney and his friends swept on. They passed Mr. Sleuth
+and the girl by his side, unaware, or so it seemed to her, that
+there was anyone else in the room but themselves.
+
+"Hurry up, Mrs. Bunting," said the turnstile-keeper; "you and your
+friends will have the place all to yourselves for a bit." From an
+official he had become a man, and it was the man in Mr. Hopkins that
+gallantly addressed pretty Daisy Bunting: "It seems strange that a
+young lady like you should want to go in and see all those 'orrible
+frights," he said jestingly.
+
+"Mrs. Bunting, may I trouble you to come over here for a moment?"
+
+The words were hissed rather than spoken by Mr. Sleuth's lips.
+
+His landlady took a doubtful step towards him.
+
+"A last word with you, Mrs. Bunting." The lodger's face was still
+distorted with fear and passion. "Do not think to escape the
+consequences of your hideous treachery. I trusted you, Mrs. Bunting,
+and you betrayed me! Put I am protected by a higher power, for
+I still have much to do." Then, his voice sinking to a whisper, he
+hissed out "Your end will be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a
+two-edged sword. Your feet shall go down to death, and your steps
+take hold on hell."
+
+Even while Mr. Sleuth was muttering these strange, dreadful words,
+he was looking round, glancing this way and that, seeking a way of
+escape.
+
+At last his eyes became fixed on a small placard placed above a
+curtain. "Emergency Exit" was written there. Mrs. Bunting thought
+he was going to make a dash for the place; but Mr. Sleuth did
+something very different. Leaving his landlady's side, he walked
+over to the turnstile, he fumbled in his pocket for a moment, and
+then touched the man on the arm. "I feel ill," he said, speaking
+very rapidly; "very ill indeed! It is the atmosphere of this place.
+I want you to let me out by the quickest way. It would be a pity
+for me to faint here--especially with ladies about."
+
+His left hand shot out and placed what he had been fumbling for in
+his pocket on the other's bare palm. "I see there's an emergency
+exit over there. Would it be possible for me to get out that way?"
+
+"Well, yes, sir; I think so."
+
+The man hesitated; he felt a slight, a very sight, feeling of
+misgiving. He looked at Daisy, flushed and smiling, happy and
+unconcerned, and then at Mrs. Bunting. She was very pale; but
+surely her lodger's sudden seizure was enough to make her feel
+worried. Hopkins felt the half-sovereign pleasantly tickling his
+palm. The Paris Prefect of Police had given him only half-a-crown
+--mean, shabby foreigner!
+
+"Yes, sir; I can let you out that way," he said at last, "and p'raps
+when you're standing out in the air, on the iron balcony, you'll feel
+better. But then, you know, sir, you'll have to come round to the
+front if you wants to come in again, for those emergency doors only
+open outward."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sleuth hurriedly. "I quite understand! If I
+feel better I'll come in by the front way, and pay another shilling
+--that's only fair."
+
+"You needn't do that if you'll just explain what happened here."
+
+The man went and pulled the curtain aside, and put his shoulder
+against the door. It burst open, and the light, for a moment,
+blinded Mr. Sleuth.
+
+He passed his hand over his eyes. "Thank you," he muttered, "thank
+you. I shall get all right out there."
+
+An iron stairway led down into a small stable yard, of which the
+door opened into a side street.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked round once more; he really did feel very ill--
+ill and dazed. How pleasant it would be to take a flying leap over
+the balcony railing and find rest, eternal rest, below.
+
+But no--he thrust the thought, the temptation, from him. Again a
+convulsive look of rage came over his face. He had remembered his
+landlady. How could the woman whom he had treated so generously have
+betrayed him to his arch-enemy?--to the official, that is, who had
+entered into a conspiracy years ago to have him confined--him, an
+absolutely sane man with a great avenging work to do in the world--
+in a lunatic asylum.
+
+He stepped out into the open air, and the curtain, falling-to behind
+him, blotted out the tall, thin figure from the little group of
+people who had watched him disappear.
+
+Even Daisy felt a little scared. "He did look bad, didn't he, now?"
+she turned appealingly to Mr. Hopkins.
+
+"Yes, that he did, poor gentleman--your lodger, too?" he looked
+sympathetically at Mrs. Bunting.
+
+She moistened her lips with her tongue. "Yes," she repeated dully,
+"my lodger."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+In vain Mr. Hopkins invited Mrs. Bunting and her pretty stepdaughter
+to step through into the Chamber of Horrors. "I think we ought to
+go straight home," said Mr. Sleuth's landlady decidedly. And Daisy
+meekly assented. Somehow the girl felt confused, a little scared by
+the lodger's sudden disappearance. Perhaps this unwonted feeling of
+hers was induced by the look of stunned surprise and, yes, pain, on
+her stepmother's face.
+
+Slowly they made their way out of the building, and when they got
+home it was Daisy who described the strange way Mr. Sleuth had been
+taken.
+
+"I don't suppose he'll be long before he comes home," said Bunting
+heavily, and he cast an anxious, furtive look at his wife. She
+looked as if stricken in a vital part; he saw from her face that
+there was something wrong--very wrong indeed.
+
+The hours dragged on. All three felt moody and ill at ease. Daisy
+knew there was no chance that young Chandler would come in to-day.
+
+About six o'clock Mrs. Bunting went upstairs. She lit the gas in
+Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room and looked about her with a fearful glance.
+Somehow everything seemed to speak to her of the lodger, there lay
+her Bible and his Concordance, side by side on the table, exactly
+as he had left them, when he had come downstairs and suggested that
+ill-starred expedition to his landlord's daughter. She took a few
+steps forward, listening the while anxiously for the familiar sound
+of the click in the door which would tell her that the lodger had
+come back, and then she went over to the window and looked out.
+
+What a cold night for a man to be wandering about, homeless,
+friendless, and, as she suspected with a pang, with but very little
+money on him!
+
+Turning abruptly, she went into the lodger's bedroom and opened the
+drawer of the looking-glass.
+
+Yes, there lay the much-diminished heap of sovereigns. If only he
+had taken his money out with him! She wondered painfully whether he
+had enough on his person to secure a good night's lodging, and then
+suddenly she remembered that which brought relief to her mind. The
+lodger had given something to that Hopkins fellow--either a sovereign
+or half a sovereign, she wasn't sure which.
+
+The memory of Mr. Sleuth's cruel words to her, of his threat, did
+not disturb her overmuch. It had been a mistake--all a mistake.
+Far from betraying Mr. Sleuth, she had sheltered him--kept his awful
+secret as she could not have kept it had she known, or even dimly
+suspected, the horrible fact with which Sir John Burney's words had
+made her acquainted; namely, that Mr. Sleuth was victim of no
+temporary aberration, but that he was, and had been for years, a
+madman, a homicidal maniac.
+
+In her ears there still rang the Frenchman's half careless yet
+confident question, "De Leipsic and Liverpool man?"
+
+Following a sudden impulse, she went back into the sitting-room,
+and taking a black-headed pin out of her bodice stuck it amid the
+leaves of the Bible. Then she opened the Book, and looked at the
+page the pin had marked:--
+
+"My tabernacle is spoiled and all my cords are broken . . .
+There is none to stretch forth my tent any more and to set up my
+curtains."
+
+At last leaving the Bible open, Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and
+as she opened the door of her sitting-room Daisy came towards her
+stepmother.
+
+"I'll go down and start getting the lodger's supper ready for you,"
+said the girl good-naturedly. "He's certain to come in when he gets
+hungry. But he did look upset, didn't he, Ellen? Right down bad--
+that he did!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no answer; she simply stepped aside to allow Daisy
+to go down.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth won't never come back no more," she said sombrely, and
+then she felt both glad and angry at the extraordinary change which
+came over her husband's face. Yet, perversely, that look of relief,
+of right-down joy, chiefly angered her, and tempted her to add,
+"That's to say, I don't suppose he will."
+
+And Bunting's face altered again; the old, anxious, depressed look,
+the look it had worn the last few days, returned.
+
+"What makes you think he mayn't come back?" he muttered.
+
+"Too long to tell you now," she said. "Wait till the child's gone
+to bed."
+
+And Bunting had to restrain his curiosity.
+
+And then, when at last Daisy had gone off to the back room where
+she now slept with her stepmother, Mrs. Bunting beckoned to her
+husband to follow her upstairs.
+
+Before doing so he went down the passage and put the chain on the
+door. And about this they had a few sharp whispered words.
+
+"You're never going to shut him out?" she expostulated angrily,
+beneath her breath.
+
+"I'm not going to leave Daisy down here with that man perhaps
+walking in any minute."
+
+"Mr. Sleuth won't hurt Daisy, bless you! Much more likely to hurt
+me," and she gave a half sob.
+
+Bunting stared at her. "What do you mean?" he said roughly.
+"Come upstairs and tell me what you mean."
+
+And then, in what had been the lodger's sitting-room, Mrs. Bunting
+told her husband exactly what it was that had happened.
+
+He listened in heavy silence.
+
+"So you see," she said at last, "you see, Bunting, that 'twas me
+that was right after all. The lodger was never responsible for
+his actions. I never thought he was, for my part."
+
+And Bunting stared at her ruminatingly. "Depends on what you call
+responsible--" he began argumentatively.
+
+But she would have none of that. "I heard the gentleman say myself
+that he was a lunatic," she said fiercely. And then, dropping her
+voice, "A religious maniac--that's what he called him."
+
+"Well, he never seemed so to me," said Bunting stoutly. "He simply
+seemed to me 'centric--that's all he did. Not a bit madder than
+many I could tell you of." He was walking round the room restlessly,
+but he stopped short at last. "And what d'you think we ought to do
+now?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting shook her head impatiently. "I don't think we ought
+to do nothing," she said. "Why should we?"
+
+And then again he began walking round the room in an aimless fashion
+that irritated her.
+
+"If only I could put out a bit of supper for him somewhere where he
+would get it! And his money, too? I hate to feel it's in there."
+
+"Don't you make any mistake--he'll come back for that," said Bunting,
+with decision.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting shook her head. She knew better. "Now," she said,
+"you go off up to bed. It's no use us sitting up any longer."
+
+And Bunting acquiesced.
+
+She ran down and got him a bedroom candle--there was no gas in the
+little back bedroom upstairs. And then she watched him go slowly up.
+
+Suddenly he turned and came down again. "Ellen," he said, in an
+urgent whisper, "if I was you I'd take the chain off the door, and
+I'd lock myself in--that's what I'm going to do. Then he can sneak
+in and take his dirty money away."
+
+Mrs. Bunting neither nodded nor shook her head. Slowly she went
+downstairs, and there she carried out half of Bunting's advice.
+She took, that is, the chain off the front door. But she did not
+go to bed, neither did she lock herself in. She sat up all night,
+waiting. At half-past seven she made herself a cup of tea, and
+then she went into her bedroom.
+
+Daisy opened her eyes.
+
+"Why, Ellen," she said, "I suppose I was that tired, and slept so
+sound, that I never heard you come to bed or get up--funny,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Young people don't sleep as light as do old folks," Mrs. Bunting
+said sententiously.
+
+"Did the lodger come in after all? I suppose he's upstairs now?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting shook her head. "It looks as if 'twould be a fine
+day for you down at Richmond," she observed in a kindly tone.
+
+And Daisy smiled, a very happy, confident little smile.
+
+******
+
+That evening Mrs. Bunting forced herself to tell young Chandler
+that their lodger had, so to speak, disappeared. She and Bunting
+had thought carefully over what they would say, and so well did
+they carry out their programme, or, what is more likely, so full
+was young Chandler of the long happy day he and Daisy had spent
+together, that he took their news very calmly.
+
+"Gone away, has he?" he observed casually. "Well, I hope he paid
+up all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," said Mrs. Bunting hastily. "No trouble of that sort."
+
+And Bunting said shamefacedly, "Aye, aye, the lodger was quite an
+honest gentleman, Joe. But I feel worried, about him. He was such
+a poor, gentle chap--not the sort o' man one likes to think of as
+wandering about by himself."
+
+"You always said he was 'centric," said Joe thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, he was that," said Bunting slowly. "Regular right-down queer.
+Leetle touched, you know, under the thatch," and, as he tapped his
+head significantly, both young people burst out laughing.
+
+"Would you like a description of him circulated?" asked Joe
+good-naturedly.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bunting looked at one another.
+
+"No, I don't think so. Not yet awhile at any rate. 'Twould upset
+him awfully, you see."
+
+And Joe acquiesced. "You'd be surprised at the number o' people
+who disappears and are never heard of again," he said cheerfully.
+And then he got up, very reluctantly.
+
+Daisy, making no bones about it this time, followed him out into
+the passage, and shut the sitting-room door behind her.
+
+When she came back she walked over to where her father was sitting
+in his easy chair, and standing behind him she put her arms round
+his neck.
+
+Then she bent down her head. "Father," she said, "I've a bit of
+news for you!"
+
+"Yes, my dear?"
+
+"Father, I'm engaged! Aren't you surprised?"
+
+"Well, what do you think?" said Bunting fondly. Then he turned
+round and, catching hold of her head, gave her a good, hearty kiss.
+
+"What'll Old Aunt say, I wonder?" he whispered.
+
+"Don't you worry about Old Aunt," exclaimed his wife suddenly.
+"I'll manage Old Aunt! I'll go down and see her. She and I have
+always got on pretty comfortable together, as you knows well, Daisy."
+
+"Yes," said Daisy a little wonderingly. "I know you have, Ellen."
+
+******
+
+Mr. Sleuth never came back, and at last after many days and many
+nights had gone by, Mrs. Bunting left off listening for the click
+of the lock which she at once hoped and feared would herald her
+lodger's return.
+
+As suddenly and as mysteriously as they had begun the "Avenger"
+murders stopped, but there came a morning in the early spring when
+a gardener, working in the Regent's Park, found a newspaper in which
+was wrapped, together with a half-worn pair of rubber-soled shoes,
+a long, peculiarly shaped knife. The fact, though of considerable
+interest to the police, was not chronicled in any newspaper, but
+about the same time a picturesque little paragraph went the round
+of the press concerning a small boxful of sovereigns which had been
+anonymously forwarded to the Governors of the Foundling Hospital.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Bunting had been as good as her word about "Old Aunt,"
+and that lady had received the wonderful news concerning Daisy in a
+more philosophical spirit than her great-niece had expected her to
+do. She only observed that it was odd to reflect that if gentlefolks
+leave a house in charge of the police a burglary is pretty sure to
+follow--a remark which Daisy resented much more than did her Joe.
+
+
+Mr. Bunting and his Ellen are now in the service of an old
+lady, by whom they are feared as well as respected, and whom they
+make very comfortable.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LODGER ***
+
+***** This file should be named 2014.txt or 2014.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/1/2014/
+
+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/2014.zip b/old/2014.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c89cc99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/2014.zip
diff --git a/old/tldgr10.txt b/old/tldgr10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ddcaf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/tldgr10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9967 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+The Lodger
+
+by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+December, 1999  [Etext #2014]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+*****This file should be named tldgr10.txt or tldgr10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, tldgr11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, tldgr10a.txt
+
+
+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
+of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
+files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
+from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
+assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
+more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
+don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email.
+
+******
+
+To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
+to view http://promo.net/pg.  This site lists Etexts by
+author and by title, and includes information about how
+to get involved with Project Gutenberg.  You could also
+download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here.  This
+is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
+for a more complete list of our various sites.
+
+To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
+Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
+sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
+at http://promo.net/pg).
+
+Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
+
+Example FTP session:
+
+ftp sunsite.unc.edu
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+***
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Lodger
+
+by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+
+
+
+"Lover and friend hast thou put far from me,
+and mine acquaintance into darkness."
+PSALM lxxxviii.  18
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning,
+carefully-banked-up fire.
+
+The room, especially when it be known that it was part of a house
+standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare,
+was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for.  A casual stranger,
+more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly
+opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr.
+and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of
+comfortable married life.  Bunting, who was leaning back in a deep
+leather arm-chair, was clean-shaven and dapper, still in appearance
+what he had been for many years of his life - a self-respecting
+man-servant.
+
+On his wife, now sitting up in an uncomfortable straight-backed
+chair, the marks of past servitude were less apparent; but they
+were there all the same - in her neat black stuff dress, and in
+her scrupulously clean, plain collar and cuffs.  Mrs. Bunting, as
+a single woman, had been what is known as a useful maid.
+
+But peculiarly true of average English life is the time-worn
+English proverb as to appearances being deceitful.  Mr. and Mrs.
+Bunting were sitting in a very nice room and in their time - how
+long ago it now seemed!  - both husband and wife had been proud of
+their carefully chosen belongings.  Everything in the room was
+strong and substantial, and each article of furniture had been
+bought at a well-conducted auction held in a private house.
+
+Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden,
+drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song,
+and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years.
+A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which
+covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat
+forward, staring into the dull, small fire.  In fact, that arm-chair
+had been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting.  She had wanted her husband
+to be comfortable after the day's work was done, and she had paid
+thirty-seven shillings for the chair.  Only yesterday Bunting had
+tried to find a purchaser for it, but the man who had come to look at
+it, guessing their cruel necessities, had only offered them twelve
+shillings and sixpence for it; so for the present they were keeping
+their arm-chair.
+
+But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort,
+much as that is valued by the Buntings of this world.  So, on the
+walls of the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded
+photographs - photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's various former
+employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had
+separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not
+unhappy servitude.
+
+But appearances were not only deceitful, they were more than
+usually deceitful with regard to these un-fortunate people.  In
+spite of their  good furniture - that substantial outward sign of
+respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall
+into trouble try to dispose of - they were almost at the end of
+their tether.  Already they had learnt to go hungry, and they were
+beginning to learn to go cold.  Tobacco, the last thing the sober
+man foregoes among his comforts, had been given up some time ago
+by Bunting.  And even Mrs. Bunting - prim, prudent, careful woman
+as she was in her way - had realised what this must mean to him.
+So well, indeed, had she understood that some days back she had
+crept out and bought him a packet of Virginia.
+
+Bunting had been touched - touched as he had not been for years by
+any woman's thought and love for him.  Painful tears had forced
+themselves into his eyes, and husband and wife had both felt in
+their odd, unemotional way, moved to the heart.
+
+Fortunately he never guessed - how could he have guessed, with his
+slow, normal, rather dull mind?  - that his poor Ellen had since
+more than once bitterly regretted that fourpence-ha'penny, for they
+were now very near the soundless depths which divide those who dwell
+on the safe tableland of security - those, that is, who are sure of
+making a respectable, if not a happy, living - and the submerged
+multitude who, through some lack in themselves, or owing to the
+conditions under which our strange civilisation has become organised,
+struggle rudderless till they die in workhouse, hospital, or prison.
+
+Had the Buntings been in a class lower than their own, had they
+belonged to the great company of human beings technically known to
+so many of us as the poor, there would have been friendly neighbours
+ready to help them, and the same would have been the case had they
+belonged to the class of smug, well-meaning, if unimaginative, folk
+whom they had spent so much of their lives in serving.
+
+There was only one person in the world who might possibly be brought
+to help them.  That was an aunt of Bunting's first wife.  With this
+woman, the widow of a man who had been well-to-do, lived Daisy,
+Bunting's only child by his first wife, and during the last long two
+days he had been trying to make up his mind to write to the old lady,
+and that though he suspected that she would almost certainly retort
+with a cruel, sharp rebuff.
+
+As to their few acquaintances, former fellow-servants, and so on,
+they had gradually fallen out of touch with them.  There was but
+one friend who often came to see them in their deep trouble.  This
+was a young fellow named Chandler, under whose grandfather Bunting
+had been footman years and years ago.  Joe Chandler had never gone
+into service; he was attached to the police; in fact not to put too
+fine a point upon it, young Chandler was a detective.
+
+When they had first taken the house which had brought them, so they
+both thought, such bad luck, Bunting had encouraged the young chap
+to come often, for his tales were well worth listening to - quite
+exciting at times.  But now poor Bunting didn't want to hear that
+sort of stories - stories of people being cleverly "nabbed," or
+stupidly allowed to escape the fate they always, from Chandler's
+point of view, richly deserved.
+
+But Joe still came very faithfully once or twice a week, so timing
+his calls that neither host nor hostess need press food upon him
+ - nay, more, he had done that which showed him to have a good and
+feeling heart.  He had offered his father's old acquaintance a loan,
+and Bunting, at last, had taken 30s.  Very little of that money
+now remained: Bunting still could jingle a few coppers in his pocket;
+and Mrs. Bunting had 2s. 9d.; that and the rent they would have to
+pay in five weeks, was all they had left.  Everything of the light,
+portable sort that would fetch money had been said.  Mrs. Bunting
+had a fierce horror of the pawnshop.  She had never put her feet in
+such a place, and she declared she never would - she would rather
+starve first.
+
+But she had said nothing when there had occurred the gradual
+disappearance of various little possessions she knew that Bunting
+valued, notably of the old-fashioned gold watch-chain which had been
+given to him after the death of his first master, a master he had
+nursed faithfully and kindly through a long and terrible illness.
+There had also vanished a twisted gold tie-pin, and a large mourning
+ring, both gifts of former employers.
+
+When people are living near that deep pit which divides the secure
+from the insecure - when they see themselves creeping closer and
+closer to its dread edge - they are apt, however loquacious by
+nature, to fall into long silences.  Bunting had always been a
+talker, but now he talked no more.  Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but
+then she had always been a silent woman, and that was perhaps one
+reason why Bunting had felt drawn to her from the very first moment
+he had seen her.
+
+It had fallen out in this way.  A lady had just engaged him as
+butler, and he had been shown, by the man whose place he was to
+take, into the dining-room.  There, to use his own expression, he
+had discovered Ellen Green, carefully pouring out the glass of port
+wine which her then mistress always drank at 11.30 every morning.
+And as he, the new butler, had seen her engaged in this task, as he
+had watched her carefully stopper the decanter and put it back into
+the old wine-cooler, he had said to himself, "That is the woman for
+me!"
+
+But now her stillness, her - her dumbness, had got on the
+unfortunate man's nerves.  He no longer felt like going into the
+various little shops, close by, patronised by him in more prosperous
+days, and Mrs. Bunting also went afield to make the slender purchases
+which still had to be made every day or two, if they were to be
+saved from actually starving to death.  
+
+kept, looked as if it could, 
+aye, and would, keep any se-
+
+
+Suddenly, across the stillness of the dark November evening there
+came the muffled sounds of hurrying feet and of loud, shrill shouting
+outside - boys crying the late afternoon editions of the evening
+papers.
+
+Bunting turned uneasily in his chair.  The giving up of a daily
+paper had been, after his tobacco, his bitterest deprivation.  And
+the paper was an older habit than the tobacco, for servants are
+great readers of newspapers.
+
+As the shouts came through the closed windows and the thick damask
+curtains, Bunting felt a sudden sense of mind hunger fall upon him.
+
+It was a shame - a damned shame - that he shouldn't know what was
+happening in the world outside!  Only criminals are kept from hearing
+news  of what is going on beyond their prison walls.  And those
+shouts, those hoarse, sharp cries must portend that something really
+exciting had happened, something warranted to make a man forget for
+the moment his own intimate, gnawing troubles.
+
+He got up, and going towards the nearest window strained his eats to
+listen.  There fell on them, emerging now and again from the confused
+babe1 of hoarse shouts, the one clear word "Murder!"
+
+Slowly Bunting's brain pieced the loud, indistinct cries into some
+sort of connected order.  Yes, that was it - "Horrible Murder!
+Murder at St. Pancras!"  Bunting remembered vaguely another murder
+which had been committed near St. Pancras - that of an old lady by
+her servant-maid.  It had happened a great many years ago, but was
+still vividly remembered, as of special and natural interest, among
+the class to which he had belonged.
+
+The newsboys - for there were more than one of them, a rather unusual
+thing in the Marylebone Road - were coming nearer and nearer; now
+they had adopted another cry, but he could not quite catch what they
+were crying.  They were still shouting hoarsely, excitedly, but he
+could only hear a word or two now and then.  Suddenly "The Avenger!
+The Avenger at his work again!" broke on his ear.
+
+During the last fortnight four very curious and brutal murders had
+been committed in London and within a comparatively small area.
+
+The first had aroused no special interest - even the second had only
+been awarded, in the paper Bunting was still then taking in, quite a
+small paragraph.
+
+Then had come the third - and with that a wave of keen excitement,
+for pinned to the dress of the victim - a drunken woman - had been
+found a three-cornered piece of paper, on which was written, in red
+ink, and in printed characters, the words,
+
+"THE AVENGER"
+
+It was then realised, not only by those whose business it is to
+investigate such terrible happenings, but also by the vast world
+of men and women who take an intelligent interest in such sinister
+mysteries, that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes;
+and before that extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into
+the public mind there took place yet another murder, and again the
+murderer had been to special pains to make it clear that some
+obscure and terrible lust for vengeance possessed him.
+
+Now everyone was talking of The Avenger and his crimes!  Even the
+man who left their ha'porth of milk at the door each morning had
+spoken to Bunting about them that very day.
+
+******
+
+Bunting came back to the fire and looked down at his wife with mild
+excitement.  Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of
+weary, mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him.
+He felt he could have shaken her!
+
+Ellen had hardly taken the trouble to listen when he, Bunting, had
+come back to bed that morning, and told her what the milkman had
+said.  In fact, she had been quite nasty about it, intimating that
+she didn't like hearing about such horrid things.
+
+It was a curious fact that though Mrs. Bunting enjoyed tales of
+pathos and sentiment, and would listen with frigid amusement to
+the details of a breach of promise action, she shrank from stories
+of immorality or of physical violence.  In the old, happy days,
+when they could afford to buy a paper, aye, and more than one paper
+daily, Bunting had often had to choke down his interest in some
+exciting "case" or "mystery" which was affording him pleasant mental
+relaxation, because any allusion to it sharply angered Ellen.
+
+But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she
+felt.
+
+Walking away from the window he took a slow, uncertain step towards
+the door; when there he turned half round, and there came over his
+close-shaven, round face the rather sly, pleading look with which
+a child about to do something naughty glances at its parent.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting remained quite still; her thin, narrow shoulders
+just showed above the back of the chair on which she was sitting,
+bolt upright, staring before her as if into vacancy.
+
+Bunting turned round, opened the door, and quickly he went out into
+the dark hall - they had given up lighting the gas there some time
+ago - and opened the front door.
+
+Walking down the small flagged path outside, he flung open the iron
+gate which gave on to the damp pavement.  But there he hesitated.
+The coppers in his pocket seemed to have shrunk in number, and he
+remembered ruefully how far Ellen could make even four pennies go.
+
+Then a boy ran up to him with a sheaf of evening papers, and Bunting,
+being sorely tempted - fell.  "Give me a Sun," he said roughly, "Sun
+or Echo!',
+
+But the boy, scarcely stopping to take breath, shook his head.  "Only
+penny papers left," he gasped. "What'll yer 'ave, sir?"
+
+With an eagerness which was mingled with shame, Bunting drew a penny
+out of his pocket and took a paper - it was the Evening Standard - 
+from the boy's hand.
+
+Then, very slowly, he shut the gate and walked back through the raw,
+cold air, up the flagged path, shivering yet full of eager, joyful
+anticipation.
+
+Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly he would pass
+a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent,
+miserable self.  It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments
+of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife,
+with careworn, troubled Ellen.
+
+A hot wave of unease almost of remorse, swept over Bunting.  Ellen
+would never have spent that penny on herself - he knew that well
+enough - and if it hadn't been so cold, so foggy, so - so drizzly,
+he would have gone out again through the gate and stood under the
+street lamp to take his pleasure.  He dreaded with a nervous dread
+the glance of Ellen's cold, reproving light-blue eye.  That glance
+would tell him that he had had no business to waste a penny on a
+paper, and that well he knew it!
+
+Suddenly the door in front of him opened, and he beard a familiar
+voice saying crossly, yet anxiously, "What on earth are you doing
+out there, Bunting?  Come in - do!  You'll catch your death of cold!
+I don't want to have you ill on my hands as well as everything else!"
+Mrs. Bunting rarely uttered so many words at once nowadays.
+
+He walked in through the front door of his cheerless house.  "I
+went out to get a paper," he said sullenly.
+
+After all, he was master.  He had as much right to spend the money
+as she had; for the matter of that the money on which they were now
+both living had been lent, nay, pressed on him - not on Ellen - by
+that decent young chap, Joe Chandler.  And he, Bunting, had done
+all he could; he had pawned everything he could pawn, while Ellen,
+so he resentfully noticed, still wore her wedding ring.
+
+He stepped past her heavily, and though she said nothing, he knew
+she grudged him his coming joy.  Then, full of rage with her and
+contempt for himself, and giving himself the luxury of a mild, a
+very mild, oath - Ellen had very early made it clear she would
+have no swearing in her presence - he lit the hall gas full-flare.
+
+"How can we hope to get lodgers if they can't even see the card?"
+he shouted angrily.
+
+And there was truth in what he said, for now that he had lit the
+gas, the oblong card, though not the word "Apartments" printed on
+it, could be plainly seen out-lined against the old-fashioned
+fanlight above the front door.
+
+Bunting went into the sitting-room, silently followed by his wife,
+and then, sitting down in his nice arm-chair, he poked the little
+banked-up fire.  It was the first time Bunting had poked the fire
+for many a long day, and this exertion of marital authority made
+him feel better.  A man has to assert himself sometimes, and he,
+Bunting, had not asserted himself enough lately.
+
+A little colour came into Mrs. Bunting's pale face.  She was not
+used to be flouted in this way.  For Bunting, when not thoroughly
+upset, was the mildest of men.
+
+She began moving about the room, flicking off an imperceptible
+touch of dust here, straightening a piece of furniture there.
+
+But her hands trembled - they trembled with excitement, with
+self-pity, with anger.  A penny?  It was dreadful - dreadful to
+have to worry about a penny!  But they had come to the point when
+one has to worry about pennies.  Strange that her husband didn't
+realise that.
+
+Bunting looked round once or twice; he would have liked to ask Ellen
+to leave off fidgeting, but he was fond of peace, and perhaps, by
+now, a little bit ashamed of himself, so he refrained from remark,
+and she soon gave over what irritated him of her own accord.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting did not come and sit down as her husband would have
+liked her to do.  The sight of him, absorbed in his paper as he was,
+irritated her, and made her long to get away from him.  Opening the
+door which separated the sitting-room from the bedroom behind, and
+ - shutting out the aggravating vision of Bunting sitting comfortably
+by the now brightly burning fire, with the Evening Standard spread
+out before him - she sat down in the cold darkness, and pressed her
+hands against her temples.
+
+Never, never had she felt so hopeless, so - so broken as now.  Where
+was the good of having been an upright, conscientious, self-respecting
+woman all her life long, if it only led to this utter, degrading
+poverty and wretchedness?  She and Bunting were just past the age
+which gentlefolk think proper in a married couple seeking to enter
+service together, unless, that is, the wife happens to be a professed
+cook.  A cook and a butler can always get a nice situation.  But Mrs.
+Bunting was no cook.  She could do all right the simple things any
+lodger she might get would require, but that was all.
+
+Lodgers?  How foolish she had been to think of taking lodgers!  For
+it had been her doing.  Bunting bad been like butter in her hands.
+
+Yet they had begun well, with a lodging-house in a seaside place.
+There they had prospered, not as they had hoped to do, but still
+pretty well; and then had come an epidemic of scarlet fever, and
+that had meant ruin for them, and for dozens, nay, hundreds, of
+other luckless people.  Then had followed a business experiment
+which had proved even more disastrous, and which had left them in
+debt - in debt to an extent they could never hope to repay, to a
+good-natured former employer.
+
+After that, instead of going back to service, as they might have
+done, perhaps, either together or separately, they had made up
+their minds to make one last effort, and they had taken over, with
+the trifle of money that remained to them, the lease of this house
+in the Marylebone Road.
+
+In former days, when they had each been leading the sheltered,
+impersonal, and, above all, financially easy existence which is
+the compensation life offers to those men and women who deliberately
+take upon themselves the yoke of domestic service, they had both
+lived in houses overlooking Regent's Park.  It had seemed a wise
+plan to settle in the same neighbourhood, the more so that Bunting,
+who had a good appearance, had retained the kind of connection
+which enables a man to get a job now and again as waiter at private
+parties.
+
+But life moves quickly, jaggedly, for people like the Buntings.
+Two of his former masters had moved to another part of London, and
+a caterer in Baker Street whom he had known went bankrupt.
+
+And now?  Well, just now Bunting could not have taken a job had
+one been offered him, for he had pawned his dress clothes.  He had
+not asked his wife's permission to do this, as so good a husband
+ought to have done.  e had just gone out and done it.  And she had
+not had the heart to say anything; nay, it was with part of the
+money that he had handed her silently the evening he did it that
+she had bought that last packet of tobacco.
+
+And then, as Mrs. Bunting sat there thinking these painful thoughts,
+there suddenly came to the front door the sound of a loud, tremulous,
+uncertain double knock.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Mr. Bunting jumped nervously to her feet.  She stood for a moment
+listening in the darkness, a darkness made the blacker by the line
+of light under the door behind which sat Bunting reading his paper.
+
+And then it came again, that loud, tremulous, uncertain double
+knock; not a knock, so the listener told herself, that boded any
+good.  Would-be lodgers gave sharp, quick, bold, confident raps.
+No; this must be some kind of beggar.  The queerest people came at
+all hours, and asked - whining or threatening - for money.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had had some sinister experiences with men and women
+ - especially women - drawn from that nameless, mysterious class
+made up of the human flotsam and jetsam which drifts about every
+great city.  But since she had taken to leaving the gas in the
+passage unlit at night she had been very little troubled with that
+kind of visitors, those human bats which are attracted by any kind
+of light but leave alone those who live in darkness.
+
+She opened the door of the sitting-room.  It was Bunting's place
+to go to the front door, but she knew far better than he did how
+to deal with difficult or obtrusive callers.  Still, somehow, she
+would have liked him to go to-night.  But Bunting sat on, absorbed
+in his newspaper; all he did at the sound of the bedroom door
+opening was to look up and say, "Didn't you hear a knock?"
+
+Without answering his question she went out into the hall.
+
+Slowly she opened the front door.
+
+On the top of the thee steps which led up to the door, there stood
+the long, lanky figure of a man, clad in an Inverness cape and an
+old-fashioned top hat.  He waited for a few seconds blinking at her,
+perhaps dazzled by the light of the gas in the passage.  Mrs.
+Bunting's trained perception told her at once that this man, odd as
+he looked, was a gentleman, belonging by birth to the class with
+whom her former employment had brought her in contact.
+
+"Is it not a fact that you let lodgings?" he asked, and there was
+something shrill, unbalanced, hesitating, in his voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said uncertainly - it was a long, long time since
+anyone had come after their lodgings, anyone, that is, that they
+could think of taking into their respectable house.
+
+Instinctively she stepped a little to one side, and the stranger
+walked past her, and so into the hall.
+
+And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting noticed that he held a
+narrow bag in his left hand.  It was quite a new bag, made of strong
+brown leather.
+
+"I am looking for some quiet rooms," he said; then he repeated the
+words, "quiet rooms," in a dreamy, absent way, and as he uttered
+them he looked nervously round him.
+
+Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully
+furnished, and was very clean.
+
+There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary
+feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which
+matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
+
+A very superior lodging-house this, and evidently a superior
+lodging-house keeper.
+
+"You'd find my rooms quite quiet, sir," she said gently.  "And just
+now I have four to let.  The house is empty, save for my husband
+and me, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting spoke in a civil, passionless voice.  It seemed too
+good to be true, this sudden coming of a possible lodger, and of a
+lodger who spoke in the pleasant, courteous way and voice which
+recalled to the poor Woman her happy, far-off days of youth and
+of security.
+
+"That sounds very suitable," he said.  "Four rooms?  Well, perhaps
+I ought only to take two rooms, but, still, I should like to see
+all four before I make my choice."
+
+How fortunate, how very fortunate it was that Bunting had lit the
+gas!  But for that circumstance this gentleman would have passed
+them by.
+
+She turned towards the staircase, quite forgetting in her agitation
+that the front door was still open; and it was the stranger whom
+she already in her mind described as "the lodger," who turned and
+rather quickly walked down the passage and shut it.
+
+"Oh, thank you, sir!" she exclaimed.  "I'm sorry you should have
+had the trouble."
+
+For a moment their eyes met.  "It's not safe to leave a front door
+open in London," he said, rather sharply.  "I hope you do not often
+do that.  It would be so easy for anyone to slip in."
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt rather upset.  The stranger had still spoken
+courteously, but he was evidently very much put out.
+
+"I assure you, sir, I never lave my front door open," she answered
+hastily.  "You needn't be at all afraid of that!"
+
+And then, through the closed door of the sitting-room, came the
+sound of Bunting coughing - it was just a little, hard cough, but
+Mrs. Bunting's future lodger started violently.
+
+"Who's that?" he said, putting out a hand and clutching her arm.
+"Whatever was that?"
+
+"Only my husband, sir.  He went out to buy a paper a few minutes
+ago, and the cold just caught him, I suppose."
+
+"Your husband - ?" he looked at her intently, suspiciously.  "What
+ - what, may I ask, is your husband's occupation?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting drew herself up.  The question as to Bunting's
+occupation was no one's business but theirs.  Still, it wouldn't do
+for her to show offence.  "He goes out waiting," she s4d stiffly.
+"He was a gentleman's servant, sir.  He could, of course, valet you
+should you require him to do so."
+
+And then she turned and led the way up the steep, narrow staircase.
+
+At the top of the first flight of stairs was what Mrs. Bunting, to
+herself, called the drawing-room floor.  It consisted of a
+sitting-room in front, and a bedroom behind.  She opened the door
+of the sitting-room and quickly lit the chandelier.
+
+This, front room was pleasant enough, though perhaps a little
+over-encumbered with furniture.  Covering the floor was a green
+carpet simulating moss; four chairs were placed round the table
+which occupied the exact middle of the apartment, and in the
+corner, opposite the door giving on to the landing, was a roomy,
+old-fashioned chiffonnier.
+
+On the dark-green walls hung a series of eight engravings, portraits
+of early Victorian belles, clad in lace and tarletan ball dresses,
+clipped from an old Book of Beauty.  Mrs. Bunting was very fond of
+these pictures; she thought they gave the drawing-room a note of
+elegance and refinement.
+
+As she hurriedly turned up the gas she was glad, glad indeed, that
+she had summoned up sufficient energy, two days ago, to give the
+room a thorough turn-out.
+
+It had remained for a long time in the state in which it had been
+left by its last dishonest, dirty occupants when they had been
+scared into going away by Bunting's rough threats of the police.
+But now it was in apple-pie order, with one paramount exception,
+of which Mrs. Bunting was painfully aware.  There were no white
+curtains to the windows, but that omission could soon be remedied
+if this gentleman really took the lodgings.
+
+But what was this - ?  The stranger was looking round him rather
+dubiously.  "This is rather - rather too grand for me," he said at
+last "I should like to see your other rooms, Mrs. er - "
+
+" - Bunting," she said softly.  "Bunting, sir."
+
+And as she spoke the dark, heavy load of care again came down and
+settled on her sad, burdened heart.  Perhaps she had been mistaken,
+after all - or rather, she had not been mistaken in one sense, but
+perhaps this gentleman was a poor gentleman - too poor, that is, to
+afford the rent of more than one room, say eight or ten shillings
+a week; eight or ten shlllings a week would be very little use to
+her and Bunting, though better than nothing at all.
+
+"Will you just look at the bedroom, sir?"
+
+"No," he said, "no.  I think I should like to see what you have
+farther up the house, Mrs.  - ," and then, as if making a prodigious
+mental effort, he brought out her name, "Bunting," with a kind of
+gasp.
+
+"The two top rooms were, of course, immediately above the
+drawing-room floor.  But they looked poor and mean, owing to the fact
+that they were bare of any kind of ornament.  Very little trouble had
+been taken over their arrangement; in fact, they bad been left in much
+the same condition as that in which the Buntings had found them.
+
+For the matter of that, it is difficult to make a nice, genteel
+sitting-room out of an apartment of which the principal features
+are a sink and a big gas stove.  The gas stove, of an obsolete
+pattern, was fed by a tiresome, shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
+It had been the property of the people from whom the Buntings had
+taken over the lease of the house, who, knowing it to be of no
+monetary value, had thrown it in among the humble fittings they
+had left behind.
+
+What furniture there was in the room was substantial and clean, as
+everything belonging to Mrs. Bunting was bound to be, but it was a
+bare, uncomfortable-looking place, and the landlady now felt sorry
+that she had done nothing to make it appear more attractive.
+
+To her surprise, however, her companion's dark, sensitive,
+hatchet-shaped face became irradiated with satisfaction.  "Capital!
+Capital!" he exclaimed, for the first time putting down the bag he
+held at his feet, and rubbing his long, thin hands together with a
+quick, nervous movement.
+
+"This is just what I have been looking for."  He walked with long,
+eager strides towards the gas stove.  "First-rate - quite first-rate!
+Exactly what I wanted to find!  You must understand, Mrs. - er - 
+Bunting, that I am a man of science.  I make, that is, all sorts of 
+experiments, and I often require the - ah, well, the presence of
+great heat."
+
+He shot out a hand, which she noticed shook a little, towards the
+stove.  "This, too, will be useful - exceedingly useful, to me," and
+he touched the edge of the stone sink with a lingering, caressing
+touch.
+
+He threw his head back and passed his hand over his high, bare
+forehead; then, moving towards a chair, he sat down - wearily.
+"I'm tired," he muttered in a low voice, "tired - tired!  I've been
+walking about all day, Mrs. Bunting, and I could find nothing to sit
+down upon.  They do not put benches for tired men in the London
+streets.  They do so on the Continent.  In some ways they are far
+more humane on the Continent than they are in England, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Indeed, sir," she said civilly; and then, after a nervous glance,
+she asked the question of which the answer would mean so much to her,
+"Then you mean to take my rooms, sir?"
+
+"This room, certainly," he said, looking round.  "This room is
+exactly what I have been looking for, and longing for, the last
+few days;" and then hastily he added, "I mean this kind of place
+is what I have always wanted to possess, Mrs. Bunting.  You would
+be surprised if you knew how difficult it is to get anything of
+the sort.  But now my weary search has ended, and that is a relief
+ - a very, very great relief to me!"
+
+He stood up and looked round him with a dreamy, abstracted air.  And
+then, "Where's my bag?" he asked suddenly, and there came a note of
+sharp, angry fear in his voice.  He glared at the quiet woman
+standing before him, and for a moment Mrs. Bunting felt a tremor of
+fright shoot through her.  It seemed a pity that Bunting was so far
+away, right down the house.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting was aware that eccentricity has always been a
+perquisite, as it were the special luxury, of the well-born and of
+the well-educated.  Scholars, as she well knew, are never quite like
+other people, and her new lodger was undoubtedly a scholar.  "Surely
+I had a bag when I came in?" he said in a scared, troubled voice.
+
+"Here it is, sir," she said soothingly, and, stooping, picked it
+up and handed it to him.  And as she did so she noticed that the
+bag was not at all heavy; it was evidently by no means full.
+
+He took it eagerly from her.  "I beg your pardon," he muttered.
+"But there is something in that bag which is very precious to me
+ - something I procured with infinite difficulty, and which I could
+never get again without running into great danger, Mrs. Bunting.
+That must be the excuse for my late agitation."
+
+"About terms, sir?" she said a little timidly, returning to the
+subject which meant so much, so very much to her.
+
+"About terms?" he echoed.  And then there came a pause.  "My name
+is Sleuth," he said suddenly, -  "S-l-e-u-t-h.  Think of a hound,
+Mrs. Bunting, and you'll never forget my name.  I could provide you
+with a reference - " (he gave her what she described to herself as
+a funny, sideways look), "but I should prefer you to dispense with
+that, if you don't mind.  I am quite willing to pay you - we1l, shall
+we say a month in advance?"
+
+A spot of red shot into Mrs. Bunting's cheeks.  She felt sick with
+relief - nay,'with a joy which was almost pain.  She had not known
+till that moment how hungry she was - how eager for- a good meal.
+"That would be all right, sir," she murmured.
+
+"And what are you going to charge me?"  There had come a kindly,
+almost a friendly note into his voice.  "With attendance, mind!  I
+shall expect you to give me attendance, and I need hardly ask if
+you can cook, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," she said.  "I am a plain cook.  What would you say
+to twenty-five shillings a week, sir?"  She looked at him
+deprecatingly, and as he did not answer she went on falteringly,
+"You see, sir, it may seem a good deal, but you would have the best
+of attendance and careful cooking - and my husband, sir - he would
+be pleased to valet you."
+
+"I shouldn't want anything of that sort done for me," said Mr.
+Sleuth hastily.  "I prefer looking after my own clothes.  I am used
+to waiting on myself.  But, Mrs. Bunting, I have a great dislike to
+sharing lodgings - "
+
+She interrupted eagerly, "I could let you have the use of the two
+floors for the same price - that is, until we get another lodger.
+I shouldn't like you to sleep in the back room up here, sir.  It's
+such a poor little room.  You could do as you say, sir - do your work
+and your experiments up here, and then have your meals in the
+drawing-room."
+
+"Yes," he said hesitatingly, "that sounds a good plan.  And if I
+offered you two pounds, or two guineas?  Might I then rely on your
+not taking another lodger?"
+
+"Yes," she said quietly.  "I'd be very glad only to have you to
+wait on, sir."
+
+"I suppose you have a key to the door of this room, Mrs. Bunting?
+I don't like to be disturbed while I'm working."
+
+He waited a moment, and then said again, rather urgently, "I suppose
+you have a key to this door, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, there's a key - a very nice little key.  The people
+who lived here before had a new kind of lock put on to the door."
+She went over, and throwing the door open, showed him that a round
+disk had been fitted above the old keyhole.
+
+He nodded his head, and then, after standing silent a little, as if
+absorbed in thought, "Forty-two shillings a week?  Yes, that will
+suit me perfectly.  And I'll begin now by paying my first month's
+rent in advance.  Now, four times forty-two shillings is" - he
+jerked his head back and stared at his new landlady; for the first
+time he smiled, a queer, wry smile - "why, just eight pounds eight
+shillings, Mrs. Bunting!"
+
+He thrust his hand through into an inner pocket of his long
+cape-like coat and took out a handful of sovereigns.  Then he began
+putting these down in a row on the bare wooden table which stood in
+the centre of the room.  "Here's five - six - seven - eight - nine
+ - ten pounds.  You'd better keep the odd change, Mrs. Bunting,
+for I shall want you to do some shopping for me to-morrow morning.
+I met with a misfortune to-day."  But the new lodger did not speak
+as if his misfortune, whatever it was, weighed on his spirits.
+
+"Indeed, sir.  I'm sorry to hear that."  Mrs. Bunting's heart was
+going thump - thump - thump.  She felt extraordinarily moved, dizzy
+with relief and joy.
+
+"Yes, a very great misfortune!  I lost my luggage, the few things
+I managed to bring away with me."  His voice dropped suddenly.  "I
+shouldn't have said that," he muttered.  "I was a fool to say that!"
+Then, more loudly, "Someone said to me, 'You can't go into a
+lodging-house without any luggage.  They wouldn't take you in.'  But
+you have taken me in, Mrs. Bunting, and I'm grateful for - for the
+kind way you have met me - "  He looked at her feelingly, appealingly,
+and Mrs. Bunting was touched.  She was beginning to feel very kindly
+towards her new lodger.
+
+"I hope I know a gentleman when I see one," she said, with a break
+in her staid voice,
+
+"I shall have to see about getting some clothes to-morrow, Mrs. Bunting."
+Again he looked at her appealingly.
+
+"I expect you'd like to wash your hands now, sir.  And would you tell
+me what you'd like for supper?  We haven't much in the house."
+
+"Oh, anything'll do," he said hastily.  "I don't want you to go out
+for me.  It's a cold, foggy, wet night, Mrs. Bunting.  If you have a
+little bread-and-butter and a cup of milk I shall be quite satisfied."
+
+"I have a nice sausage," she said hesitatingly.
+
+It was a very nice sausage, and she had bought it that same morning
+for Bunting's supper; as to herself, she had been going to content
+herself with a little bread and cheese.  But now - wonderful, almost,
+intoxicating thought - she could send Bunting out to get anything
+they both liked.  The ten sovereigns lay in her hand full of comfort
+and good cheer.
+
+"A sausage?  No, I fear that will hardly do.  I never touch flesh
+meat," he said; "it is a long, long time since I tasted a sausage,
+Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Is it indeed, sir?"  She hesitated a moment, then asked stiffly,
+"And will you be requiring any beer, or wine, sir?"
+
+A strange, wild look of lowering wrath suddenly filled Mr. Sleuth's
+pale face.
+
+"Certainly not.  I thought I had made that quite clear, Mrs. Bunting.
+I had hoped to hear that you were an abstainer - "
+
+"So I am, sir, lifelong.  And so's Bunting been since we married."
+She might have said, had she been a woman given to make such
+confidences, that she had made Buntlng abstain very early in their
+acquaintance.  That he had given in about that had been the thing
+that first made her believe, that he was sincere in all the nonsense
+that he talked to her, in those far-away days of his courting.  Glad
+she was now that he had taken the pledge as a younger man; hut for
+that nothing would have kept him from the drink during the bad times
+they had gone through.
+
+And then, going downstairs, she showed Mr. Sleuth the nice bedroom
+which opened out of the drawing-room.  It was a replica of Mrs.
+Bunting's own room just underneath, excepting that everything up
+here had cost just a little more, and was therefore rather better
+in quality.
+
+The new lodger looked round him with such a strange expression of
+content and peace stealing over his worn face.  "A haven of rest,"
+he muttered; and then, "'He bringeth them to their desired haven.'
+Beautiful words, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt a little startled.  It was the first time anyone
+had quoted the Bible to her for many a long day.  But it seemed to
+set the seal, as it were, on Mr. Sleuth's respectability.
+
+What a comfort it was, too, that she had to deal with only one
+lodger, and that a gentleman, instead of with a married couple!
+Very peculiar married couples had drifted in and out of Mr. and
+Mrs. Bunting's lodgings, not only here, in London, but at the
+seaside.
+
+How unlucky they had been, to be sure!  Since they had come to
+London not a single pair of lodgers had been even moderately
+respectable and kindly.  The last lot had belonged to that horrible
+underworld of men and women who, having, as the phase goes, seen
+better days, now only keep their heads above water with the help of
+petty fraud.
+
+"I'll bring you up some hot water in a minute, sir, and some clean
+towels," she said, going to the door.
+
+And then Mr. Sleuth turned quickly round.  "Mrs. Bunting " - and as
+he spoke he stammered a little - " I - I don't want you to interpret
+the word attendance too liberally.  You need not run yourself off
+your feet for me.  I'm accustomed to look after myself."
+
+And, queerly, uncomfortably, she felt herself dismissed  - even a
+little snubbed.  "All right, sir," she said.  "I'll only just let
+you know when I've your supper ready."
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+But what was a little snub compared with the intense relief and joy
+of going down and telling Bunting of the great piece of good fortune
+which had fallen their way?
+
+Staid Mrs. Bunting seemed to make but one leap down the steep stairs.
+In the hall, however, she pulled herself together, and tried to still
+her agitation.  She had always disliked and despised any show of
+emotion; she called such betrayal of feeling "making a fuss."
+
+Opening the door of their sitting-room, she stood for a moment
+looking at her husband's bent back, and she realised, with a pang
+of pain, how the last few weeks had aged him.
+
+Bunting suddenly looked round, and, seeing his wife, stood up.  He
+put the paper he had been holding down on to the table: "Well," he
+said, "well, who was it, then?"
+
+He felt rather ashamed of himself; it was he who ought to have
+answered the door and done all that parleying of which he had heard
+murmurs.
+
+And then in a moment his wife's hand shot out, and the ten sovereigns
+fell in a little clinking heap on the table.
+
+"Look there!" she whispered, with an excited, tearful quiver in her
+voice.  "Look there, Bunting!"
+
+And Bunting did look there, but with a troubled, frowning gaze.
+
+He was not quick-witted, but at once he jumped to the conclusion
+that his wile had just had in a furniture dealer, and that this
+ten pounds represented all their nice furniture upstairs.  If that
+were so, then it was the beginning of the end.  That furniture in
+the first-floor front had cost - Ellen had reminded him of the fact
+bitterly only yesterday - seventeen pounds nine shillings, and
+every single item had been a bargain.  It was too bad that she had
+only got ten pounds for it.
+
+Yet he hadn't the heart to reproach her.
+
+He did not speak as he looked across at her, and meeting that
+troubled, rebuking glance, she guessed what it was that he thought
+had happened.
+
+"We've a new lodger!" she cried.  "And - and, Bunting?  He's quite
+the gentleman!  He actually offered to pay four weeks in advance, at
+two guineas a week."
+
+"No, never!"
+
+Bunting moved quickly round the table, and together they stood there,
+fascinated by the little heap of gold.  "But there's ten sovereigns
+here," he said suddenly.
+
+"Yes, the gentleman said I'd have to buy some things for him
+to-morrow.  And, oh, Bunting, he's so well spoken, I really felt
+that - I really felt that - " and then Mrs. Bunting, taking a step
+or two sideways, sat down, and throwing her little black apron over
+her face burst into gasping sobs.
+
+Bunting patted her back timidly.  "Ellen?" he said, much moved by her
+agitation, "Ellen?  Don't take on so, my dear - "
+
+"I won't," she sobbed, "I - I won't!  I'm a  fool - I know I am!
+But, oh, I didn't think we was ever going to have any luck again!"
+
+And then she told him - or rather tried to tell him -  what the
+lodger was like.  Mrs. Bunting was no hand at talking, but one thing
+she did impress on her husband's mind, namely, that Mr. Sleuth was
+eccentric, as so many clever people are eccentric - that is, in a
+harmless way - and that he must be humoured.
+
+"He says he doesn't want to be waited on much," she said at last
+wiping her eyes, "but I can see he will want a good bit of looking
+after, all the same, poor gentleman."
+
+And just as the words left her mouth there came the unfamiliar sound
+of a loud ring.  It was that of the drawing-room bell being pulled
+again and again.
+
+Bunting looked at his wife eagerly.  "I think I'd better go up, eh,
+Ellen?" he said.  He felt quite anxious to see their new lodger.
+For the matter of that, it would be a relief to be doing something
+again.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "you go up!  Don't keep him waiting!  I wonder
+what it is he wants?  I said I'd let him know when his supper was
+ready."
+
+A moment later Bunting came down again.  There was an odd smile on
+his face.  "Whatever d'you think he wanted?" he whispered
+mysteriously.  And as she said nothing, he went on, "He's asked me
+for the loan of a Bible!"
+
+"Well, I don't see anything so out of the way in that," she said
+hastily, "'specially if he don't fell well.  I'll take it up to him."
+
+And then going to a small table which stood between the two windows,
+Mrs. Bunting took off it a large Bible, which had been given to her
+as a wedding present by a married lady with whose mother she had
+lived for several years.
+
+"He said it would do quite well when you take up his supper," said
+Bunting; and, then, "Ellen?  He's a queer-looking cove - not like
+any gentleman I ever had to do with."
+
+"He is a gentleman," said Mrs. Bunting rather fiercely.
+
+"Oh, yes, that's all right." But still he looked at her doubtfully.
+"I asked him if he'd like me to just put away his clothes.  But,
+Ellen, he said he hadn't got any clothes!"
+
+"No more he hasn't;" she spoke quickly, defensively.  "He had the
+misfortune to lose his luggage.  He's one dishonest folk 'ud take
+advantage of."
+
+"Yes, one can see that with half an eye," Buntlng agreed.
+
+And then there was silence for a few moments, while Mrs. Bunting
+put down on a little bit of paper the things she wanted her husband
+to go out and buy for her.  She handed him the list, together with
+a sovereign.  "Be as quick as you can," she said, "for I feel a bit
+hungry.  I'll be going down now to see about Mr. Sleuth's supper.
+He only wants a glass of milk and two eggs.  I'm glad I've never
+fallen to bad eggs!"
+
+"Sleuth," echoed Bunting, staring at her.  "What a queer name!
+How d'you spell it - S-l-u-t-h?"
+
+"No," she shot out, "S-l-e - u - t - h."
+
+"Oh,'' he said doubtfully.
+  
+"He said, 'Think of a hound and  you'll never forget my name,'"
+and Mrs. Bunting smiled.
+
+When he got to the door, Bunting turned round: "We'll now be able
+to pay young Chandler back some o' that thirty shillings.  I am
+glad."  She nodded; her heart, as the saying is, too full for words.
+
+And then each went about his and her business - Bunting out into
+the drenching fog, his wife down to her cold kitchen.
+
+The lodger's tray was soon ready; everything upon it nicely and
+daintily arranged.  Mrs. Bunting knew how to wait upon a gentleman.
+
+Just as the landlady was going up the kitchen stair, she suddenly
+remembered Mr. Sleuth's request for a Bible.  Putting the tray down
+in the hall, she went into her sitting-room and took up the Book;
+but when back in the hall she hesitated a moment as to whether it
+was worth while to make two journeys.  But, no, she thought she
+could manage; clasping the large, heavy volume under her arm, and
+taking up the tray, she walked slowly up the staircase.
+
+But a great surprise awaited her; in fact, when Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady opened the door of the drawing-room she very nearly dropped
+the tray.  She actually did drop the Bible, and it fell with a heavy
+thud to the ground.
+
+The new lodger had turned all those nice framed engravings of the
+early Victorian beauties, of which Mrs. Bunting had been so proud,
+with their faces to the wall!
+
+For a moment she was really too surprised to speak.  Putting the
+tray down on the table, she stooped and picked up the Book.  It
+troubled her that the should have fallen to the ground; but really
+she hadn't been able to help it - it was mercy that the tray hadn't
+fallen, too.
+
+Mr. Sleuth got up.  "I - I have taken the liberty to arrange the
+room as I should wish it to be," he said awkwardly.  "You see,
+Mrs. - er - Bunting, I felt as I sat here that these women's eyes
+followed me about.  It was a most unpleasant sensation, and gave
+me quite an eerie feeling."
+
+The landlady was now laying a small tablecloth over half of the
+table.  She made no answer to her lodger's remark, for the good
+reason that she did not know what to say.
+
+Her silence seemed to distress Mr. Sleuth.  After what seemed a
+long pause, he spoke again.
+
+"I prefer bare walls, Mrs. Bunting," he spoke with some agitation.
+"As a matter of fact, I have been used to seeing bare walls about
+me for a long time."  And then, at last his landlady answered him,
+in a composed, soothing voice, which somehow did him good to hear.
+"I quite understand, sir.  And when Bunting comes in he shall take
+the pictures all down.  We have plenty of space in our own rooms
+for them."
+
+"Thank you - thank you very much."
+
+Mr. Sleuth appeared greatly relieved.
+
+"And I have brought you up my Bible, sir.  I understood you wanted
+the loan of it?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth stared at her as if dazed for a moment; and then, rousing
+himself, he said, "Yes, yes, I do.  There is no reading like the Book.
+There is something there which suits every state of mind, aye, and of
+body too - "
+
+"Very true, sir." And then Mrs. Bunting, having laid out what really
+looked a very appetising little meal, turned round and quietly shut
+the door.
+
+She went down straight into her sitting-room and waited there for
+Bunting, instead of going to the kitchen to clear up.  And as she
+did so there came to her a comfortable recollection, an incident of
+her long-past youth, in the days when she, then Ellen Green, had
+maided a dear old lady.
+
+The old lady had a favourite nephew - a bright, jolly young gentleman,
+who was learning to paint animals in Paris.  And one morning Mr.
+Algernon - that was his rather peculiar Christian name - had had the
+impudence to turn to the wall six beautiful engravings of paintings
+done by the famous Mr. Landseer!
+
+Mrs. Bunting remembered all the circumstances as if they had only
+occurred yesterday, and yet she had not thought of them for years.
+
+It was quite early; she had come down - for in those days maids
+weren't thought so much of as they are now, and she slept with the
+upper housemaid, and it was the upper housemaid's duty to be down
+very early - and, there, in the dining-room, she had found Mr.
+Algernon engaged in turning each engraving to the wall!  Now, his
+aunt thought all the world of those pictures, and Ellen had felt
+quite concerned, for it doesn't do for a young gentleman to put
+himself wrong with a kind aunt.
+
+"Oh, sir," she had exclaimed in dismay, "whatever are you doing?"
+And even now she could almost hear his merry voice, as he had
+answered, "I am doing my duty, fair Helen" - he had always called
+her "fair Helen" when no one was listening.  "How can I draw ordinary
+animals when I see these half-human monsters staring at me all the
+time I am having my breakfast, my lunch, and my dinner?"  That was
+what Mr. Algernon had said in his own saucy way, and that was what
+he repeated in a more serious, respectful manner to his aunt, when
+that dear old lady had come downstairs.  In fact he had declared,
+quite soberly, that the beautiful animals painted by Mr. Landseer
+put his eye out!
+
+But his aunt had been very much annoyed - in fact, she had made him
+turn the pictures all back again; and as long as he stayed there he
+just had to put up with what he called "those half-human monsters."
+Mrs. Bunting, sitting there, thinking the matter of Mr. Sleuth's
+odd behaviour over, was glad to recall that funny incident of her
+long-gone youth.  It seemed to prove that her new lodger was not so
+strange as he appeared to be.  Still, when Bunting came in, she did
+not tell him the queer thing which had happened.  She told herself
+that she would be quite able to manage the taking down of the
+pictures in the drawing-room herself.
+
+But before getting ready their own supper, Mr. Sleuth's landlady
+went upstairs to dear away, and when on the staircase she heard the
+sound of - was it talking, in the drawing-room?  Startled, she
+waited a moment on the landing outside the drawing-room door, then
+she realised that it was only the lodger reading aloud to himself.
+There was something very awful in the words which rose and fell on
+her listening ears:
+
+"A strange woman is a narrow gate.  She also lieth in wait as for
+a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men."
+
+She remained where she was, her hand on the handle of ,the door,
+and again there broke on her shrinking ears that curious, high,
+sing-song voice, "Her house is the way to hell, going down to
+the chambers of death."
+
+It made the listener feel quite queer.  But at last she summoned up
+courage, knocked, and walked in.
+
+"I'd better clear away, sir, had I not?" she said.  And Mr. Sleuth
+nodded.
+
+Then he got up and dosed the Book.  "I think I'll go to bed now,"
+he said.  "I am very, very tired.  I've had a long and a very
+weary day, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+After he had disappeared into the back room, Mrs. Bunting climbed
+up on a chair and unhooked the pictures which had so offended Mr.
+Sleuth.  Each left an unsightly mark on the wall - but that, after
+all, could not be helped.
+
+Treading softly, so that Bunting should not hear her, she carried
+them down, two by two, and stood them behind her bed.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Mrs. Bunting woke up the next morning feeling happier than she had
+felt for a very, very long time.
+
+For just one moment she could not think why she felt so different
+ - and then she suddenly remembered.
+
+How comfortable it was to know that upstairs, just over her head,
+lay, in the well-found bed she had bought with such satisfaction at
+an auction held in a Baker Street house, a lodger who was paying two
+guineas a week!  Something seemed to tell her that Mr. Sleuth would
+be "a permanency." In any case, it wouldn't be her fault if he
+wasn't.  As to his - his queerness, well, there's always something
+funny in everybody.  But after she had got up, and as the morning
+wore itself away, Mrs. Bunting grew a little anxious, for there
+came no sound at all from the new lodger's rooms.  At twelve,
+however, the drawing-room bell rang.  Mrs. Bunting hurried upstairs.
+She was painfully anxious to please and satisfy Mr. Sleuth.  His
+coming had only been in the nick of time to save them from terrible
+disaster.
+
+She found her lodger up, and fully dressed.  He was sitting at the
+round table which occupied the middle of the sitting-room, and his
+landlady's large Bible lay open before him.
+
+As Mrs. Bunting came in, he looked up, and she was troubled to see
+how tired and worn he seemed.
+
+"You did not happen," he asked, "to have a Concordance, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She shook her head; she had no idea what a Concordance could be,
+but she was quite sure that she had nothing of the sort about.
+
+And then her new lodger proceeded to tell her what it was he
+desired her to buy for him.  She had supposed the bag he had
+brought with him to contain certain little necessaries of
+civilised life - such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush,
+a set of razors, a toothbrush, to say nothing of a couple of
+nightshirts - but no, that was evidently not so, for Mr. Sleuth
+required all these things to be bought now.
+
+After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs. Bunting hurried
+out to purchase the things of which he was in urgent need.
+
+How pleasant it was to feel that there was money in her purse
+again - not only someone else's' money, but money she was now in
+the very act of earning so agreeably.
+
+Mrs. Bunting first made her way to a little barber's shop close by.
+It was there she purchased the brush and comb and the razors.  It
+was a funny, rather smelly little place, and she hurried as much as
+she could, the more so that the foreigner who served her insisted
+on telling her some of the strange, peculiar details of this
+Avenger murder which had taken place forty-eight hours before, and
+in which Bunting took such a morbid interest.
+
+The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting.  She didn't want to think of
+anything painful or disagreeable on such a day as this.
+
+Then she came back and showed the lodger her various purchases.  Mr.
+Sleuth was pleased with everything, and thanked her most courteously.
+But when she suggested doing his bedroom he frowned, and looked
+quite put out.
+
+"Please wait till this evening," he said hastily.  "It is my custom
+to stay at home all day.  I only care to walk about the streets when
+the lights are lit.  You must bear with me, Mrs. Bunting, if I seem
+a little, just a little, unlike the lodgers you have been accustomed
+to.  And I must ask you to understand that I must not be disturbed
+when thinking out my problems - "  He broke off short, sighed, then
+added solemnly, "for mine are the great problems of life and death."
+
+And Mrs. Bunting willingly fell in with his wishes.  In spite of her
+prim manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's landlady was a true woman
+ - she had, that is, an infinite patience with masculine vagaries
+and oddities.
+
+
+When she was downstairs again, Mr. Sleuth's landlady met with a
+surprise; but it was quite a pleasant surprise.  While she had
+been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young friend, Joe
+Chandler, the detective, had come in, and as she walked into the
+sitting-room she saw that her husband was pushing half a sovereign
+across the table towards Joe.
+
+Joe Chandler's fair, good-natured face was full of satisfaction:
+not at seeing his money again, mark you, but at the news Bunting
+had evidently been telling him - that news of the sudden wonderful
+change in their fortunes, the coming of an ideal lodger.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth don't want me to do his bedroom till he's gone out!"
+she exclaimed.  And then she sat down for a bit of a rest.
+
+It was a comfort to know that the lodger was eating his good
+breakfast?  and there was no need to think of him for the present.
+In a few minutes she would be going down to make her own and
+Bunting's dinner, and she told Joe Chandler that he might as well
+stop and have a bite with them.
+
+Her heart warmed to the young man, for Mrs. Bunting was in a mood
+which seldom surprised her - a mood to be pleased with anything
+and everything.  Nay, more.  When Bunting began to ask Joe Chandler
+about the last of those awful Avenger murders, she even listened
+with a certain languid interest to all he had to say.
+
+In the morning paper which Bunting had begun taking again that
+very day three columns were devoted to the extraordinary mystery
+which was now beginning to be the one topic of talk all over London,
+West and East, North and South.  Bunting had read out little bits
+about it while they ate their breakfast, and in spite of herself
+Mrs. Bunting had felt thrilled and excited.
+
+"They do say," observed Bunting cautiously, "They do say, Joe, that
+the police have a clue they won't say nothing about?"  He looked
+expectantly at his visitor.  To Bunting the fact that Chandler was
+attached to the detective section of the Metropolitan Police
+invested the young man with a kind of sinister glory - especially
+just now, when these awful and mysterious crimes were amazing and
+terrifying the town.
+
+"Them who says that says wrong," answered Chandler slowly, and a
+look of unease, of resentment came over his fair, stolid face.
+"'Twould make a good bit of difference to me if the Yard had a clue."
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting interposed.  "Why that, Joe?" she said,
+smiling indulgently; the young man's keenness about his work pleased
+her.  And in his slow, sure way Joe Chandler was very keen, and took
+his job very seriously.  He put his whole heart and mind into it.
+
+"Well, 'tis this way," he explained.  "From to-day I'm on this
+business myself.  You see, Mrs. Bunting, the Yard's nettled - that's
+what it is, and we're all on our mettle - that we are.  I was right
+down sorry for the poor chap who was on point duty in the street
+where the last one happened - "
+
+"No!" said Bunting incredulously.  "You don't mean there was a
+policeman there, within a few yards?"
+
+That fact hadn't been recorded in his newspaper.
+
+Chandler nodded.  "That's exactly what I do mean, Mr. Bunting!  The
+man is near off his head, so I'm told.  He did hear a yell, so he
+says, but he took no notice - there are a good few yells in that
+part o' London, as you can guess.  People always quarrelling and
+rowing at one another in such low parts."
+
+"Have you seen the bits of grey paper on which the monster writes
+his name?" inquired Bunting eagerly.
+
+Public imagination had been much stirred by the account of those
+three-cornered pieces of grey paper, pinned to the victims' skirts,
+on which was roughly written in red ink and in printed characters 
+the words "The Avenger."
+
+His round, fat face was full of questioning eagerness.  He put his
+elbows on the table, and stared across expectantly at the young man.
+
+"Yes, I have," said Joe briefly.
+
+"A funny kind of visiting card, eh!" Bunting laughed; the notion
+struck him as downright comic.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting coloured.  "It isn't a thing to make a joke about,"
+she said reprovingly.
+
+And Chandler backed her up.  "No, indeed," he said feelingly.  "I'll
+never forget what I've been made to see over this job.  And as for
+that grey bit of paper, Mr. Bunting - or, rather, those grey bits of
+paper " - he corrected himself hastily - " you know they've three of
+them now at the Yard - well, they gives me the horrors!"
+
+And then he jumped up.  "That reminds me that I oughtn't to be
+wasting my time in pleasant company - "
+
+"Won't you stay and have a bit of dinner?" said Mrs. Bunting
+solicitously.
+
+But the detective shook his head.  "No," he said, "I had a bite
+before I came out.  Our job's a queer kind of job, as you know.  A
+lot's left to our discretion, so to speak, but it don't leave us
+much time for lazing about, I can tell you."
+
+When he reached the door he turned round, and with elaborate
+carelessness he inquired, "Any chance of Miss Daisy coming to London
+again soon?"
+
+Bunting shook his head, but his face brightened.  He was very, very
+fond of his only child; the pity was he saw her so seldom.  "No,"
+he said, "I'm afraid not Joe.  Old Aunt, as we calls the old lady,
+keeps Daisy pretty tightly tied to her apron-string.  She was quite
+put about that week the child was up with us last June."
+
+"Indeed?  Well, so long!"
+
+After his wife had let their friend out, Bunting said cheerfully,
+"Joe seems to like our Daisy, eh, Ellen?"
+
+But Mrs. Bunting shook her head scornfully.  She did not exactly
+dislike the girl, though she did not hold with the way Bunting's
+daughter was being managed by that old aunt of hers - an idle,
+good-for-nothing way, very different from the fashion in which
+she herself had been trained at the Foundling, for Mrs. Bunting
+as a little child bad known no other home, no other family than
+those provided by good Captain Coram.
+
+"Joe Chandler's too sensible a young chap to be thinking of girls
+yet awhile," she said tartly.
+
+"No doubt you're right," Bunting agreed.  "Times be changed.  In my
+young days chaps always had time for that.  'Twas just a notion that
+came into my head, hearing him asking, anxious-like, after her."
+
+******
+
+About five o'clock, after the street lamps were well alight, Mr.
+Sleuth went out, and that same evening there came two parcels
+addressed to his landlady.  These parcels contained clothes.  But
+it was quite clear to Mrs. Bunting's eyes that they were not new
+clothes.  In fact, they had evidently been bought in some good
+second-hand clothes-shop.  A funny thing for a real gentleman like
+Mr. Sleuth to do!  It proved that he had given up all hope of
+getting back his lost luggage.
+
+When the lodger had gone out he had not taken his bag with him, of
+that Mrs. Bunting was positive.  And yet, though she searched high
+and low for it, she could not find the place where Mr. Sleuth kept
+it.  And at last, had it not been that she was a very clear-headed
+woman, with a good memory, she would have been disposed to think
+that the bag had never existed, save in her imagination.
+
+But no, she could not tell herself that!  She remembered exactly
+how it had looked when Mr. Sleuth had first stood, a strange,
+queer-looking figure of a man, on her doorstep.
+
+She further remembered how he had put the bag down on the floor of
+the top front room, and then, forgetting what he had done, how he
+had asked her eagerly, in a tone of angry fear, where the bag was
+ - only to find it safely lodged at his feet!
+
+As time went on Mrs. Bunting thought a great deal about that bag,
+for, strange and amazing fact, she never saw Mr. Sleuth's bag again.
+But, of course, she soon formed a theory as to its whereabouts.
+The brown leather bag which had formed Mr. Sleuth's only luggage
+the afternoon of his arrival was almost certainly locked up in the
+lower part of the drawing-room chiffonnier.  Mr. Sleuth evidently
+always carried the key of the little corner cupboard about his
+person; Mrs. Bunting had also had a good hunt for that key, but,
+as was the case with the bag, the key disappeared, and she never
+saw either the one or the other again.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+How quietly, how uneventfully, how pleasantly, sped the next few
+days.  Already life was settling down into a groove.  Waiting on
+Mr. Sleuth was just what Mrs. Bunting could manage to do easily,
+and without tiring herself.
+
+It had at once become clear that the lodger preferred to be waited
+on only by one person, and that person his landlady.  He gave her
+very little trouble.  Indeed, it did her good having to wait on the
+lodger; it even did her good that he was not like other gentlemen;
+for the fact occupied her mind, and in a way it amused her.  The
+more so that whatever his oddities Mr. Sleuth had none of those
+tiresome, disagreeable ways with which landladies are only too
+familiar, and which seem peculiar only to those human beings who
+also happen to be lodgers.  To take but one point: Mr. Sleuth did
+not ask to be called unduly early.  Bunting and his Ellen had fallen
+into the way of lying rather late in the morning, and it was a great
+comfort not to have to turn out to make the lodger a cup of tea at
+seven, or even half-past seven.  Mr. Sleuth seldom required anything
+before eleven.
+
+But odd he certainly was.
+
+The second evening he had been with them Mr. Sleuth had brought in
+a book of which the queer name was Cruden's Concordance.  That and
+the Bible - Mrs. Bunting had soon discovered that there was a
+relation between the two books - seemed to be the lodger's only
+reading.  He spent hours each day, generally after he had eaten
+the breakfast which also served for luncheon, poring over the Old
+Testament and over that, strange kind of index to the Book.
+
+As for the delicate and yet the all-important question of money,
+Mr. Sleuth was everything - everything that the most exacting
+landlady could have wished.  Never had there been a more confiding
+or trusting gentleman.  On the very first day he had been with them 
+he had allowed his money - the considerable sum of one hundred and
+eighty-four sovereigns - to lie about wrapped up in little pieces
+of rather dirty newspaper on his dressing-table.  That had quite
+upset Mrs. Bunting.  She had allowed herself respectfully to point
+out to him that what he was doing was foolish, indeed wrong.  But
+as only answer he had laughed, and she had been startled when the
+loud, unusual and discordant sound had issued from his thin lips.
+
+"I know those I can trust," he had answered, stuttering rather, as
+was his way when moved.  "And - and I assure you, Mrs. Bunting, that
+I hardly have to speak to a human being - especially to a woman"
+(and he had drawn in his breath with a hissing sound) "before I
+know exactly what manner of person is before me."
+
+It hadn't taken the landlady very long to find out that her lodger
+had a queer kind of fear and dislike of women.  When she was doing
+the staircase and landings she would often hear Mr. Sleuth reading
+aloud to himself passages in the Bible that were very uncomplimentary
+to her sex.  But Mrs. Bunting had no very great opinion of her sister
+woman, so that didn't put her out.  Besides, where one's lodger is
+concerned, a dislike of women is better than - well, than the other
+thing.
+
+In any case, where would have been the good of worrying about the
+lodger's funny ways?  Of course, Mr. Sleuth was eccentric.  If he
+hadn't been, as Bunting funnily styled it, "just a leetle touched
+upstairs," he wouldn't be here, living this strange, solitary life
+in lodgings.  He would be living in quite a different sort of way
+with some of his relatives, or with a friend of his own class.
+
+There came a time when Mrs. Bunting, looking back  - as even the
+least imaginative of us are apt to look back to any part of our
+own past lives which becomes for any reason poignantly memorable
+ - wondered how soon it was that she had discovered that her
+lodger was given to creeping out of the house at a time when
+almost all living things prefer to sleep.
+
+She brought herself to believe - but I am inclined to doubt whether
+she was right in so believing - that the first time she became aware
+of this strange nocturnal habit of Mr. Sleuth's happened to be
+during the night which preceded the day on which she had observed a
+very curious circumstance.  This very curious circumstance was the
+complete disappearance of one of Mr. Sleuth's three suits of clothes.
+
+It always passes my comprehension how people can remember, over any
+length of time, not every moment of certain happenings, for that is
+natural enough, but the day, the hour, the minute when these
+happenings took place!  Much as she thought about it afterwards,
+even Mrs. Bunting never quite made up her mind whether it was during
+the fifth or the sixth night of Mr. Sleuth's stay under her roof
+that she became aware that he had gone out at two in the morning and
+had only come in at five.
+
+But that there did come such a night is certain - as certain as is
+the fact that her discovery coincided with various occurrences
+which were destined to remain retrospectively memorable.
+
+******
+
+It was intensely dark, intensely quiet - the darkest quietest hour
+of the night, when suddenly Mrs. Bunting was awakened from a deep,
+dreamless sleep by sounds at once unexpected and familiar.  She
+knew at once what those sounds were.  They were those made by Mr.
+Sleuth, first coming down the stairs, and walking on tiptoe - she
+was sure it was.  on tiptoe - past her door, and finally softly
+shutting the front door behind him.
+
+Try as she would, Mrs. Bunting found it quite impossible to go to
+sleep again.  There she lay wide awake, afraid to move lest Bunting
+should waken up too, till she heard Mr. Sleuth, three hours later,
+creep back into the house and so up to bed.
+
+Then, and not till then, she slept again.  But in the morning she
+felt very tired, so tired indeed, that she had been very glad when
+Bunting good-naturedly suggested that he should go out and do their
+little bit of marketing.
+
+The worthy couple had very soon discovered that in the matter of
+catering it was not altogether an easy matter to satisfy Mr. Sleuth,
+and that though he always tried to appear pleased.  This perfect
+lodger had one serious fault from the point of view of those who
+keep lodgings.  Strange to say, he was a vegetarian.  He would not
+eat meat in any form.  He sometimes, however, condescended to a
+chicken, and when he did so condescend he generously intimated that
+Mr. and Mrs. Bunting were welcome to a share in it.
+
+Now to-day - this day of which the happenings were to linger in Mrs.
+Bunting's mind so very long, and to remain so very vivid, it had
+been arranged that Mr. Sleuth was to have some fish for his lunch,
+while what he left was to be "done up" to serve for his simple supper.
+
+Knowing that Bunting would be out for at least an hour, for he was
+a gregarious soul, and liked to have a gossip in the shops he
+frequented, Mrs. Bunting rose and dressed in a leisurely manner;
+then she went and "did" her front sitting-room.
+
+She felt languid and dull, as one is apt to feel after a broken
+night, and it was a comfort to her to know that Mr. Sleuth was not
+likely to ring before twelve.
+
+But long before twelve a loud ring suddenly clanged through the
+quiet l1ouse.  She knew it for the front door bell.
+
+Mrs. Bunting frowned.  No doubt the ring betokened one of those
+tiresome people who come round for old, bottles and such-like
+fal-lals.
+
+She went slowly, reluctantly to the door.  And then her face cleared,
+for it was that good young chap, Joe Chandler, who stood waiting
+outside.
+
+He was breathing a little hard, as if he had walked over-quickly
+through the moist, foggy air.
+
+"Why, Joe?" said Mrs. Bunting wonderingly.  "Come in - do!  Bunting's
+out, but he won't be very long now.  You've been quite a stranger
+these last few days."
+
+"Well, you know why, Mrs. Bunting - "
+
+She stared at him for a moment, wondering what he could mean.  Then,
+suddenly she remembered.  Why, of course, Joe was on a big job just
+now - the job of trying to catch The Avenger!  Her husband had
+alluded to the fact again and again when reading out to her little
+bits from the halfpenny evening paper he was taking again.
+
+She led the way to the sitting-room.  It was a good thing Bunting
+had insisted on lighting the fire before he went out, for now the
+room was nice and warm - and it was just horrible outside.  She had
+felt a chill go right through her as she had stood, even for that
+second, at the front door.
+
+And she hadn't been alone to feel it, for, "I say, it is jolly to
+be in here, out of that awful cold!" exclaimed Chandler, sitting
+down heavily in Bunting's easy chair.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting bethought herself that the young man was tired,
+as well as cold.  He was pale, almost pallid under his usual healthy,
+tanned complexion - the complexion of the man who lives much out of
+doors.
+
+"Wouldn't you like me just to make you a cup of tea?" she said
+solicitously.
+
+"Well, to tell truth, I should be right down thankful for one, Mrs.
+Bunting!"  Then he looked round, and again he said her name, "Mrs.
+Bunting - ?"  
+
+He spoke in so odd, so thick a tone that she turned quickly.  "Yes,
+what is it, Joe?" she asked.  And then, in sudden terror, "You've
+never come to tell me that anything's happened to Bunting?  He's
+not had an accident?"
+
+"Goodness, no!  Whatever made you think that?  But - but, Mrs.
+Bunting, there's been another of them!"
+
+His voice dropped almost to a whisper.  He was staring at her with
+unhappy, it seemed to her terror-filled, eyes.
+
+"Another of them?"  She looked at him, bewildered  - at a loss.
+And then what he meant flashed across her - " another of them"
+meant another of these strange, mysterious, awful murders.
+
+But her relief for the moment was so great - for she really had
+thought for a second that he had come to give her ill news of
+Bunting - that the, feeling that she did experience on hearing
+this piece of news was actually pleasurable, though she would
+have been much shocked had that fact been brought to her notice.
+
+Almost in spite of herself, Mrs. Bunting had become keenly interested
+in the amazing series of crimes which was occupying the imagination
+of the whole of London's nether-world.  Even her refined mind had
+busied itself for the last two or three days with the strange problem
+so frequently presented to it by Bunting - for Bunting, now that they
+were no longer worried, took an open, unashamed, intense interest in
+"The Avenger" and his doings.
+
+She took the kettle off the gas-ring.  "It's a pity Bunting isn't
+here," she said, drawing in her breath.  "He'd a-liked so much to
+hear you tell  all about it, Joe."
+
+As she spoke she was pouring boiling water into a little teapot.
+
+But Chandler said nothing, and she turned and glanced at him.  "Why,
+you do look bad!" she exclaimed.
+
+And, indeed, the young fellow did look bad - very bad indeed.
+
+"I can't help it," he said, with a kind of gasp.  "It was your
+saying that about my telling you all about it that made me turn
+queer.  You see, this time I was one of the first there, and it
+fairly turned me sick - that it did.  Oh, it was too awful, Mrs.
+Bunting!  Don't talk of it."
+
+He began gulping down the hot tea before it was well made.
+
+She looked at him with sympathetic interest. "Why, Joe," she said,
+"I never would have thought, with all the horrible sights you see,
+that anything could upset you like that."
+
+"This isn't like anything there's ever been before," he said.  "And
+then - then - oh, Mrs. Bunting, 'twas I that discovered the piece of
+paper this time."
+
+"Then it is true," she cried eagerly.  "It is The Avenger's bit of
+paper!  Bunting always said it was.  He never believed in that
+practical joker."
+
+"I did," said Chandler reluctantly.  "You see, there are some queer
+fellows even - even - " (he lowered his voice, and looked round him
+as if the walls had ears) - "even in the Force, Mrs. Bunting, and
+these murders have fair got on our nerves."
+
+"No, never!" she said.  "D'you think that a Bobby might do a thing
+like that?"
+
+He nodded impatiently, as if the question wasn't worth answering.
+Then, "It was all along of that bit of paper and my finding it while
+the poor soul was still warm he shuddered - " that brought me out
+West this morning.  One of our bosses lives close by, in Prince
+Albert Terrace, and I had to go and tell him all about it.  They
+never offered me a bit or a sup - I think they might have done that,
+don't you, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Yes," she said absently.  "Yes, I do think so."
+
+"But, there, I don't know that I ought to say that," went on Chandler.
+"He had me up in his dressing-room, and was very considerate-like to
+me while I was telling him."
+
+"Have a bit of something now?" she said suddenly.
+
+"Oh, no, I couldn't eat anything," he said hastily.  "I don't feel
+as if I could ever eat anything any more."
+
+"That'll only make you ill."  Mrs. Bunting spoke rather crossly,
+for she was a sensible woman.  And to please her he took a bite
+out of the slice of bread-and-butter she had cut for him.
+
+"I expect you're right," he said.  "And I've a goodish heavy day
+in front of me.  Been up since four, too - "
+
+"Four?" she said.  "Was it then they found - " she hesitated a
+moment, and then said, "it?"
+
+He nodded.  "It was just a chance I was near by.  If I'd been half
+a minute sooner either I or the officer who found her must have
+knocked up against that -  that monster.  But two or three people
+do think they saw him slinking away."
+
+"What was he like?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Well, that's hard to answer.  You see, there was such an awful
+fog.  But there's one thing they all agree about.  He was carrying
+a bag - "
+
+"A bag?" repeated Mrs. Bunting, in a low voice.  "Whatever sort of
+bag might it have been, Joe?"
+
+There had come across her-just right in her middle, like - such a
+strange sensation, a curious kind of tremor, or fluttering.
+
+ She was at a loss to account for it,
+
+"Just a hand-bag," said Joe Chandler vaguely.  "A woman I spoke to
+ - cross-examining her, like - who was positive she had seen him,
+said, 'Just a tall, thin shadow - that's what he was, a tall, thin
+shadow of a man - with a bag."'
+
+"With a bag?" repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.  "How very strange
+and peculiar - "
+
+"Why, no, not strange at all.  He has to carry the thing he does
+the deed with in something, Mrs. Bunting.  We've always wondered how
+he hid it.  They generally throws the knife or fire-arms away, you
+know."
+
+"Do they, indeed?" Mrs. Bunting still spoke in that absent, wondering
+way.  She was thinking that she really must try and see what the
+lodger had done with his bag.  It was possible - in fact, when one
+came to think of it, it was very probable - that he had just lost
+it, being so forgetful a gentleman, on one of the days he had gone
+out, as she knew he was fond of doing, into the Regent's Park.
+
+"There'll be a description circulated in an hour or two," went on
+Chandler.  "Perhaps that'll help catch him.  There isn't a London
+man or woman, I don't suppose, who wouldn't give a good bit to lay
+that chap by the heels.  Well, I suppose I must be going now."
+
+"Won't you wait a bit longer for Bunting?" she said hesitatingly.
+
+"No, I can't do that.  But I'll come in, maybe, either this evening
+or to-morrow, and tell you any more that's happened.  Thanks kindly
+for the tea.  It's made a man of me, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Well, you've had enough to unman you, Joe."
+
+"Aye, that I have," he said heavily.
+
+A few minutes later Bunting did come in, and he and his wife had
+quite a little tiff - the first tiff they had had since Mr. Sleuth
+became their lodger.
+
+It fell out this way.  When he heard who had been there, Bunting
+was angry that Mrs. Bunting hadn't got more details of the horrible
+occurrence which had taken place that morning, out of Chandler.
+
+"You don't mean to say, Ellen, that you can't even tell me where it
+happened?" he said indignantly.  "I suppose you put Chandler off
+ - that's what you did!  Why, whatever did he come here for,
+excepting to tell us all about it?"
+
+"He came to have something to eat and drink," snapped out Mrs.
+Bunting.  "That's what the poor lad came for, if you wants to know.
+He could hardly speak of it at all - he felt so bad.  In fact, he
+didn't say a word about it until he'd come right into the room and
+sat down.  He told me quite enough!"
+
+"Didn't he tell you if the piece of paper on which the murderer had
+written his name was square or three-cornered?" demanded Bunting.
+
+"No; he did not.  And that isn't the sort of thing I should have
+cared to ask him."
+
+"The more fool you!"  And then he stopped abruptly.  The newsboys
+were coming down the Marylebone Road, shouting out the awful
+discovery which had been made that morning - that of The Avenger's
+fifth murder.  Bunting went out to buy a paper, and his wife took
+the things he had brought in down to the kitchen.
+
+The noise the newspaper-sellers made outside had evidently wakened
+Mr. Sleuth, for his landlady hadn't been in the kitchen ten minutes
+before his bell rang.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Mr. Sleuth's bell rang again.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's breakfast was quite ready, but for the first time since
+he had been her lodger Mrs. Bunting did not answer the summons at
+once.  But when there came the second imperative tinkle - for
+electric hells had not been fitted into that old-fashioned house - 
+she made up her mind to go upstairs.
+
+As she emerged into the hall from the kitchen stairway, Bunting,
+sitting comfortably in their parlour, heard his wile stepping heavily
+under the load of the well-laden tray.
+
+"Wait a minute!" he called out.  "I'll help you, Ellen," and he came
+out and took the tray from her.
+
+She said nothing, and together they proceeded up to the drawing-room
+floor landing.
+
+There she stopped him.  "Here," she whispered quickly, "you give me
+that, Bunting.  The lodger won't like your going in to him."  And
+then, as he obeyed her, and was about to turn downstairs again, she
+added in a rather acid tone, "You might open the door for me, at
+any rate!  How can I manage to do it with this here heavy tray on
+my hands?"
+
+She spoke in a queer, jerky way, and Bunting felt surprised - rather
+put out.  Ellen wasn't exactly what you'd call a lively, jolly woman,
+but when things were going well - as now - she was generally equable
+enough.  He supposed she was still resentful of the way he had
+spoken to her about young Chandler and the new Avenger murder.
+
+However, he was always for peace, so he opened the drawing-room door,
+and as soon as he had started going downstairs Mrs. Bunting walked
+into the room.
+
+And then at once there came over her the queerest feeling of relief,
+of lightness of heart.
+
+As usual, the lodger was sitting at his old place, reading the Bible.
+
+Somehow - she could not have told you why, she would not willingly
+have told herself - she had expected to see Mr. Sleuth looking
+different.  But no, he appeared to be exactly the same - in fact,
+as he glanced up at her a pleasanter smile than usual lighted up
+his thin, pallid face.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bunting," he said genially, "I overslept myself this
+morning, but I feel all the better for the rest."
+
+"I'm glad of that, sir," she answered, in a low voice.  "One of the
+ladies I once lived with used to say, 'Rest is an old-fashioned
+remedy, but it's the best remedy of all."
+
+Mr. Sleuth himself removed the Bible and Cruden's Concordance off
+the table out of her way, and then he stood watching his landlady
+laying the cloth.
+
+Suddenly he spoke again.  He was not often so talkative in the
+morning.  "I think, Mrs. Bunting, that there was someone with you
+outside the door just now?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  Bunting helped me up with the tray."
+
+"I'm afraid I give you a good deal of trouble," he said hesitatingly.
+
+But she answered quickly, "Oh, no, sir!  Not at all, sir!  I was
+only saying yesterday that we've never had a lodger that gave us as
+little trouble as you do, sir."
+
+"I'm glad of that.  I am aware that my habits are somewhat peculiar."
+
+He looked at her fixedly, as if expecting her to give some sort of
+denial to this observation.  But Mrs. Bunting was an honest and
+truthful woman.  It never occurred to her to question his statement.
+Mr. Sleuth's habits were somewhat peculiar.  Take that going out at
+night, or rather in the early morning, for instance?  So she remained
+silent.
+
+After she had laid the lodger's breakfast on the table she prepared
+to leave the room.  "I suppose I'm not to do your room till you goes
+out, sir?"
+
+And Mr. Sleuth looked up sharply.  "No, no!" he said.  "I never
+want my room done when I am engaged in studying the Scriptures, Mrs.
+Bunting.  But I am not going out to-day.  I shall be carrying out a
+somewhat elaborate experiment - upstairs.  If I go out at all" he
+waited a moment, and again he looked at her fixedly " - I shall wait
+till night-time to do so."  And then, coming back to the matter in
+hand, he added hastily, "Perhaps you could do my room when I go
+upstairs, about five o'clock - if that time is convenient to you,
+that is?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir!  That'll do nicely!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and as she did so she took herself
+wordlessly, ruthlessly to task, but she did not face - even in her
+inmost heart - the strange tenors and tremors which had so shaken
+her.  She only repeated to herself again and again, "I've got upset
+ - that's what I've done," and then she spoke aloud, "I must get
+myself a dose at the chemist's next time I'm out.  That's what I
+must do."
+
+And just as she murmured the word "do," there came a loud double
+knock on the front door.
+
+It was only the postman's knock, but the postman was an unfamiliar
+visitor in that house, and Mrs. Bunting started violently.  She was
+nervous, that's what was the matter with her, - so she told herself
+angrily.  No doubt this was a letter for Mr. Sleuth; the lodger must
+have relations and acquaintances somewhere in the world.  All
+gentlefolk have.  But when she picked the small envelope off the
+hall floor, she saw it was a letter from Daisy, her husband's daughter.
+
+"Bunting!" she called out sharply.  "Here's a letter for you."
+
+She opened the door of their sitting-room and looked in.  Yes, there
+was her husband, sitting back comfortably in his easy chair, reading
+a paper.  And as she saw his broad, rather rounded back, Mrs. Bunting
+felt a sudden thrill of sharp irritation.  There he was, doing
+nothing - in fact, doing worse than nothing - wasting his time
+reading all about those horrid crimes.
+
+She sighed - a long, unconscious sigh.  Bunting was getting into
+idle ways, bad ways for a man of his years.  But how could she
+prevent it?  He had been such an active, conscientious sort of man
+when they had first made acquaintance. . .
+
+She also could remember, even more clearly than Bunting did himself,
+that first meeting of theirs in the dining-room of No. 90 Cumberland
+Terrace.  As she had stood there, pouring out her mistress's glass of
+port wine, she had not been too much absorbed in her task to have a
+good out-of-her-eye look at the spruce, nice, respectable-looking
+fellow who was standing over by the window.  How superior he had
+appeared even then to the man she already hoped he would succeed as
+butler!
+
+To-day, perhaps because she was not feeling quite herself, the past
+rose before her very vividly, and a lump came into her throat.
+
+Putting the letter addressed to her husband on the table, she closed
+the door softly, and went down into the kitchen; there were various
+little things to put away and clean up, as well as their dinner to
+cook.  And all the time she was down there she fixed her mind
+obstinately, determinedly on Bunting and on the problem of Bunting.
+She wondered what she'd better do to get him into good ways again.
+
+Thanks to Mr. Sleuth, their outlook was now moderately bright.  A
+week ago everything had seemed utterly hopeless.  It seemed as if
+nothing could save them from disaster.  But everything was now
+changed!
+
+Perhaps it would be well for her to go and see the new proprietor
+of that registry office, in Baker Street, which had lately changed
+hands.  It would be a good thing for Bunting to get even an
+occasional job - for the matter of that he could now take up a
+fairly regular thing in the way of waiting.  Mrs. Bunting knew that
+it isn't easy to get a man out of idle ways once he has acquired
+those ways.
+
+When, at last, she went upstairs again she felt a little ashamed of
+what she had been thinking, for Bunting had laid the cloth, and laid
+it very nicely, too, and brought up the two chairs to the table.
+
+"Ellen?" he cried eagerly, "here's news!  Daisy's coming to-morrow!
+There's scarlet fever in their house.  Old Aunt thinks she'd better
+come away for a few days.  So, you see, she'll be here for her
+birthday.  Eighteen, that's what she be on the nineteenth!  It do
+make me feel old - that it do!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting put down the tray.  "I can't have the girl here just
+now," she said shortly.  "I've just as much to do as I can manage.
+The lodger gives me more trouble than you seem to think for."
+
+"Rubbish!" he said sharply.  "I'll help you with the lodger.  It's
+your own fault you haven't had help with him before.  Of course,
+Daisy must come here.  Whatever other place could the girl go to?"
+
+Bunting felt pugnacious - so cheerful as to be almost light-hearted.
+But as he looked across at his wife his feeling of satisfaction
+vanished.  Ellen's face was pinched and drawn to-day; she looked ill
+ - ill and horribly tired.  It was very aggravating of her to go and
+behave like this - just when they were beginning to get on nicely
+again.
+
+"For the matter of that," he said suddenly, "Daisy'll be able to help
+you with the work, Ellen, and she'll brisk us both up a bit."
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no answer.  She sat down heavily at the table.
+And then she said languidly, "You might as well show me the girl's
+letter."
+
+He handed it across to her, and she read it slowly to herself.
+
+"DEAR FATHER (it ran) - I hope this finds you as well at it leaves
+me.  Mrs. Puddle's youngest has got scarlet fever, and Aunt thinks
+I had better come away at once, just to stay with you for a few
+days.  Please tell Ellen I won't give her no trouble.  I'll start
+at ten if I don't hear nothing. - Your loving daughter,
+
+
+"Yes, I suppose Daisy will have to come here," Mrs. Bunting slowly.
+"It'll do her good to have a bit of work to do for once in her life."
+
+And with that ungraciously worded permission Bunting had to content
+himself.
+
+******
+
+Quietly the rest of that eventful day sped by.  When dusk fell Mr.
+Sleuth's landlady heard him go upstairs to the top floor.  She
+remembered that this was the signal for her to go and do his room.
+
+He was a tidy man, was the lodger; he did not throw his things
+about as so many gentlemen do, leaving them all over the place.
+No, he kept everything scrupulously tidy.  His clothes, and the
+various articles Mrs. Bunting had bought for him during the first
+two days he had been there, were carefully arranged in the chest
+of drawers.  He had lately purchased a pair of boots.  Those he
+had arrived in were peculiar-looking footgear, buff leather shoes
+with rubber soles, and he had told his landlady on that very first
+day that he never wished them to go down 
+to be cleaned.
+
+A funny idea - a funny habit that, of going out for a walk after
+midnight in weather so cold and foggy that all other folk were
+glad to be at home, snug in bed.  But then Mr. Sleuth himself
+admitted that he was a funny sort of gentleman.
+
+After she had done his bedroom the landlady went into the
+sitting-room and gave it a good dusting.  This room was not kept
+quite as nice as she would have liked it to be.  Mrs. Bunting
+longed to give the drawing-room something of a good turn out; but
+Mr. Sleuth disliked her to be moving about in it when he himself
+was in his bedroom; and when up he sat there almost all the time.
+Delighted as he had seemed to be with the top room, he only used
+it when making his mysterious experiments, and never during the
+day-time.
+
+And now, this afternoon, she looked at the rosewood chiffonnier with
+longing eyes - she even gave that pretty little piece of furniture
+a slight shake.  If only the doors would fly open, as the locked
+doors of old cupboards sometimes do, even after they have been
+securely fastened, how pleased she would be, how much more
+comfortable somehow she would feel!
+
+But the chiffonnier refused to give up its secret.
+
+******
+
+About eight o'clock on that same evening Joe Chandler came in, just
+for a few minutes' chat.  He had recovered from his agitation of the
+morning, but he was full of eager excitement, and Mrs. Bunting
+listened in silence, intensely interested in spite of herself, while
+he and Bunting talked.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I'm as right as a trivet now!  I've had a good rest
+ - laid down all this afternoon.  You see, the Yard thinks there's
+going to be something on to-night.  He's always done them in pairs."
+
+"So he has," exclaimed Hunting wonderingly.  "So he has!  Now, I
+never thought o' that.  Then you think, Joe, that the monster'll be
+on the job again to-night?"
+
+Chandler nodded.  "Yes.  And I think there's a very good chance of
+his being caught too - "
+
+"I suppose there'll be a lot on the watch to-night, eh?"
+
+"I should think there will be!  How many of our men d'you think
+there'll be on night duty to-night, Mr. Bunting?"
+
+Bunting shook his head.  "I don't know," he said helplessly.
+
+"I mean extra," suggested Chandler, in an encouraging voice."
+
+"A thousand?" ventured Bunting.
+
+"Five thousand, Mr. Bunting.
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Bunting, amazed.
+
+And even Mrs. Bunting echoed "Never!" incredulously.
+
+"Yes, that there will.  You see, the Boss has got his monkey up!"
+Chandler drew a folded-up newspaper out of his coat pocket.  "Just
+listen to this:
+
+"'The police have reluctantly to admit that they have no clue to
+the perpetrators of these horrible crimes, and we cannot feel any
+surprise at the information that a popular attack has been organised
+on the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.  There is even
+talk of an indignation mass meeting.'
+
+"What d'you think of that?  That's not a pleasant thing for a
+gentleman as is doing his best to read, eh?"
+
+"Well, it does seem queer that the police can't catch him, now
+doesn't it?" said Bunting argumentatively.
+
+"I don't think it's queer at all," said young Chandler crossly.
+"Now you just listen again!  Here's a bit of the truth for once - 
+in a newspaper."  And slowly he read out:
+
+"'The detection of crime in London now resembles a game of blind
+man's buff, in which the detective has his hands tied and his eyes
+bandaged.  Thus is he turned loose to hunt the murderer through
+the slums of a great city."'
+
+"Whatever does that mean?" said Bunting.  "Your hands aren't tied,
+and your eyes aren't bandaged, Joe?"
+
+"It's metaphorical-like that it's intended, Mr. Bunting.  We haven't
+got the same facilities - no, not a quarter of them - that the
+French 'tecs have."
+
+And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting spoke: "What was that
+word, Joe - 'perpetrators'?  I mean that first bit you read out."
+
+"Yes," he said, turning to her eagerly.
+
+"Then do they think there's more than one of them?" she said, and
+a look of relief came over her thin face.
+
+"There's some of our chaps thinks it's a gang," said Chandler.
+"They say it can't be the work of one man."
+
+"What do you think, Joe?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bunting, I don't know what to think.  I'm fair puzzled."
+
+He got up.  "Don't you come to the door.  I'll shut it all right.
+So long!  See you to-morrow, perhaps."  As he had done the other
+evening, Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's visitor stopped at the door.  "Any
+news of Miss Daisy?" he asked casually.
+
+"Yes; she's coming to-morrow," said her father.  "They've got scarlet
+fever at her place.  So Old Aunt thinks she'd better clear out."
+
+
+The husband and wife went to bed early that night, but Mrs. Bunting
+found she could not sleep.  She lay wide awake, hearing the hours,
+the half-hours, the quarters chime out from the belfry of the old
+church close by.
+
+And then, just as she was dozing off - it must have been about one
+o'clock - she heard the sound she had half unconsciously been
+expecting to hear, that of the lodger's stealthy footsteps coming
+down the stairs just outside her room.
+
+He crept along the passage and let himself out very, very quietly.
+
+But though she tried to keep awake, Mrs. Bunting did not hear him
+come in again, for she soon fell into a heavy sleep.
+
+Oddly enough, she was the first to wake the next morning; odder
+still, it was she, not Bunting, who jumped out of bed, and going
+out into the passage, picked up the newspaper which had just been
+pushed through the letter-box.
+
+But having picked it up, Mrs. Bunting did not go back at once into
+her bedroom.  Instead she lit the gas in the passage, and leaning
+up against the wall to steady herself, for she was trembling with
+cold and fatigue, she opened the paper.
+
+Yes, there was the heading she sought:
+
+The AVENGER Murders"
+
+But, oh, how glad she was to see the words that followed:
+
+"Up to the time of going to press there is little new to report
+concerning the extraordinary series of crimes which are amazing,
+and, indeed, staggering not only London, hut the whole civilised
+world, and which would seem to be the work of some woman-hating
+teetotal fanatic.  Since yesterday morning, when the last of these
+dastardly murders was committed, no reliable clue to the perpetrator,
+or perpetrators, has been obtained, though several arrests were made
+in the course of the day.  In every case, however, those arrested
+were able to prove a satisfactory alibi."
+
+And then, a little lower down
+
+"The excitement grows and grows.  It is not too much to say that
+even a stranger to London would know that something very unusual
+was in the air.  As for the place where the murder was committed
+last night - "
+
+"Last night!" thought Mrs. Bunting, startled; and then she realised
+that "last night," in this connection, meant the night before last.
+
+She began the sentence again:
+
+"As for the place where the murder was committed last night, all
+approaches to it were still blocked up to a late hour by hundreds
+of onlookers, though, of course, nothing now remains in the way of
+traces of the tragedy."
+
+Slowly and carefully Mrs. Bunting folded the paper up again in its
+original creases, and then she stooped and put it back down on the
+mat where she had found it.  She then turned out the gas, and going
+back into bed she lay down by her still sleeping husband.
+
+"Anything the matter?" Bunting murmured, and stirred uneasily.
+"Anything the matter, Ellen?"
+
+She answered in a whisper, a whisper thrilling with a strange
+gladness, "No, nothing, Bunting - nothing the matter!  Go to sleep
+again, my dear."
+
+They got up an hour later, both in a happy, cheerful mood.  Bunting
+rejoiced at the thought of his daughter's coming, and even Daisy's
+stepmother told herself that it would be pleasant having the girl
+about the house to help her a bit.
+
+About ten o'clock Bunting went out to do some shopping.  He brought
+back with him a nice little bit of pork for Daisy's dinner, and
+three mince-pies.  He even remembered to get some apples for the
+sauce.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate.
+
+It brought Daisy - pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy - a
+sight to gladden any father's heart.
+
+"Old Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad," she
+cried out joyously.
+
+There was a bit of a wrangle over the fare.  King's Cross, as all
+the world knows, is nothing like two miles from the Marylebone Road,
+but the man clamoured for one and sixpence, and hinted darkly that
+he had done the young lady a favour in bringing her at all.
+
+While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it,
+walked up the flagged path to the door where her stepmother was
+awaiting her.
+
+As they were exchanging a rather frigid kiss, indeed, 'twas a mere
+peck on Mrs. Bunting's part, there fell, with startling suddenness,
+loud cries on the still, cold air.  Long-drawn and wailing, they
+sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar
+of traffic in the Edgware Road.
+
+"What's that?" exclaimed Bunting wonderingly.  "Why, whatever's
+that?"
+
+The cabman lowered his voice.  "Them's 'a-crying out that 'orrible
+affair at King's Cross.  He's done for two of 'em this time!  That's
+what I meant when I said I might 'a got a better fare.  I wouldn't
+say nothink before little missy there, but folk 'ave been coming
+from all over London the last five or six hours; plenty of toffs,
+too - but there, there's nothing to see now!"
+
+"What?  Another woman murdered last night?"
+
+Bunting felt tremendously thrilled.  What had the five thousand
+constables been about to let such a dreadful thing happen?
+
+The cabman stared at him, surprised.  "Two of 'em, I tell yer - 
+within a few yards of one another.  He 'ave - got a nerve -  But,
+of course, they was drunk.  He are got a down on the drink!"
+
+"Have they caught him?" asked Bunting perfunctorily.
+
+"Lord, no!  They'll never catch 'im!  It must 'ave happened hours
+and hours ago - they was both stone cold.  One each end of a little
+passage what ain't used no more.  That's why they didn't find 'em
+before."
+
+The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer - two news vendors
+trying to outshout each other.
+
+"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross!" they yelled exultingly.
+"The Avenger again!"
+
+And Bunting, with his daughter's large straw hold-all in his hand,
+ran forward into the roadway and recklessly gave a boy a penny for
+a halfpenny paper.
+
+He felt very much moved and excited.  Somehow his acquaintance with
+young Joe Chandler made these murders seem a personal affair.  He
+hoped that Chandler would come in soon and tell them all about it,
+as he had done yesterday morning when he, Bunting, had unluckily
+been out.
+
+As be walked back into the little hall, he heard Daisy's voice - 
+high, voluble, excited - giving her stepmother a long account of
+the scarlet fever case, and how at first Old Aunt's neighbours had
+thought it was not scarlet fever at all, but just nettlerash.
+
+But as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room, there
+came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter's voice, and he heard
+her cry, "Why, Ellen, whatever is the matter?  You do look bad!"
+and his wife's muffled answer, "Open the window - do."
+
+"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross - a clue at last!" yelled
+the newspaper-boys triumphantly.
+
+And then, helplessly, Mrs. Bunting began to laugh.  She laughed,
+and laughed, and laughed, rocking herself to and fro as if in an
+ecstasy of mirth.
+
+"Why, father, whatever's the matter with her?"
+
+Daisy looked quite scared.
+
+"She's in 'sterics - that's what it is," he said shortly.
+"I'll just get the water-jug.  Wait a minute!"
+
+Bunting felt very put out.  Ellen was ridiculous - that's what she
+was, to be so easily upset.
+
+The lodger's bell suddenly pealed through the quiet house.  Either
+that sound, or maybe the threat of the water-jug, had a magical
+effect on Mrs. Bunting.  She rose to her feet, still shaking all
+over, but mentally composed.
+
+"I'll go up," she skid a little chokingly.  "As for you, child,
+just run down into the kitchen.  You'll find a piece of pork
+roasting in the oven.  You might start paring the apples for the
+sauce."
+
+As Mrs. Bunting went upstairs her legs felt as if they were made
+of cotton wool.  She put out a trembling hand, and clutched at the
+banister for support.  But soon, making a great effort over herself,
+she began to feel more steady; and after waiting for a few moments
+on the landing, she knocked at the door of the drawing-room.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's voice answered her from the bedroom.  "I'm not well,"
+he called out querulously; "I think I've caught a chill.  I should
+be obliged if you would kindly bring me up a cup of tea, and put it
+outside my door, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting turned and went downstairs.  She still felt queer and
+giddy, so instead of going into the kitchen, she made the lodger his
+cup of tea over her sitting-room gas-ring.
+
+During their midday dinner the husband and wile had a little
+discussion as to where Daisy should sleep.  It had been settled
+that a bed should be made up for her in the top back room, but
+Mrs. Bunting saw reason to change this plan.  "I think 'twould be
+better if Daisy were to sleep with me, Bunting, and you was to
+sleep upstairs."
+
+Bunting felt and looked rather surprised, but he acquiesced.  Ellen
+was probably right; the girl would be rather lonely up there, and,
+after all, they didn't know much about the lodger, though he seemed
+a respectable gentleman enough.
+
+Daisy was a good-natured girl; she liked London, and wanted to make
+herself useful to her stepmother.  "I'll wash up; don't you bother to
+come downstairs," she said cheerfully.
+
+Bunting began to walk up and down the room.  His wife gave him a
+furtive glance; she wondered what he was thinking about.
+
+"Didn't you get a paper?" she said at last.
+
+"Yes, of course I did," he answered hastily.  "But I've put it away.
+I thought you'd rather not look at it, as you're that nervous."
+
+Again she glanced at him quickly, furtively, but he seemed just as
+usual - he evidently meant just what he said and no more.
+
+"I thought they was shouting something in the street - I mean just
+before I was took bad."
+
+It was now Bunting's turn to stare at his wife quickly and rather
+furtively.  He had felt sure that her sudden attack of queerness, 
+of hysterics - call it what you might - had been due to the shouting
+outside.  She was not the only woman in London who had got the
+Avenger murders on her nerves.  His morning paper said quite a lot
+of women were afraid to go out alone.  Was it possible that the
+curious way she had been taken just now had had nothing to do with
+the shouts and excitement outside?
+
+"Don't you know what it was they were calling out?" he asked slowly.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked across at him.  She would have given a very
+great deal to be able to lie, to pretend that she did not know what
+those dreadful cries had portended.  But when it came to the point
+she found she could not do so.
+
+"Yes," she said dully.  "I heard a word here and there.  There's
+been another murder, hasn't there?"
+
+"Two other murders," he said soberly.  
+
+"Two?  That's worse news!"  She turned so pale - a sallow
+greenish-white - that Bunting thought she was again going queer.
+
+"Ellen?" he said warningly, "Ellen, now do have a care!  I can't
+think what's come over, you about these murders.  Turn your mind
+away from them, do!  We needn't talk about them - not so much,
+that is "
+
+"But I wants to talk about them," cried Mrs. Bunting hysterically.
+
+The husband and wife were standing, one each side of the table,
+the man with his back to the fire, the woman with her back to the
+door.
+
+Bunting, staring across at his wife, felt sadly perplexed and
+disturbed.  She really did seem ill; even her slight, spare figure
+looked shrunk.  For the first time, so he told himself ruefully,
+Ellen was beginning to look her full age.  Her slender hands - she
+had kept the pretty, soft white hands of the woman who has never
+done rough work - grasped the edge of the table with a convulsive
+movement.
+
+Bunting didn't at all like the look of her.  "Oh, dear," he said
+to himself, "I do hope Ellen isn't going to be ill!  That would be
+a to-do just now."
+
+"Tell me about it," she commanded, in a low voice.  " Can't you see
+I'm waiting to hear?  Be quick now, Bunting!"
+
+"There isn't very much to tell," he said reluctantly.  "There's
+precious little in this paper, anyway.  But the cabman what brought
+Daisy told me - "
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What I said just now.  There's two of 'em this time, and they'd
+both been drinking heavily, poor creatures."
+
+"Was it where the others was done?" she asked looking at her husband
+fearfully.
+
+"No," he said awkwardly.  "No, it wasn't, Ellen.  It was a good bit
+farther West - in fact, not so very far from here.  Near King's Cross
+ - that's how the cabman knew about it, you see.  They seems to have
+been done in a passage which isn't used no more."  And then, as he
+thought his wife's eyes were beginning to look rather funny, he added
+hastily.  "There, that's enough for the present!  We shall soon be
+hearing a lot more about it from Joe Chandler.  He's pretty sure to
+come in some time to-day."
+
+"Then the five thousand constables weren't no use?" said Mrs.
+Bunting slowly.
+
+She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was standing more
+upright.
+
+"No use at all," said Bunting briefly.  "He is artful and no mistake
+about it.  But wait a minute - " he turned and took up the paper
+which he had laid aside, on a chair.  "Yes they says here that they
+has a clue."
+
+"A clue, Bunting?"  Mrs. Bunting spoke in a soft, weak, die-away
+voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the edge of the
+table.
+
+But her husband was not noticing her now.  He was holding the paper
+close up to his eyes, and he read from it, in a tone of considerable
+satisfaction:
+
+"'It is gratifying to be able to state that the police at last
+believe they are in possession of a clue which will lead to the
+arrest of the - '" and then Bunting dropped the paper and rushed
+round the table.
+
+His wife, with a curious sighing moan, had slipped down on to the
+floor, taking with her the tablecloth as she went.  She lay there
+in what appeared to be a dead faint.  And Bunting, scared out of
+his wits, opened the door and screamed out, "Daisy!  Daisy!  Come
+up, child.  Ellen's took bad again."
+
+And Daisy, hurrying in, showed an amount of sense and resource
+which even at this anxious moment roused her fond father's
+admiration.
+
+"Get a wet sponge, Dad - quick!" she cried, "a sponge, - and, if
+you've got such a thing, a drop o' brandy.  I'll see after her!"
+And then, after he had got the little medicine flask, "I can't think
+what's wrong with Ellen," said Daisy wonderingly.  "She seemed quite
+all right when I first came in.  She was listening, interested-like,
+to what I was telling her, and then, suddenly - well, you saw how
+she was took, father?  'Taint like Ellen this, is now?"
+
+"No," he whispered.  "No, 'taint.  But you see, child, we've been
+going through a pretty bad time - worse nor I should ever have let
+you know of, my dear.  Ellen's just feeling it now - that's what it
+is.  She didn't say nothing, for Ellen's a good plucked one, but
+it's told on her - it's told on her!"
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting, sitting up, slowly opened her eyes, and
+instinctively put her hand up to her head to see if her hair was
+all right.
+
+She hadn't really been quite "off."  It would have been better for
+her if she had.  She had simply had an awful feeling that she
+couldn't stand  up - more, that she must fall down.  Bunting's words
+touched a most unwonted chord in the poor woman's heart, and the
+eyes which she opened were full of tears.  She had not thought her
+husband knew how she had suffered during those weeks of starving
+and waiting.
+
+But she had a morbid dislike of any betrayal of sentiment.  To her
+such betrayal betokened "foolishness," and so all she said was,
+"There's no need to make a fuss!  I only turned over a little queer.
+I never was right off, Daisy."
+
+Pettishly she pushed away the glass in which Bunting had hurriedly
+poured a little brandy.  "I wouldn't touch such stuff - no, not if
+I was dying!" she exclaimed.
+
+Putting out a languid hand, she pulled herself up, with the help of
+the table, on to her feet.  "Go down again to the kitchen, child";
+but there was a sob, a kind of tremor in her voice.
+
+"You haven't been eating properly, Ellen - that's what's the matter
+with you," said Bunting suddenly.  "Now I come to think of it, you
+haven't eat half enough these last two days.  I always did say - in
+old days many a time I telled you - that a woman couldn't live on
+air.  But there, you never believed me!"
+
+Daisy stood looking from one to the other, a shadow over her bright,
+pretty face.  "I'd no idea you'd had such a bad time, father," she
+said feelingly.  "Why didn't you let me know about it?  I might have
+got something out of Old Aunt."
+
+"We didn't want anything of that sort," said her stepmother hastily.
+"But of course - well, I expect I'm still feeling the worry now.  I
+don't seem able to forget it.  Those days of waiting, of - of - "
+she restrained herself; another moment and the word "starving" would
+have left her lips.
+
+"But everything's all right now," said Bunting eagerly, all right,
+thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is."
+
+"Yes," repeated his wife, in a low, strange tone of voice.  "Yes,
+we're all right now, and as you say, Bunting, it's all along of
+Mr. Sleuth."
+
+She walked across to a chair and sat down on it.  "I'm just a little
+tottery still," she muttered.
+
+And Daisy, looking at her, turned to her father and said in a
+whisper, but not so low but that Mrs. Bunting heard her, "Don't you
+think Ellen ought to see a doctor, father?  He might give her
+something that would pull her round."
+
+"I won't see no doctor!" said Mrs. Bunting with sudden emphasis.  "I
+saw enough of doctors in my last place.  Thirty-eight doctors in ten
+months did my poor missis have.  Just determined on having 'em she
+was!  Did they save her?  No!  She died just the same!  Maybe a bit
+sooner."
+
+"She was a freak, was your last mistress, Ellen," began Bunting
+aggressively.
+
+Ellen had insisted on staying on in that place till her poor mistress
+died.  They might have been married some months before they were
+married but for that fact.  Bunting had always resented it.
+
+His wife smile wanly.  "We won't have no words about that," she said,
+and again she spoke in a softer, kindlier tone than usual.  "Daisy?
+If you won't go down to the kitchen again, then I must" - she turned
+to her stepdaughter, and the girl flew out of the room.
+
+"I think the child grows prettier every minute," said Bunting fondly.
+
+"Folks are too apt to forget that beauty is but skin deep," said his
+wife.  She was beginning to feel better.  "But still, I do agree,
+Bunting, that Daisy's well enough.  And she seems more willing, too."
+
+"I say, we mustn't forget the lodger's dinner," Bunting spoke
+uneasily.  "It's a bit of fish to-day, isn't it?  Hadn't I better
+just tell Daisy to see to it, and then I can take it up to him, as
+you're not feeling quite the thing, Ellen?"
+
+"I'm quite well enough to take up Mr. Sleuth's luncheon," she said
+quickly.  It irritated her to hear her husband speak of the lodger's
+dinner.  They had dinner in the middle of the day, but Mr. Sleuth
+had luncheon.  However odd he might be, Mrs. Bunting never forgot
+her lodger was a gentleman.
+
+"After all, he likes me to wait on him, doesn't he?  I can manage
+all right.  Don't you worry," she added after a long pause.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later
+than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs
+with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice
+slice of roast pork downstairs.
+
+"I hope you're feeling a little better, sir," Mrs. Bunting had forced
+herself to say when she first took in his tray.
+
+And he had answered plaintively, querulously, "No, I can't say I
+feel well to-day, Mrs. Bunting.  I am tired - very tired.  And as I
+lay in bed I seemed to hear so many sounds - so much crying and
+shouting.  I trust the Marylebone Road is not going to become a noisy
+thoroughfare, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I don't think that.  We're generally reckoned very
+quiet indeed, sir."
+
+She waited a moment - try as she would, she could not allude to what
+those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened.  "I expect you've
+got a chill, sir," she said suddenly.  "If I was you, I shouldn't
+go out this afternoon; I'd just stay quietly indoors.  There's a lot
+of rough people about - "  Perhaps there was an undercurrent of
+warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated
+in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and
+an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous grey eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bunting.  But I think I'll take your
+advice.  That is, I will stay quietly at home, I am never at a loss
+to know what to do with myself so long as I can study the Book of
+Books."
+
+"Then you're not afraid about your eyes, sir?" said Mrs. Bunting
+curiously.  Somehow she was beginning to feel better.  It comforted
+her to be up here, talking to Mr. Sleuth, instead of thinking about
+him downstairs.  It seemed to banish the terror which filled her
+soul - aye, and her body, too - at other times.  When she was with
+him Mr. Sleuth was so gentle, so reasonable, so - so grateful.
+
+Poor kindly, solitary Mr. Sleuth!  This kind of gentleman surely
+wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone a human being.  Eccentric - so much
+must be admitted.  But Mrs. Bunting had seen a good deal of eccentric
+folk, eccentric women rather than eccentric men, in her long career
+as useful maid.
+
+Being at ordinary times an exceptionally sensible, well-balanced
+woman, she had never, in old days, allowed her mind to dwell on
+certain things she had learnt as to the aberrations of which human
+nature is capable - even well-born, well-nurtured, gentle human
+nature - as exemplified in some of the households where she had
+served.  It would, indeed, be unfortunate if she now became morbid
+or - or hysterical.
+
+So it was in a sharp, cheerful voice, almost the voice in which she
+had talked during the first few days of Mr. Sleuth's stay in her
+house, that she exclaimed, "Well, sir, I'll be up again to clear
+away in about half an hour.  And if you'll forgive me for saying so,
+I hope you will stay in and have a rest to-day.  Nasty, muggy weather
+ - that's what it is!  If there's any little thing you want, me or
+Bunting can go out and get it."
+
+******
+
+It must have been about four o'clock when there came a ring at the
+front door.
+
+The three were sitting chatting together, for Daisy had washed up
+ - she really was saving her stepmother a good bit of trouble - and
+the girl was now amusing her elders by a funny account of Old Aunt's
+pernickety ways.
+
+"Whoever can that be?" said Bunting, looking up.  "It's too early
+for Joe Chandler, surely."
+
+"I'll go," said his wife, hurriedly jumping up from her chair.
+"I'll go!  We don't want no strangers in here."
+
+And as she stepped down the short bit of passage she said to herself,
+"A clue?  What clue?"
+
+But when she opened the front door a glad sigh of relief broke from
+her.  "Why, Joe?  We never thought 'twas you!  But you're very
+welcome, I'm sure.  Come in."
+
+And Chandler came in, a rather sheepish look on his good-looking,
+fair young face.
+  
+"I thought maybe that Mr. Bunting would like to know - " he began,
+in a loud, cheerful voice, and Mrs. Bunting hurriedly checked him.
+She didn't want the lodger upstairs to hear what young Chandler
+might be going to say.
+
+"Don't talk so loud," she said a little sharply.  "The lodger is
+not very well to-day.  He's had a cold," she added hastily, "and
+during the last two or three days he hasn't been able to go out."
+
+She wondered at her temerity, her - her hypocrisy, and that moment,
+those few words, marked an epoch in Ellen Bunting's life.  It was
+the first time she had told a bold and deliberate lie.  She was
+one of those women - there are many, many such - to whom there is
+a whole world of difference between the suppression of the truth
+and the utterance of an untruth.
+
+But Chandler paid no heed to her remarks.  "Has Miss Daisy arrived?"
+he asked, in a lower voice.
+
+She nodded.  And then he went through into the room where the father
+and daughter were sitting.
+
+"Well?" said Bunting, starting up.  "Well, Joe?  Now you can tell
+us all about that mysterious clue I suppose it'd be too good news
+to expect you to tell us they've caught him?"
+
+"No fear of such good news as that yet awhile.  If they'd caught
+him," said Joe ruefully, "well, I don't suppose I should be here,
+Mr. Bunting.  But the Yard are circulating a description at last.
+And - well, they've found his weapon!"
+
+"No?" cried Bunting excitedly.  "You don't say so!  Whatever sort
+of a thing is it?  And are they sure 'tis his?"
+
+"Well, 'tain't sure, but it seems to be likely."
+
+Mrs. Bunting had slipped into the room and shut the door behind her.
+But she was still standing with her back against the door, looking
+at the group in front of her.  None of them were thinking of her
+ - she thanked God for that!  She could hear everything that was
+said without joining in the talk and excitement.
+
+"Listen to this!" cried Joe Chandler exultantly.  "'Tain't given
+out yet - not for the public, that is - but we was all given it by
+eight o'clock this morning.  Quick work that eh?" He read out:
+
+
+"WANTED
+
+A man, of age approximately 28, slight in figure, height 
+approximately 5 ft.  '8 in.  Complexion dark.  No beard or
+whiskers.  Wearing a black diagonal coat hard felt hat, high
+white collar, and tie.  Carried a newspaper parcel.  Very
+respectable appearance."
+
+
+Mrs. Bunting walked forward.  She gave a long, fluttering sigh of
+unutterable relief.
+
+"There's the chap!" said Joe Chandler triumphantly.  "And now, Miss
+Daisy" - he turned to her jokingly, but there was a funny little
+tremor in his frank, cheerful-sounding voice - "if you knows of any
+nice, likely young fellow that answers to that description - well,
+you've only got to walk in and earn your reward of five hundred
+pounds."
+
+"Five hundred pounds!" cried Daisy and her father simultaneously.
+
+"Yes.  That's what the Lord Mayor offered yesterday.  Some private
+bloke - nothing official about it.  But we of the Yard is barred
+from taking that reward, worse luck.  And it's too bad, for we has
+all the trouble, after all"
+
+"Just hand that bit of paper over, will you?" said Bunting.  "I'd
+like to con it over to myself."
+
+Chandler threw over the bit of flimsy.
+
+A moment later Bunting looked up and handed it back.  "Well, it's
+clear enough, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes.  And there's hundreds - nay, "thousands - of young fellows
+that might be a description of," said Chandler sarcastically.  "As
+a pal of mine said this morning, 'There isn't a chap will like to
+carry a newspaper parcel after this.' And it won't do to have a
+respectable appearance - eh?"
+
+Daisy's voice rang out in merry, pealing laughter.  She greatly
+appreciated Mr. Chandler's witticism.
+
+"Why on earth didn't the people who saw him try and catch him?"
+asked Bunting suddenly.
+
+And Mrs. Bunting broke in, in a lower voice, "Yes, Joe - that seems
+odd, don't it?"
+
+Joe Chandler coughed.  "Well, it's this way," he said.  "No one
+person did see all that.  The man who's described here is just made
+up from the description of two different folk who think they saw
+him.  You see, the murders must have taken place - well, now, let
+me see - perhaps at two o'clock this last time.  Two o'clock -  
+that's the idea.  Well, at such a time as that not many people are
+about, especially on a foggy night.  Yes, one woman declares she
+saw a young chap walking away from the spot where 'twas done; and
+another one - but that was a good bit later - says The Avenger
+passed by her.  It's mostly her they're following in this 'ere
+description.  And then the boss who has charge of that sort of
+thing looked up what other people had said - I mean when the other
+crimes was committed.  That's how he made up this 'Wanted."'
+
+"Then The Avenger may be quite a different sort of man?" said
+Bunting slowly, disappointedly.
+
+"Well, of course he may be.  But, no; I think that description
+fits him all right," said Chandler; but he also spoke in a
+hesitating voice.
+
+"You was saying, Joe, that they found a weapon?" observed Bunting
+insinuatingly.
+
+He was glad that Ellen allowed the discussion to go on - in fact,
+that she even seemed to take an intelligent interest in it.  She
+had come up close to them, and now looked quite her old self again.
+
+"Yes.  They believe they've found the weapon what he does his awful
+deeds with," said Chandler.  "At any rate, within a hundred yards
+of that little dark passage where they found the bodies - one at
+each end, that was - there was discovered this morning a very
+peculiar kind o' knife - 'keen as a razor, pointed as a dagger' - 
+that's the exact words the boss used when he was describing it to
+a lot of us.  He seemed to think a lot more of that clue than of
+the other - I mean than of the description people gave of the chap
+who walked quickly by with a newspaper parcel.  But now there's a
+pretty job in front of us.  Every shop where they sell or might a'
+sold, such a thing as that knife, including every eating-house in
+the East End, has got to be called at!"
+
+"Whatever for?" asked Daisy.
+
+"Why, with an idea of finding out if anyone saw such a knife fooling
+about there any time, and, if so, in whose possession it was at the
+time.  But, Mr. Bunting" -  Chandler's voice changed; it became
+businesslike, official  - "they're not going to say anything about
+that - not in newspapers - till to-morrow, so don't you  go and
+tell anybody.  You see, we don't want to frighten the fellow off.
+If he knew they'd got his knife - well, he might just make himself
+scarce, and they don't want that!  If it's discovered that any knife
+of that kind was sold, say a month ago, to some customer whose ways
+are known, then - then - "
+
+"What'll happen then?" said Mrs. Bunting, coming nearer.
+
+"Well, then, nothing'll be put about it in the papers at all," said
+Chandler deliberately.  "The only objec' of letting the public know
+about it would be if nothink was found - I mean if the search of
+the shops, and so on, was no good.  Then, of course, we must try
+and find out someone - some private person-like, who's watched that
+knife in the criminal's possession.  It's there the reward - the
+five hundred pounds will come in.
+
+"Oh, I'd give anything to see that knife!" exclaimed Daisy, clasping
+her hands together.
+
+"You cruel, bloodthirsty, girl!" cried her stepmother passionately.
+
+They all looked round at her, surprised.
+
+"Come, come, Ellen!" said Bunting reprovingly.
+
+"Well, it is a horrible idea!" said his wife sullenly.  "To go and
+sell a fellow-being for five hundred pounds."
+
+But Daisy was offended.  "Of course I'd like to see it!" she cried
+defiantly.  "I never said nothing about the reward.  That was Mr.
+Chandler said that!  I only said I'd like to see the knife."
+
+Chandler looked at her soothingly.  "Well, the day may come when
+you will see it," he said slowly.
+
+A great idea had come into his mind.
+
+"No!  What makes you think that?"
+
+"If they catches him, and if you comes along with me to see our
+Black Museum at the Yard, you'll certainly see the knife, Miss Daisy.
+They keeps all them kind of things there.  So if, as I say, this
+weapon should lead to the conviction of The Avenger - well, then,
+that knife 'ull be there, and you'll see' it!"
+
+"The Black Museum?  Why, whatever do they have a museum in your
+place for?" asked Daisy wonderingly.  "I thought there was only the
+British Museum - "
+
+And then even Mrs. Bunting, as well as Bunting and Chandler,
+laughed aloud.
+
+"You are a goosey girl!" said her father fondly.  "Why, there's a
+lot of museums in London; the town's thick with 'em.  Ask Ellen
+there.  She and me used to go to them kind of places when we was
+courting - if the weather was bad."
+
+"But our museum's the one that would interest Miss Daisy," broke in
+Chandler eagerly.  "It's a regular Chamber of 'Orrors!"
+
+"Why, Joe, you never told us about that place before," said Bunting
+excitedly.  "D'you really mean that there's a museum where they
+keeps all sorts of things connected with crimes?  Things like knives
+murders have been committed with?"
+
+"Knives?" cried Joe, pleased at having become the centre of
+attention, for Daisy had also fixed her blue eyes on him, and even
+Mrs. Bunting looked at him expectantly.  "Much more than knives, Mr.
+Bunting!  Why, they've got there, in little bottles, the real poison
+what people have been done away with."
+
+"And can you go there whenever you like?" asked Daisy wonderingly.
+She had not realised before what extraordinary and agreeable
+privileges are attached to the position of a detective member of
+the London Police
+Force.
+
+"Well, I suppose I could - " Joe smiled.  "Anyway I can certainly
+get leave to take a friend there."  He looked meaningly at Daisy,
+and Daisy looked eagerly at him.
+
+But would Ellen ever let her go out by herself with Mr. Chandler?
+Ellen was so prim, so - so irritatingly proper.  But what was this
+father was saying?  "D'you really mean that, Joe?"
+
+"Yes, of course I do!"
+
+"Well, then, look here!  If it isn't asking too much of a favour, I
+should like to go along there with you very much one day.  I don't
+want to wait till The Avenger's caught " - Bunting smiled broadly.
+"I'd be quite content as it is with what there is in that museum
+o' yours.  Ellen, there " - he looked across at his wife-" don't
+agree with me about such things.  Yet I don't think I'm a
+bloodthirsty man!  But I'm just terribly interested in all that sort
+of thing - always have been.  I used to positively envy the butler
+in that Balham Mystery!"
+
+Again a look passed between Daisy and the young man - it was a look
+which contained and carried a great many things backwards and
+forwards, such as -  "Now, isn't it funny that your father should
+want to go to such a place?  But still, I can't help it if he does
+want to go, so we must put up with his company, though it would
+have been much nicer for us to go just by our two selves."  And
+then Daisy's look answered quite as plainly, though perhaps Joe
+didn't read her glance quite as clearly as she had read his: "Yes,
+it is tiresome.  But father means well; and 'twill be very pleasant
+going there, even if he does come too."
+
+"Well, what d'you say to the day after to-morrow, Mr. Bunting?  I'd
+call for you here about - shall we say half-past two?  - and just
+take you and Miss Daisy down to the Yard.  'Twouldn't take very
+long; we could go all the way by bus, right down to Westminster
+Bridge."  He looked round at his hostess: "Wouldn't you join us,
+Mrs. Bunting?  'Tis truly a wonderful interesting place."
+
+But his hostess shook her head decidedly.  "'Twould turn me sick,"
+she exclaimed, "to see the bottle of poison what had done away with
+the life of some poor creature!
+
+"And as for knives - !" a look of real horror, of startled fear,
+crept over her pale face.
+
+"There, there!" said Bunting hastily.  "Live and let live - that's
+what I always say.  Ellen ain't on in this turn.  She can just
+stay at home and mind the cat - I beg his pardon, I mean the lodger!"
+
+"I won't have Mr. Sleuth laughed at," said Mrs. Bunting darkly.
+"But there!  I'm sure it's very kind of you, Joe, to think of giving
+Bunting and Daisy such a rare treat " - she spoke sarcastically, but
+none of the three who heard her understood that.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The moment she passed though the great arched door which admits the
+stranger to that portion of New Scotland Yard where throbs the heart
+of that great organism which fights the forces of civilised crime,
+Daisy Bunting felt that she had indeed become free of the Kingdom of
+Romance.  Even the lift in which the three of them were whirled up
+to one of the upper floors of the huge building was to the girl a
+new and delightful experience.  Daisy had always lived a simple,
+quiet life in the little country town where dwelt Old Aunt and this
+was the first time a lift had come her way.
+
+With a touch of personal pride in the vast building, Joe Chandler
+marched his friends down a wide, airy corridor.
+
+Daisy clung to her father's arm, a little bewildered, a little
+oppressed by her good fortune.  Her happy young voice was
+stilled by the awe she felt at the wonderful place where she
+found herself, and by the glimpses she caught of great rooms full
+of busy, silent men engaged in unravelling - or so she supposed
+ - the mysteries of crime.
+
+They were passing a half-open door when Chandler suddenly stopped
+short.  "Look in there," he said, in a low voice, addressing the
+father rather than the daughter, "that's the Finger-Print Room.
+We've records here of over two hundred thousand men's and women's
+finger-tips!  I expect you know, Mr. Bunting, as how, once we've got
+the print of a man's five finger-tips, well, he's done for - if he
+ever does anything else, that is.  Once we've got that bit of him
+registered he can't never escape us - no, not if he tries ever so.
+But though there's nigh on a quarter of a million records in there,
+yet it don't take - well, not half an hour, for them to tell
+whether any particular man has ever been convicted before!  Wonderful
+thought, ain't it?"
+
+"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing a deep breath.  And then a
+troubled look came over his stolid face.  "Wonderful, but also a
+very fearful thought for the poor wretches as has got their
+finger-prints in, Joe."
+
+Joe laughed.  "Agreed!" he said.  "And the cleverer ones knows that
+only too well.  Why, not long ago, one man who knew his record was
+here safe, managed to slash about his fingers something awful, just
+so as to make a blurred impression - you takes my meaning?  But
+there, at the end of six weeks the skin grew all right again, and
+in exactly the same little creases as before!"
+
+"Poor devil!" said Bunting under his breath, and a cloud even came
+over Daisy's bright eager face.
+
+They were now going along a narrower passage, and then again they
+came to a half-open door, leading into a room far smaller than
+that of the Finger-Print Identification Room.
+
+"If you'll glance in there," said Joe briefly, "you'll see how we
+finds out all about any man whose finger-tips has given him away, so
+to speak.  It's here we keeps an account of what he's done, his
+previous convictions, and so on.  His finger-tips are where I told
+you, and his record in there - just connected by a number."
+
+"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing in his breath.  But Daisy was
+longing to get on - to get to the Black Museum.  All this that Joe
+and her father were saying was quite unreal to her, and, for the
+matter of that not worth taking the trouble to understand.  However,
+she had not long to wait.
+
+A broad-shouldered, pleasant-looking young fellow, who seemed on
+very friendly terms with Joe Chandler, came forward suddenly, and,
+unlocking a common-place-looking door, ushered the little party of
+three through into the Black Museum.
+
+For a moment there came across Daisy a feeling of keen disappointment
+and surprise.  This big, light room simply reminded her of what they
+called the Science Room in the public library of the town where she
+lived with Old Aunt.  Here, as there, the centre was taken up with
+plain glass cases fixed at a height from the floor which enabled
+their contents to be looked at closely.
+
+She walked forward and peered into the case nearest the door.  The
+exhibits shown there were mostly small, shabby-looking little things,
+the sort of things one might turn out of an old rubbish cupboard in
+an untidy house - old medicine bottles, a soiled neckerchief, what
+looked like a child's broken lantern, even a box of pills. . .
+
+As for the walls, they were covered with the queerest-looking
+objects; bits of old iron, odd-looking things made of wood and
+leather, and so on.
+
+It was really rather disappointing.
+
+Then Daisy Bunting gradually became aware that standing on a shelf
+just below the first of the broad, spacious windows which made the
+great room look so light and shadowless, was a row of life-size
+white plaster heads, each head slightly inclined to the right.
+There were about a dozen of these, not more - and they had such odd,
+staring, helpless, real-looking faces.
+
+"Whatever's those?" asked Bunting in a low voice.
+
+Daisy clung a thought closer to her father's arm.  Even she guessed
+that these strange, pathetic, staring faces were the death-masks of
+those men and women who had fulfilled the awful law which ordains
+that the murderer shall be, in his turn, done to death.
+
+"All hanged!" said the guardian of the Black Museum briefly.  "Casts
+taken after death."
+
+Bunting smiled nervously.  "They don't look dead somehow..  They
+looks more as if they were listening,"
+he said.
+
+"That's the fault of Jack Ketch," said the man facetiously.  "It's
+his idea - that of knotting his' patient's necktie under the left
+ear!  That's what he does to each of the gentlemen to whom he has
+to act valet on just one occasion only.  It makes them lean just a
+bit to one side.  You look here - ?"
+
+Daisy and her father came a little closer, and the speaker pointed
+with his' finger to a little dent imprinted on the left side of each
+neck; running from this indentation was a curious little furrow,
+well ridged above, showing how tightly Jack Ketch's necktie had been
+drawn when its wearer was hurried through the gates of eternity.
+
+"They looks foolish-like, rather than terrified, or - or hurt," said
+Bunting wonderingly.
+
+He was extraordinarily moved and fascinated by those dumb, staring
+faces.
+
+But young Chandler exclaimed in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice,
+"Well, a man would look foolish at such a time as that, with all his
+plans brought to naught - and knowing he's only got a second to live
+ - now wouldn't he?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose he would," said Bunting slowly.
+
+Daisy had gone a little pale.  The sinister, breathless atmosphere
+of the place was beginning to tell on her.  She now began to
+understand that the shabby little objects lying there in the glass
+case close to her were each and all links in the chain of evidence
+which, in almost every case, had brought some guilty man or woman
+to the gallows.
+
+"We had a yellow gentleman here the other day," observed the guardian
+suddenly; "one of those Brahmins - so they calls themselves.  Well,
+you'd a been quite surprised to see how that heathen took on!  He
+'declared - what was the word he used? " - he turned to Chandler.
+
+"He said that each of these things, with the exception of the casts,
+mind you - queer to say, he left them out - exuded evil, that was
+the word he used!  Exuded - squeezed out it means.  He said that
+being here made him feel very bad.  And twasn't all nonsense either.
+He turned quite green under his yellow skin, and we had to shove him
+out quick.  He didn't feel better till he'd got right to the other
+end of the passage!"
+
+"There now!  Who'd ever think of that?" said Bunting.  "I should say
+that man 'ud got something on his conscience, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Well, I needn't stay now," said Joe's good-natured friend.  "You
+show your friends round, Chandler.  You knows the place nearly as
+well as I do, don't you?"
+
+He smiled at Joe's visitors, as if to say good-bye, but it seemed
+that he could not tear himself away after all.
+
+"Look here," he said to Bunting.  "In this here little case are the
+tools of Charles Peace.  I expect you've heard of him."
+
+"I should think I have!" cried Bunting eagerly.
+
+"Many gents as comes here thinks this case the most interesting of
+all.  Peace was such a wonderful man!  A great inventor they say he
+would have been, had he been put in the way of it.  Here's his
+ladder; you see it folds up quite compactly, and makes a nice little
+bundle - just like a bundle of old sticks any man might have been
+seen carrying about London in those days without attracting any
+attention.  Why, it probably helped him to look like an honest
+working man time and time again, for on being arrested he declared
+most solemnly he'd always carried that ladder openly under his arm."
+
+"The daring of that!" cried Bunting.
+
+"Yes, and when the ladder was opened out it could reach from the
+ground to the second storey of any old house.  And, oh! how clever
+he was!  Just open one section, and you see the other sections open
+automatically; so Peace could stand on the ground and force the
+thing quietly up to any window he wished to reach.  Then he'd go
+away again, having done his job, with a mere bundle of old wood
+under his arm!  My  word, he was artful!  I wonder if you've heard
+the tale of how Peace once lost a finger.  Well, he guessed the
+constables were instructed to look out for a man missing a finger;
+so what did he do?"
+
+"Put on a false finger," suggested Bunting.
+
+"No, indeed!  Peace made up his mind just to do without a hand
+altogether.  Here's his false stump: you see, it's made of wood
+ - wood and black felt?  Well, that just held his hand nicely.
+Why, we considers that one of the most ingenious contrivances in
+the whole museum."
+
+Meanwhile, Daisy had let go her hold of her father.  With Chandler
+in delighted attendance, she bad moved away to the farther end of
+the great room, and now she was bending over yet another glass case.
+"Whatever are those little bottles for?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+There were five small phials, filled with varying quantities of
+cloudy liquids.
+
+"They're full of poison, Miss Daisy, that's what they are.  There's
+enough arsenic in that little whack o' brandy to do for you and me
+ - aye, and for your father as well, I should say."
+
+"Then chemists shouldn't sell such stuff," said Daisy, smiling.
+Poison was so remote from herself, that the sight of these little
+bottles only brought a pleasant thrill.
+
+"No more they don't.  That was sneaked out of a flypaper, that was.
+Lady said she wanted a cosmetic for her complexion, but what she was
+really going for was flypapers for to do away with her husband.
+She'd got a bit tired of him, I suspect."
+
+"Perhaps he was a horrid man, and deserved to be done away with,"
+said Daisy.  The idea struck them both as so very comic that they
+began to laugh aloud in unison.
+
+"Did you ever hear what a certain Mrs. Pearce did?" asked Chandler,
+becoming suddenly serious.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Daisy, and she shuddered a little.  "That was the
+wicked, wicked woman what killed a pretty little baby and its mother.
+They've got her in Madame Tussaud's.  But Ellen, she won't let me go
+to the Chamber of Horrors.  She wouldn't let father take me there
+last time I was in London.  Cruel of her, I called it.  But somehow
+I don't feel as if I wanted to go there now, after having been here!"
+
+"Well," said Chandler slowly, "we've a case full of relics of Mrs.
+Pearce.  But the pram the bodies were found in, that's at Madame
+Tussaud's - at least so they claim, I can't say.  Now here's something
+just as curious, and not near so dreadful.  See that man's jacket
+there?!'
+
+"Yes," said Daisy falteringly.  She was beginning to feel oppressed,
+frightened.  She no longer wondered that the Indian gentleman had
+been taken queer.
+
+"A burglar shot a man dead who'd disturbed him, and by mistake he
+went and left that jacket behind him.  Our people noticed that one
+of the buttons was broken in two.  Well, that don't seem much of a
+clue, does it, Miss Daisy?  Will you believe me when I tells you
+that that other bit of button was discovered, and that it hanged
+the fellow?  And 'twas the more wonderful because all three buttons
+was different!"
+
+Daisy stared wonderingly, down at the little broken button which
+had hung a man.  "And  whatever's that!" she asked, pointing to a
+piece of dirty-looking stuff.
+
+"Well," said Chandler reluctantly, "that's rather a horrible thing
+ - that is.  That's a bit o' shirt that was buried with a woman - 
+buried in the ground, I mean - after her husband had cut her up and
+tried, to burn her.  Twas that bit o' shirt that brought him to the
+gallows."
+
+"I considers your museum's a very horrid place!" said Daisy
+pettishly, turning away.
+
+She longed to be out in the passage again, away from this brightly
+lighted, cheerful-looking, sinister room.
+
+But her father was now absorbed in the case containing various types
+of infernal machines.  "Beautiful little works of art some of them
+are," said his guide eagerly, and Bunting could not but agree.
+
+"Come along - do, father!" said Daisy quickly.  "I've seen about
+enough now.  If I was to stay in here much longer it 'ud give me
+the horrors.  I don't want to have no nightmares to-night.  It's
+dreadful to think there are so many wicked people in the world.
+Why, we might knock up against some murderer any minute without
+knowing it, mightn't we?"
+
+"Not you, Miss Daisy," said Chandler smilingly.  "I don't suppose
+you'll ever come across even a common swindler, let alone anyone
+who's committed a murder - not one in a million does that.  Why,
+even I have never had anything to do with a proper murder case!"
+
+But Bunting was in no hurry.  He was thoroughly enjoying every
+moment of the time.  Just now he was studying intently the various
+photographs which hung on the walls of the Black Museum; especially
+was he pleased to see those connected with a famous and still
+mysterious case which had taken place not long before in Scotland,
+and in which the servant of the man who died had played a
+considerable part - not in elucidating, but in obscuring, the mystery.
+
+"I suppose a good many murderers get off?" he said musingly.
+
+And Joe Chandler's friend nodded.  "I should think they did!" he
+exclaimed.  "There's no such thing as justice here in England.
+'Tis odds on the murderer every time.  'Tisn't one in ten that
+come to the end he should do - to the gallows, that is."
+
+"And what d'you think about what's going on now - I mean about
+those Avenger murders?"
+
+Bunting lowered his voice, but Daisy and Chandler were already
+moving towards the door.
+
+"I don't believe he'll ever be caught," said the other
+confidentially.  "In some ways 'tis a lot more of a job to catch a
+madman than 'tis to run down just an ordinary criminal.  And, of
+course - leastways to my thinking -  The Avenger is a madman - one
+of the cunning, quiet sort.  Have you heard about the letter?" his
+voice dropped lower.
+
+ "No," said Bunting, staring eagerly at him.  "What letter d'you
+mean?"
+
+"Well, there's a letter - it'll be in this museum some day - which
+came just before that last double event.  'Twas signed 'The Avenger,'
+in just the same printed characters as on that bit of paper he always
+leaves behind him.  Mind you, it don't follow that it actually was The
+Avenger what sent that letter here, but it looks uncommonly like it,
+and I know that the Boss  attaches quite a lot of importance to it."
+
+"And where was it posted?" asked Bunting.  "That might be a bit of a
+clue, you know."
+
+"Oh, no," said the other.  "They always goes a very long way to
+post anything - criminals do.  It stands to reason they would.  But
+this particular one was put in the Edgware Road Post Office."
+
+"What?  Close to us?" said Bunting.  "Goodness! dreadful!"
+
+"Any of us might knock up against him any minute. I don't suppose 
+The Avenger's in any way peculiar-looking -in fact we know he ain't."
+
+"Then you think that woman as says she saw him did see him?" asked 
+Bunting hesitatingly.
+
+Our description was made up from what she said," answered the other
+cautiously.  "But, there, you can't tell!  In a case like that it's
+groping - groping in the dark all the time - and it's just a lucky
+accident if it comes out right in the end.  Of course, it's upsetting
+us all very much here.  You can't wonder at that!"
+
+No, indeed," said Bunting quickly.  "I give you my word, I've hardly
+thought of anything else for the last month."
+
+Daisy had disappeared, and when her father joined her in the passage
+she was listening, with downcast eyes, to what Joe Chandler was
+saying.
+
+He was telling her about his real home, of the place where his mother
+lived, at Richmond - that it was a nice little house, close to the
+park.  He was asking her whether she could manage to come out there
+one afternoon, explaining that his mother would give them tea, and
+how nice it would be.
+
+"I don't see why Ellen shouldn't let me," the girl said rebelliously.
+"But she's that old-fashioned and pernickety is Ellen - a regular
+old maid!  And, you see, Mr. Chandler, when I'm staying with them,
+father don't like for me to do anything that Ellen don't approve of.
+But she's got quite fond of you, so perhaps if you ask her - ?"
+She looked at him, and he nodded sagely.
+
+"Don't you be afraid," he said confidently.  "I'll get round Mrs.
+Bunting.  But, Miss Daisy" - he grew very red - "I'd just like to
+ask you a question - no offence meant - "
+
+"Yes?" said Daisy a little breathlessly.  "There's father close to
+us, Mr. Chandler.  Tell me quick; what is it?"
+
+"Well, I take it, by what you said just now, that you've never
+walked out with any young fellow?"
+
+Daisy hesitated a moment; then a very pretty dimple came into her
+cheek.  "No," she said sadly.  "No, Mr. Chandler, that I have not."
+In a burst of candour she added, "You see, I never had the chance!"
+
+And Joe Chandler smiled, well pleased.  
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+By what she regarded as a fortunate chance, Mrs. Bunting found
+herself for close on an hour quite alone in the house during her
+husband's and Daisy's jaunt with young Chandler.
+
+Mr. Sleuth did not o4ften go out in the daytime, but on this
+particular afternoon, after he had finished his tea, when dusk was
+falling, he suddenly observed that he wanted a new suit of clothes,
+and his landlady eagerly acquiesced in his going out to purchase it.
+
+As soon as he had left the house, she went quickly up to the
+drawing-room floor.  Now had come her opportunity of giving the two
+rooms a good dusting; but Mrs. Bunting knew well, deep in her heart,
+that it was not so much the dusting of Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room she
+wanted to do - as to engage in a vague search for - she hardly knew
+for what.
+
+During the years she had been in service Mrs. Bunting had always
+had a deep, wordless contempt for those of her fellow-servants who
+read their employers' private letters, and who furtively peeped
+into desks and cupboards in the hope, more vague than positive, of
+discovering family skeletons.
+
+But now, with regard to Mr. Sleuth, she was ready, aye, eager, to
+do herself what she had once so scorned others for doing.
+
+Beginning with the bedroom, she started on a methodical search.  He
+was a very tidy gentleman was the lodger, and his few things,
+under-garments, and so on, were in apple-pie order.  She had early
+undertaken, much to his satisfaction, to do the very little bit of
+washing he required done, with her own and Bunting's.  Luckily he
+wore soft shirts.
+
+At one time Mrs. Bunting had always had a woman in to help her with
+this tiresome weekly job, but lately she had grown quite clever at
+it herself.  The only things she had to send out were Bunting's
+shirts.  Everything else she managed to do herself.
+
+>From the chest of drawers she now turned her attention to the
+dressing-table.
+
+Mr. Sleuth did not take his money with him when he went out, he
+generally left it in one of the drawers below the old-fashioned
+looking-glass.  And now, in a perfunctory way, his landlady pulled
+out the little drawer, but she did not touch what was lying there;
+she only glanced at the heap of sovereigus and a few bits of silver.
+The lodger had taken just enough money with him to buy the clothes
+he required.  He had consulted her as to how much they would cost,
+making no secret of why he was going out, and the fact had vaguely
+comforted Mrs. Bunting.
+
+Now she lifted the toilet-cover, and even rolled up the carpet a
+little way, but no, there was nothing there, not so much as a scrap
+of paper.  And at last, when more or less giving up the search, as
+she came and went between the two rooms, leaving the connecting door
+wide open, her mind became full of uneasy speculation and wonder as
+to the lodger's past life.
+
+Odd Mr. Sleuth must surely always have been, but odd in a sensible
+sort of way, having on the whole the same moral ideals of conduct
+as have other people of his class.  He was queer about the drink-one
+might say almost crazy on the subject - but there, as to that, he
+wasn't the only one!  She.  Ellen Bunting, had once lived with a
+lady who was just like that, who was quite crazed, that is, on the
+question of drink and drunkards -  She looked round the neat
+drawing-room with vague dissatisfaction.  There was only one place
+where anything could be kept concealed - that place was the
+substantial if small mahogany chiffonnier.  And then an idea
+suddenly came to Mrs. Bunting, one she had never thought of before.
+
+After listening intently for a moment, lest something should suddenly
+bring Mr. Sleuth home earlier than she expected, she went to the
+corner where the chiffonnier stood, and, exerting the whole of her
+not very great physical strength, she tipped forward the heavy piece
+of furniture.
+
+As she did so, she heard a queer rumbling sound, - something rolling
+about on the second shelf, something which had not been there before
+Mr. Sleuth's arrival.  Slowly, laboriously, she tipped the chiffonnier
+backwards and forwards - once, twice, thrice - satisfied, yet strangely
+troubled in her mind, for she now felt sure that the bag of which the
+disappearance had so surprised her was there, safely locked away by
+its owner.
+
+Suddenly a very uncomfortable thought came to Mrs. Buntlng's mind.
+She hoped Mr. Sleuth would not notice that his bag had shifted inside
+the cupboard.  A moment later, with sharp dismay, Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady realised that the fact that she had moved the chiffonnier
+must become known to her lodger, for a thin trickle of some
+dark-coloured liquid was oozing out though the bottom of the little
+cupboard door.
+
+She stooped down and touched the stuff.  It showed red, bright red,
+on her finger.
+
+Mrs. Bunting grew chalky white, then recovered herself quickly.  In
+fact the colour rushed into her face, and she grew hot all over.
+
+It was only a bottle of red ink she had upset - that was all!  How
+could she have thought it was anything else?
+
+It was the more silly of her - so she told herself in scornful
+condemnation - because she knew that the lodger used red ink.
+Certain pages of Cruden's Concordance were covered with notes written
+in Mr. Sleuth's peculiar upright handwriting.  In fact in some places
+you couldn't see the margin, so closely covered was it with remarks
+and notes of interrogation.
+
+Mr Sleuth had foolishly placed his bottle of red ink in the
+chiffonnier - that was what her poor, foolish gentleman had done;
+and it was owing to her inquisitiveness, her restless wish to know
+things she would be none the better, none the happier, for knowing,
+that this accident had taken place.
+
+She mopped up with her duster the few drops of ink which had fallen
+on the green carpet and then, still feeling, as she angrily told
+herself, foolishly upset she went once more into the back room.
+
+It was curious that Mr. Sleuth possessed no notepaper.  She would
+have expected him to have made that one of his first purchases - the
+more so that paper is so very cheap, especially that rather
+dirty-looking grey Silurian paper.  Mrs. Buntlng had once lived with
+a lady who always used two kinds of notepaper, white for her friends
+and equals, grey for those whom she called "common people."  She,
+Ellen Green, as she then was, had always resented the fact.  Strange
+she should remember it now, stranger in a way because that employer
+of her's had not been a real lady, and Mr. Sleuth, whatever his
+peculiarities, was, in every sense of the word, a real gentleman.
+Somehow Mrs. Bunting felt sure that if he had bought any notepaper
+it would have been white - white and probably cream-laid - not
+grey and cheap.
+
+Again she opened the drawer of the old-fashioned wardrobe and lifted
+up the few pieces of underclothing Mr. Sleuth now possessed.
+
+But there was nothing there - nothing, that is, hidden away.  When
+one came to think of it there seemed something strange in the notion
+of leaving all one's money where anyone could take it, and in locking
+up such a valueless thing as a cheap sham leather bag, to say nothing
+of a bottle of ink.
+
+Mrs. Bunting once more opened out each of the tiny drawers below the 
+looking-glass, each delicately fashioned of fine old mahogany.  Mr.
+Sleuth kept his money in the centre drawer.
+
+The glass had only cost seven-and-sixpence, and, after the auction
+a dealer had come and offered her first fifteen shillings, and then
+a guinea for it.  Not long ago, in Baker Street, she had seen a
+looking-glass which was the very spit of this one, labeled
+"Chippendale, Antique. £215s0d."
+
+There lay Mr. Sleuth's money - the sovereigns, as the landlady well
+knew, would each and all gradually pass into her's and Bunting's
+possession, honestly earned by them no doubt but unattainable - in 
+act unearnable - excepting in connection with the present owner of
+those dully shining gold sovereigns.
+
+At last she went downstairs to await Mr. Sleuth's return.
+
+When she heard the key turn in the door, she came out into the
+passage.
+
+"I'm sorry to say I've had an accident, sir," she said a little
+breathlessly.  "Taking advantage of your being out I went up to
+dust the drawing-room, and while I was trying to get behind the
+chiffonnier it tilted.  I'm afraid, sir, that a bottle of ink that
+was inside may have got broken, for just a few drops oozed out,
+sir.  But I hope there's no harm done.  I wiped it up as well as
+I could, seeing that the doors of the chiffonnier are locked."
+
+Mr. Sleuth stared at her with a wild, almost a terrified glance.
+But Mrs. Bunting stood her ground.  She felt far less afraid now
+than she had felt before he came in.  Then she had been so
+frightened that she had nearly gone out of the house, on to the
+pavement, for company.
+
+"Of course I had no idea, sir, that you kept any ink in there."
+
+She spoke as if she were on the defensive, and the lodger's brow
+cleared.
+
+"I was aware you used ink, sir," Mrs. Bunting went on, "for I have
+seen you marking that book of yours - I mean the book you read
+together with the Bible.  Would you like me to go out and get you
+another bottle, sir?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Sleuth.  "No, I thank you.  I will at once proceed
+upstairs and see what damage has been done.  When I require you I
+shall ring."
+
+He shuffled past her, and five minutes later the drawing-room bell
+did ring.
+
+At once, from the door, Mrs. Bunting saw that the chiffonnier was
+wide open, and that the shelves were empty save for the bottle of
+red ink which had turned over and now lay in a red pool of its own
+making on the
+lower shelf.
+
+"I'm afraid it will have stained the wood, Mrs. Bunting.  Perhaps I
+was ill-advised to keep my ink in there."
+
+"Oh, no, sir!  That doesn't matter at all.  Only a drop or two fell
+out on to the carpet, and they don't show, as you see, sir, for it's
+a dark corner.  Shall I take the bottle away?  I may as well."
+
+Mr. Sleuth hesitated.  "No," he said, after a long pause, "I think
+not, Mrs. Bunting.  For the very little I require it the ink
+remaining in the bottle will do quite well, especially if I add a
+little water, or better still, a little tea, to what already
+remains in the bottle.  I only require it to mark up passages which
+happen to be of peculiar interest in my Concordance - a work, Mrs.
+Bunting, which I should have taken great pleasure in compiling
+myself had not this - ah - this gentleman called Cruden, been before. 
+
+******
+
+Not only Bunting, but Daisy also, thought Ellen far pleasanter in
+her manner than usual that evening.  She listened to all they had
+to say about their interesting visit to the Black Museum, and did
+not snub either of them - no, not even when Bunting told of the
+dreadful, haunting, silly-looking death-masks taken from the hanged.
+
+But a few minutes after that, when her husband suddenly asked her
+a question, Mrs. Bunting answered at random.  It was clear she had
+not heard the last few words he had been saying.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts!" he said jocularly.  But she shook her
+head.
+
+Daisy slipped out of the room, and, five minutes later, came back
+dressed up in a blue-and-white check silk gown.
+
+"My!" said her father.  "You do look fine, Daisy.  I've never seen
+you wearing that before."
+
+"And a rare figure of fun she looks in it!" observed Mrs. Bunting
+sarcastically.  And then, "I suppose this dressing up means that
+you're expecting someone.  I should have thought both of you must
+have seen enough of young Chandler for one day.  I wonder when that
+young chap does his work - that I do!  He never seems too busy to
+come and waste an hour or two here."
+
+But that was the only nasty thing Ellen said all that evening.  And
+even Daisy noticed that her stepmother seemed dazed and unlike
+herself.  She went about her cooking and the various little things
+she had to do even more silently than was her wont.
+
+Yet under that still, almost sullen, manner, how fierce was the
+storm of dread, of sombre, anguish, and, yes, of sick suspense,
+which shook her soul, and which so far affected her poor, ailing
+body that often she felt as if she could not force herself to
+accomplish  her simple round of daily work.
+
+After they had finished supper Bunting went out and bought a penny
+evening paper, but as he came in he announced, with a rather' rueful
+smile, that he had read so much of that nasty little print this
+last week or two that his eyes hurt him.
+
+"Let me read aloud a bit to you, father," said Daisy eagerly, and he
+handed her the paper.
+
+Scarcely had Daisy opened her lips when a loud ring and a knock
+echoed through the house.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+It was only Joe.  Somehow, even Bunting called him "Joe" now, and no
+longer "Chandler," as he had mostly used to do.
+
+Mrs.  Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way.
+She wasn't going to have any strangers pushing in past her.
+
+To her sharpened, suffering senses her house had become a citadel
+which must be defended; aye, even if the besiegers were a mighty
+horde with right on their side.  And she was always expecting that
+first single spy who would herald the battalion against whom her
+only weapon would be her woman's wit and cunning.
+
+But when she saw who stood there smiling at her, the muscles of her
+face relaxed, and it lost the tense, anxious, almost agonised look
+it assumed the moment she turned her back on her husband and
+stepdaughter.
+
+"Why, Joe," she whispered, for she had left the door open behind
+her, and Daisy had already begun to read aloud, as her father had
+bidden her.  "Come in, do!  It's fairly cold to-night."
+
+A glance at his face had shown her that there was no fresh news.
+
+Joe Chandler walked in, past her, into the little hall.  Cold?
+Well, he didn't feel cold, for he had walked quickly to be the
+sooner where he was now.
+
+Nine days had gone by since that last terrible occurrence, the
+double murder which had been committed early in the morning of
+the day Daisy had arrived in London.  And though the thousands of
+men belonging to the Metropolitan Police - to say nothing of the
+smaller, more alert body of detectives attached to the Force -
+were keenly on the alert, not one but had begun to feel that
+there was nothing to be alert about.  Familiarity, even with
+horror, breeds contempt.
+
+But with the public it was far otherwise.  Each day something
+happened to revive and keep alive the mingled horror and interest
+this strange, enigmatic series of crimes had evoked.  Even the
+more sober organs of the Press went on attacking, with gathering
+severity and indignation, the Commissioner of Police; and at the
+huge demonstration held in Victoria Park two days before violent
+speeches had also been made against the Home Secretary.
+
+But just now Joe Chandler wanted to forget all that.  The little
+house in the Marylebone Road had become to him an enchanted isle
+of dreams, to which his thoughts were ever turning when he had a
+moment to spare from what had grown to be a wearisome, because an
+unsatisfactory, job.  He secretly agreed with one of his pals who
+had exclaimed, and that within twenty-four hours of the last double
+crime, "Why, 'twould be easier to find a needle in a rick o' hay
+than this  -  bloke!"
+
+And if that had been true then, how much truer it was now - after
+nine long, empty days had gone by?
+
+Quickly he divested himself of his great-coat, muffler, and low hat.
+Then he put his finger on his lip, and motioned smilingly to Mrs.
+Bunting to wait a moment.  From where he stood in the hall the
+father and daughter made a pleasant little picture of contented
+domesticity.  Joe Chandler's honest heart swelled at the sight.
+
+Daisy, wearing the blue-and-white check silk dress about which her
+stepmother and she had had words, sat on a low stool on the left
+side of the fire, while Bunting, leaning back in his own comfortable
+arm-chair, was listening, his hand to his ear, in an attitude - as
+it was the first time she had caught him doing it, the fact brought
+a pang to Mrs. Bunting - which showed that age was beginning to
+creep over the listener.
+
+One of Daisy's duties as companion to her great-aunt was that of
+reading the newspaper aloud, and she prided herself on her
+accomplishment.
+
+Just as Joe had put his finger on his lip Daisy bad been asking,
+"Shall I read this, father?"  And Bunting had answered quickly,
+"Aye, do, my dear."
+
+He was absorbed in what he was hearing, and, on seeing Joe at the
+door, he had only just nodded his head.  The young man was becoming
+so frequent a visitor as to be almost one of themselves.
+
+Daisy read out:'
+
+"The Avenger: A - "
+
+And then she stopped short, for the next word puzzled her greatly.
+Bravely, however, she went on.  "A the-o-ry."
+
+"Go in - do!" whispered Mrs. Bunting to her visitor.  "Why should
+we stay out here in the cold?  It's ridiculous."
+
+"I don't want to interrupt Miss Daisy," whispered Chandler back,
+rather hoarsely.
+
+"Well, you'll hear it all the better in the room.  Don't think
+she'll stop because of you,  bless you!  There's nothing shy about
+our Daisy!"
+
+The young man resented the tart, short tone.  "Poor little girl!"
+he said to himself tenderly.  "That's what it is having a stepmother,
+instead of a proper mother."  But he obeyed Mrs. Bunting, and then
+he was pleased he had done so, for Daisy looked up, and a bright
+blush came over her pretty face.
+
+"Joe begs you won't stop yet awhile.  Go on with your reading,"
+commanded Mrs. Bunting quickly.  "Now, Joe, you can go and sit over
+there, close to Daisy, and then you won't miss a word."
+
+There was a sarcastic inflection in her voice, even Chandler noticed
+that, but he obeyed her with alacrity, and crossing the room he went
+and sat on a chair just behind Daisy.  From there he could note with
+reverent delight the charming way her fair hair grew upwards from
+the nape of her slender neck.
+
+"The AVENGER: A THE-O-RY"
+
+began Daisy again, clearing her throat.  
+
+"DEAR Sir - I have a suggestion to put forward for which I think
+there is a great deal to be said.  It seems to me very probable
+that The Avenger - to give him the name by which he apparently 
+wishes to be known - comprises in his own person the peculiarities
+of Jekyll and Hyde, Mr. Louis Stevenson's now famous hero.
+
+"The culprit, according to my point of view, is a quiet,
+pleasant-looking gentleman who lives somewhere in the West End of
+London.  He has, however, a tragedy in his past life.  He is the
+husband of a dipsomaniac wife.  She is, of course, under care, and
+is never mentioned in the house where he lives, maybe with his
+widowed mother and perhaps a maiden sister.  They notice that he
+has become gloomy and brooding of late, but he lives his usual life,
+occupying himself each day with some harmless hobby.  On foggy
+nights, once the quiet household is plunged in sleep, he creeps out
+of the house, maybe between one and two o'clock, and swiftly makes
+his way straight to what has become The Avenger's murder area.
+Picking out a likely victim, he approaches her with Judas-like
+gentleness, and having committed his awful crime, goes quietly home
+again.  After a good bath and breakfast, he turns up happy, once
+more the quiet individual who is an excellent son, a kind brother,
+esteemed and even beloved by a large circle of friends and
+acquaintances.  Meantime, the police are searching about the scene
+of the tragedy for what they regard as the usual type of criminal
+lunatic.
+
+"I give this theory, Sir, for what it is worth, but I confess that
+I am amazed the police have so wholly confined their inquiries to
+the part of London where these murders have been actually committed.
+I am quite sure from all that has come out - and we must remember
+that full information is never given to the newspapers - The Avenger
+should be sought for in the West and not in the East End of London
+ - Believe me to remain, Sir, yours very truly - "
+
+Again Daisy hesitated, and then with an effort she brought out the
+word "Gab-o-ri-you," said she.
+
+"What a funny name!" said Bunting wonderingly.
+
+And then Joe broke in: "That's the name of a French chap what wrote
+detective stories," he said.  "Pretty good, some of them are, too!"
+
+"Then this Gaboriyou has come over to study these Avenger murders,
+I take it?" said Bunting.
+
+"Oh, no," Joe spoke with confidence.  "Whoever's written that silly
+letter just signed that name for fun."
+
+"It is a silly letter," Mrs. Bunting had broken in resentfully.  "I
+wonder a respectable paper prints such rubbish."
+
+"Fancy if The Avenger did turn out to be a gentleman cried Daisy, in
+an  awe-struck voice.  "There'd be a how-to-do!"
+
+"There may be something in the notion," said her father thoughtfully.
+"After all, the monster must be somewhere.  This very minute he must
+be somewhere a-hiding of himself."
+
+"Of course he's somewhere," said Mrs. Bunting scornfully.
+
+She had just heard Mr. Sleuth moving overhead.  'Twould soon be time
+for the lodger's supper.
+
+She hurried on: "But what I do say is that - that - he has nothing
+to do with the West End.  Why, they say it's a sailor from the Docks
+ - that's a good bit more likely, I take it.  But there, I'm fair
+sick of the whole subject!  We talk of nothing else in this house.
+The Avenger this -  The Avenger that - "
+
+"I expect Joe has something to tell us new to-night," said Bunting
+cheerfully.  "Well, Joe, is there anything new?"
+
+"I say, father, just listen to this!" Daisy broke in excitedly.
+She read out:
+
+
+"BLOODHOUNDS TO BE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED"
+
+
+"Bloodhounds?" repeated Mrs. Bunting, and there was terror in her
+tone.  "Why bloodhounds?  That do seem to me a most horrible idea!"
+
+Bunting looked across at her, mildly astonished.  "Why, 'twould be
+a very good idea, if 'twas possible to have bloodhounds in a town.
+But, there, how can that be done in London, full of butchers' shops,
+to say nothing of slaughter-yards and other places o' that sort?"
+
+But Daisy went on, and to her stepmother's shrinking ear there
+seemed a horrible thrill of delight; of gloating pleasure, in her
+fresh young voice.   
+
+"Hark to this," she said:
+
+"A man who had committed a murder in a lonely wood near Blackburn
+was traced by the help of a bloodhound, and thanks to the sagacious
+instincts of the animal, the miscreant was finally convicted and
+hanged."
+
+"La, now I Who'd ever have thought of such a thing?"  Bunting
+exclaimed, in admiration.  "The newspapers do have some useful
+hints in sometimes, Joe."
+
+But young Chandler shook his head.  "Bloodhounds ain't no use," he
+said; "no use at all!  If the Yard was to listen to all the
+suggestions that the last few days have brought in - well, all I
+can say is our work would be cut out for us - not but what it's
+cut out for us now, if it comes to that!"  He sighed ruefully.  He
+was beginning to feel very tired; if only he could stay in this
+pleasant, cosy room listening to Daisy Bunting reading on and on
+for ever, instead of having to go out, as he would presently have
+to do, into the cold and foggy night!
+
+Joe Chandler was fast becoming very sick of his new job.  There
+was a lot of unpleasantness attached to the business, too.  Why,
+even in the house where he lived, and in the little cook-shop where
+he habitually took his meals, the people round him had taken to
+taunt him with the remissness of the police.  More than that one of
+his pals, a man he'd always looked up to, because the young fellow
+had the gift of the gab, had actually been among those who had
+spoken at the big demonstration in Victoria Park, making a violent
+speech, not only against the Commissioner of the Metropolitan
+Police, but also against the Home Secretary.
+
+But Daisy, like most people who believe themselves blessed with the
+possession of an accomplishment, had no mind to leave off reading
+just yet.
+
+"Here's another notion!" she exclaimed.  "Another letter, father!"
+
+
+"PARDON TO ACCOMPLICES.
+
+
+"DEAR Sir - During the last day or two several of the more
+Intelligent of my acquaintances have suggested that The Avenger,
+whoever he may be, must be known to a certain number of persons.
+It is impossible that the perpetrator of such deeds, however
+nomad he may be in his habits - "
+
+"Now I wonder what 'nomad' can be?" Daisy interrupted herself, and
+looked round at her little audience.
+
+"I've always declared the fellow had all his senses about him,"
+observed Bunting confidently.
+
+Daisy went on, quite satisfied:
+
+" - however nomad he may be in his habit; must have some habitat
+where his ways are known to at least one person.  Now the person
+who knows the terrible secret is evidently withholding information
+in expectation of a reward, or maybe because, being an accessory
+after the fact, he or she is now afraid of the consequences.  My
+suggestion, Sir, is that the Home Secretary promise a free pardon.
+The more so that only thus can this miscreant be brought to justice.
+Unless he was caught red-handed in the act, it will be exceedingly
+difficult to trace the crime committed to any individual, for
+English law looks very askance at circumstantial evidence."
+
+"There's something worth listening to in that letter," said Joe,
+leaning forward.
+
+Now he was almost touching Daisy, and he smiled involuntarily as
+she turned her gay, pretty little face the better to hear what he
+was saying.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Chandler?" she said interrogatively.
+
+"Well, d'you remember that fellow what killed an old gentleman in
+a railway carriage?  He took refuge with someone - a woman his
+mother had known, and she kept him hidden for quite a long time.
+But at last she gave him up, and she got a big reward, too!"
+
+"I don't think I'd like to give anybody up for a reward," said
+Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic way.
+
+"Oh, yes, you would, Mr. Bunting," said Chandler confidently.  "You'd
+only be doing what it's the plain duty of everyone - everyone, that
+is, who's a good citizen.  And you'd be getting something for doing
+it, which is more than most people gets as does their duty."
+
+"A man as gives up someone for a reward is no better than a common
+informer," went on Bunting obstinately.  "And no man 'ud care to be
+called that!  It's different for you, Joe," he added hastily.  "It's
+your job to catch those who've done anything wrong.  And a man'd be
+a fool who'd take refuge - like with you.  He'd be walking into the
+lion's mouth - " Bunting laughed.
+
+And then Daisy broke in coquettishly: "If I'd done anything I
+wouldn't mind going for help to Mr. Chandler," she said.
+
+And Joe, with eyes kindling, cried, "No.  And if you did you needn't
+be afraid I'd give you up, Miss Daisy!"
+
+And then, to their amazement, there suddenly broke from Mrs. Bunting,
+sitting with towed head over the table, an exclamation of impatience
+and anger, and, it seemed to those listening, of pain.
+
+"Why, Ellen, don't you feel well?" asked Bunting quickly.
+
+"Just a spasm, a sharp stitch in my side, like," answered the poor
+woman heavily.  "It's over now.  Don't mind me."
+
+"But I don't believe - no, that I don't - that there's anybody in
+the world who knows who The Avenger is," went on Chandler quickly.
+"It stands to reason that anybody'd give him up - in their own
+interest, if not in anyone else's.  Who'd shelter such a creature?
+Why, 'twould be dangerous to have him in the house along with one!"
+
+"Then it's your idea that he's not responsible for the wicked things
+he does?" Mrs. Bunting raised her head, and looked over at Chandler
+with eager, anxious eyes.
+
+"I'd be sorry to think he wasn't responsible enough to hang!" said
+Chandler deliberately.  "After all the trouble he's been giving us, too!"
+
+"Hanging'd be too good for that chap," said Bunting.
+
+"Not if he's not responsible," said his wife sharply.  "I never
+heard of anything so cruel - that I never did!  If the man's a
+madman, he ought to be in an asylum - that's where he ought to be."
+
+"Hark to her now!" Bunting looked at his Ellen with amusement.
+"Contrary isn't the word for her!  But there, I've noticed the last
+few days that she seemed to be taking that monster's part.  That's
+what comes of being a born total abstainer."
+
+Mrs. Bunting had got up from her chair.  "What nonsense you do talk!"
+she said angrily.  "Not but what it's a good thing if these murders
+have emptied the public-houses of women for a bit.  England's drink
+is England's shame - I'll never depart from that!  Now, Daisy, child,
+get up, do!  Put down that paper.  We've heard quite enough.  You can
+be laying the cloth while I goes down the kitchen."
+
+"Yes, you mustn't be forgetting the lodger's supper," called out
+Bunting.  "Mr. Sleuth don't always ring - " he turned to Chandler.
+"For one thing, he's often out about this time."
+
+"Not often - just now and again, when he wants to buy' something,"
+snapped out Mrs. Bunting.  "But I hadn't forgot his supper.  He
+never do want it before eight o'clock."
+
+"Let me take up the lodger's supper, Ellen," Daisy's eager voice
+broke in.  She had got up in obedience to her stepmother, and was
+now laying the cloth.
+
+"Certainly not!  I told you he only wanted me to wait on him.  You
+have your work cut out looking after things down here - that's where
+I wants you to help me."
+
+Chandler also got up.  Somehow he didn't like to be doing nothing
+while Daisy was so busy.  "Yes," he said, looking across at Mrs.
+Bunting, "I'd forgotten about your lodger.  Going on all right, eh?"
+
+"Never knew so quiet and well-behaved a gentleman," said Bunting.
+"He turned our luck, did Mr. Sleuth."
+
+His wife left the room, and after she had gone Daisy laughed.
+"You'll hardly believe it, Mr. Chandler, but I've never seen this
+wonderful lodger.  Ellen keeps him to herself, that she does!  If I
+was father I'd be jealous!"
+
+Both men laughed.  Ellen?  No, the idea was too funny.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go.  One can't always do
+just what one wants to do - not in this world, at any rate!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular,
+though both her husband and her stepdaughter were in the room.  She
+was standing by the table, staring straight before her, and as she
+spoke she avoided looking at either Bunting or Daisy.  There was in
+her voice a tone of cross decision, of thin finality, with which
+they were both acquainted, and to which each listener knew the other
+would have to bow.
+
+There was silence for a moment, then Daisy broke out passionately,
+"I don't see why I should go if I don't want to!" she cried.
+"You'll allow I've been useful to you, Ellen?  'Tisn't even as if
+you was quite well."
+
+"I am quite well - perfectly well!" snapped out Mrs. Bunting, and
+she turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her
+stepdaughter.
+
+"'Tain't often I has a chance of being with you and father."  There
+were tears in Daisy's voice, and Bunting glanced deprecatingly at
+his wife.
+
+An invitation had come to Daisy - an invitation from her own dead
+mother's sister, who was housekeeper in a big house in Belgrave
+Square.  "The family" had gone away for the Christmas holidays, and
+Aunt Margaret - Daisy was her godchild - had begged that her niece
+might come and spend two or three days with her.
+
+But the girl had already had more than one taste of what life was
+like in the great gloomy basement of 100 Belgrave Square.  Aunt
+Margaret was one of those old-fashioned servants for whom the modern
+employer is always sighing.  While "the family" were away it was
+her joy - she regarded it as a privilege - to wash sixty-seven pieces
+of very valuable china contained in two cabinets in the drawing-room;
+she also slept in every bed by turns, to keep them all well aired.
+These were the two duties with which she intended her young niece
+to assist her, and Daisy's soul sickened at the prospect.
+
+But the matter had to be settled at once.  The letter had come an
+hour ago, containing a stamped telegraph form, and Aunt Margaret
+was not one to be trifled with.
+
+Since breakfast the three had talked of nothing else, and from the
+very first Mrs. Bunting had said that Daisy ought to go - that there
+was no doubt about it, that it did not admit of discussion.  But
+discuss it they all did, and for once Bunting stood up to his wife.
+But that, as was natural, only made his Ellen harder and more set
+on her own view.
+
+"What the child says is true," he observed.  "It isn't as if you
+was quite well.  You've been took bad twice in the last few days
+ - you can't deny of it, Ellen.  Why shouldn't I just take a bus
+and go over and see Margaret?  I'd tell her just how it is.  She'd
+understand, bless you!"
+
+"I won't have you doing nothing of the sort!" cried Mrs. Bunting,
+speaking almost as passionately as her stepdaughter had done.
+"Haven't I a right to be ill, haven't I a right to be took bad,
+aye, and to feel all right again - same as other people?"
+
+Daisy turned round and clasped her hands.  "Oh,
+
+Ellen!" she cried; "do say that you can't spare me!  I don't want
+to go across to that horrid old dungeon of a place."
+
+"Do as you like," said Mrs. Bunting sullenly.  "I'm fair tired of
+you both!  There'll come a day, Daisy, when you'll know, like me,
+that money is the main thing that matters in this world; and when
+your Aunt Margaret's left her savings to somebody else just because
+you wouldn't spend a few days with her this Christmas, then you'll
+know what it's like to go without - you'll know what a fool you
+were, and that nothing can't alter it any more!"
+
+And then, with victory actually in her grasp, poor Daisy saw it
+snatched from her.
+
+"Ellen is right," Bunting said heavily.  "Money does matter - a
+terrible deal-though I never thought to hear Ellen say 'twas the
+only thing that mattered.  But 'twould be foolish - very, very
+foolish, my girl, to offend your Aunt Margaret.  It'll only be
+two days after all - two days isn't a very long time."
+
+But Daisy did not hear her father's last words.  She had already
+rushed from the room, and gone down to the kitchen to hide her
+childish tears of disappointment - the childish tears which came
+because she was beginning to be a woman, with a woman's natural
+instinct for building her own human nest.
+
+Aunt Margaret was not one to tolerate the comings of any strange
+young man, and she had a peculiar dislike to the police.
+
+"Who'd ever have thought she'd have minded as much as that!"
+Bunting looked across at Ellen deprecatingly; already his heart
+was misgiving him.
+
+"It's plain enough why she's become so fond of us all of a sudden,"
+said Mrs. Bunting sarcastically.  And as her husband stared at her
+uncomprehendingly, she added, in a tantalising tone, "as plain as
+the nose on your face, my man."
+
+"What d'you mean?" he said.  "I daresay I'm a bit slow, Ellen, but
+I really don't know what you'd be at?"
+
+"Don't you remember telling me before Daisy came here that Joe
+Chandler had become sweet on her last summer?  I thought it only
+foolishness then, but I've come round to your view - that's all."
+
+Bunting nodded his head slowly.  Yes, Joe had got into the way of
+coming very often, and there had been the expedition to that gruesome
+Scotland Yard museum, but somehow he, Bunting, had been so interested
+in the Avenger murders that he hadn't thought of Joe in any other
+connection - not this time, at any rate.
+
+"And do you think Daisy likes him?"  There was an unwonted tone of
+excitement, of tenderness, in Bunting's voice.
+
+His wife looked over at him; and a thin smile, not an unkindly
+smile by any means, lit up her pale face.  "I've never been one
+to prophesy," she answered deliberately.  "But this I don't mind
+telling you, Bunting - Daisy'll have plenty o' time to get tired
+of Joe Chandler before they two are dead.  Mark my words!"
+
+"Well, she might do worse," said Bunting ruminatingly.  "He's as
+steady as God makes them, and he's already earning thirty-two
+shillings a week.  But I wonder how Old Aunt'd like the notion?
+I don't see her parting with Daisy before she must."
+
+"I wouldn't let no old aunt interfere with me about such a thing
+as that!" cried Mrs. Bunting.  "No, not for millions of gold!"
+And Bunting looked at her in silent wonder.  Ellen was singing a
+very different tune now to what she'd sung a few minutes ago, when
+she was so keen about the girl going to Belgrave Square.
+
+"If she still seems upset while she's having her dinner," said his
+wife suddenly, "well, you just wait till I've gone out for something,
+and then you just say to her, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'
+ - just that, and nothing more!  She'll take it from you.  And I
+shouldn't be surprised if it comforted her quite a lot."
+
+"For the matter of that, there's no reason why Joe Chandler shouldn't
+go over and see her there," said Bunting hesitatingly.
+
+"Oh, yes, there is," said Mrs. Bunting, smiling shrewdly.  Plenty of
+reason.  Daisy'll be a very foolish girl if she allows her aunt to
+know any of her secrets.  I've only seen that woman once, hut I know
+exactly the sort Margaret is.  She's just waiting for Old Aunt to
+drop off and then she'll want to have Daisy herself - to wait on
+her, like.  She'd turn quite nasty if she thought there was a young
+fellow what stood in her way."
+
+She glanced at the dock, the pretty little eight-day clock which
+had been a wedding present from a kind friend of her last mistress.
+It had mysteriously disappeared during their time of trouble, and
+had as mysteriously reappeared three or four days after Mr. Sleuth's
+arrival.
+
+"I've time to go out with that telegram," she said briskly - somehow
+she felt better, different to what she had done the last few days - 
+"and then it'll be done.  It's no good having more words about it,
+and I expect we should have plenty more words if I wait till the
+child comes upstairs again."
+
+She did not speak unkindly, and Bunting looked at her rather
+wonderingly.  Ellen very seldom spoke of Daisy as "the child "
+ - in fact, he could only remember her having done so once before, 
+and that was a long time ago.  They had been talking over their 
+future life together, and she had said, very solemnly, "Bunting, 
+I promise I will do my duty - as much as lies in my power, that 
+is - by the child."
+
+But Ellen had not had much opportunity of doing her duty by Daisy.
+As not infrequently happens with the duties that we are willing to
+do, that particular duty had been taken over by someone else who
+had no mind to let it go.
+
+"What shall I do if Mr. Sleuth rings?" asked Bunting, rather
+nervously.  It was the first time since the lodger had come to them
+that Ellen had offered to go out in the morning.
+
+She hesitated.  In her anxiety to have the matter of Daisy settled,
+she had forgotten Mr. Sleuth.  Strange that she should have done so
+- strange, and, to herself, very comfortable and pleasant.
+
+"Oh, well, you can just go up and knock at the door and say I'll be
+back in a few minutes - that I had to go out with a message.  He's
+quite a reasonable gentleman."  She went into the back room to put
+on her bonnet and thick jacket for it was very cold - getting colder
+every minute.
+
+As she stood, buttoning her gloves - she wouldn't have gone out
+untidy for the world - Bunting suddenly came across to her.  "Give
+us a kiss, old girl," he said.  And his wife turned up her face.
+
+"One 'ud think it was catching!" she said, but there was a lilt in
+her voice.
+
+"So it is," Bunting briefly answered.  "Didn't that old cook get
+married just after us?  She'd never 'a thought of it if it hadn't
+been for you!"
+
+But once she was out, walking along the damp, uneven pavement, Mr.
+Sleuth revenged himself for his landlady's temporary forgetfulness.
+
+During the last two days the lodger had been queer, odder than usual,
+unlike himself, or, rather, very much as he had been some ten days
+ago, just before that double murder had taken place.
+
+The night before, while Daisy was telling all about the dreadful
+place to which Joe Chandler had taken her and her father, Mrs.
+Bunting had heard Mr. Sleuth moving about overhead, restlessly
+walking up and down his sitting-room.  And later, when she took up
+his supper, she had listened a moment outside the door, while he
+read aloud some of the texts his soul delighted in - terrible texts
+telling of the grim joys attendant on revenge.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was so absorbed in her thoughts, so possessed with the
+curious personality of her lodger, that she did not look where she
+was going, and suddenly a young woman bumped up against her.
+
+She started violently and looked round, dazed, as the young person
+muttered a word of apology; - then she again fell into deep thought.
+
+It was a good thing Daisy was going away for a few days; it made the
+problem of Mr. Sleuth and his queer ways less disturbing.  She,
+Ellen, was sorry she had spoken so sharp-like to the girl, but after
+all it wasn't wonderful that she had been snappy.  This last night
+she had hardly slept at all.  Instead, she had lain awake listening
+ - and there is nothing so tiring as to lie awake listening for a
+sound that never comes.
+
+The house had remained so still you could have heard a pin drop.  Mr.
+Sleuth, lying snug in his nice warm bed upstairs, had not stirred.
+Had he stirred his landlady was bound to have heard him, for his bed
+was, as we know, just above hers.  No, during those long hours of
+darkness Daisy's light, regular breathing was all that had fallen on
+Mrs. Bunting's ears.
+
+And then her mind switched off Mr. Sleuth.  She made a determined
+effort to expel him, to toss him, as it were, out of her thoughts.
+
+It seemed strange that The Avenger had stayed his hand, for, as Joe
+had said only last evening, it was full time that he should again
+turn that awful, mysterious searchlight of his on himself.  Mrs.
+Bunting always visioned The Avenger as a black shadow in the centre
+a bright blinding light - but the shadow had no form or definite
+substance.  Sometimes he looked like one thing, sometimes like
+another. . .
+
+Mrs. Bunting had now come to the corner which led up the street
+where there was a Post Office.  But instead of turning sharp to the
+left she stopped short for a minute.
+
+There had suddenly come over her a feeling of horrible self-rebuke
+and even self-loathing.  It was dreadful that she, of all women,
+should have longed to hear that another murder had been committed
+last night!
+
+Yet such was the shameful fact.  She had listened all through
+breakfast hoping to hear the dread news being shouted outside; yes,
+and more or less during the long discussion which had followed on
+the receipt of Margaret's letter she had been hoping - hoping
+against hope - that those dreadful triumphant shouts of the
+newspaper-sellers still might come echoing down the Marylebone Road.
+And yet hypocrite that she was, she had reproved Bunting when he
+had expressed, not disappointment exactly - but, well, surprise,
+that nothing had happened last night.
+
+Now her mind switched off to Joe Chandler.  Strange to think how
+afraid she had been of that young man!  She was no longer afraid of
+him, or hardly at all.  He was dotty - that's what was the matter
+with him, dotty with love for rosy-checked, blue-eyed little Daisy.
+Anything might now go on, right under Joe Chandler's very nose - but,
+bless you, he'd never see it!  Last summer, when this affair, this
+nonsense of young Chandler and Daisy bad begun, she had had very
+little patience with it all.  In fact, the memory of the way Joe
+had gone on then, the tiresome way he would be always dropping in,
+had been one reason (though not the most important reason of all)
+why she had felt so terribly put about at the idea of the girl
+coming again.  But now?  Well, now she had become quite tolerant,
+quite kindly - at any rate as far as Joe Chandler was concerned.
+
+She wondered why.
+
+Still, 'twouldn't do Joe a bit of harm not to see the girl for a
+couple of days.  In fact 'twould be a very good thing, for then he'd
+think of Daisy - think of her to the exclusion of all else.  Absence
+does make the heart grow fonder - at first, at any rate.  Mrs.
+Bunting was well aware of that.  During the long course of hers
+and Bunting's mild courting, they'd been separated for about three
+months, and it was that three months which had made up her mind for
+her.  She had got so used to Bunting that she couldn't do without
+him, and she had felt - oddest fact of all - acutely, miserably
+jealous.  But she hadn't let him know that - no fear!
+
+Of course, Joe mustn't neglect his job - that would never do, But
+what a good thing it was, after all, that he wasn't like some of
+those detective chaps that are written about in stories - the sort
+of chaps that know everything, see everything, guess everything
+ - even where there isn't anything to see, or know, or guess!
+
+Why, to take only one little fact - Joe Chandler had never shown
+the slightest curiosity about their lodger. . ..
+
+Mrs. Bunting pulled herself together with a start, and hurried
+quickly on.  Bunting would begin to wonder what had happened to her.
+
+She went into the Post Office and handed the form to the young woman
+without a word.  Margaret, a sensible woman, who was accustomed to
+manage other people's affairs, had even written out the words: "Will
+be with you to tea. - DAISY."
+
+It was a comfort to have the thing settled once for all.  If anything
+horrible was going to happen in the next two or three days - it was
+just as well Daisy shouldn't be at home.  Not that there was any real
+danger that anything would happen, - Mrs. Bunting felt sure of that.
+
+By this time she was out in the street again, and she began mentally
+counting up the number of murders The Avenger had committed.  Nine,
+or was it ten?  Surely by now The Avenger must be avenged?  Surely by
+now, if - as that writer in the newspaper had suggested - he was a
+quiet, blameless gentleman living in the West End, whatever vengeance
+he had to wreak, must be satisfied?
+
+She began hurrying homewards; it wouldn't do for the lodger to ring
+before she had got back.  Bunting would never know how to manage Mr.
+Sleuth, especially if Mr. Sleuth was in one of his queer moods.
+
+******
+
+Mrs. Bunting put the key into the front door lock and passed into
+the house.  Then her heart stood still with fear and terror.  There
+came the sound of voices - of voices she thought she did not know - 
+in the sitting-room.
+
+She opened the door, and' then drew a long breath.  It was only Joe
+Chandler - Joe, Daisy, and Bunting, talking together.  They stopped
+rather guiltily as she came in, but not before she had heard
+Chandler utter the words: "That don't mean nothing!  I'll just run
+out and send another saying you won't come, Miss Daisy."
+
+And then the strangest smile came over Mrs. Bunting's face.  There
+had fallen on her ear the still distant, but unmistakable, shouts
+which betokened that something had happened last night - something
+which made it worth while for the newspaper-sellers to come crying
+down the Maryleb6ne Road.
+
+"Well?" she said a little breathlessly.  "Well, Joe?  I suppose
+you've brought us news?  I suppose there's been another?"
+
+He looked at her, surprised.  "No, that there hasn't, Mrs. Bunting
+ - not as far as I know, that is.  Oh, you're thinking of those
+newspaper chaps?  They've got to cry out something," he grinned.
+"You wouldn't 'a thought folk was so bloodthirsty.  They're just
+shouting out that there's been an arrest; but we don't take no
+stock of that.  It's a Scotchman what gave himself up last night
+at Dorking.  He'd been drinking, and was apitying of himself.
+Why, since this business began, there's been about twenty arrests,
+but they've all come to nothing."
+
+"Why, Ellen, you looks quite sad, quite disappointed," said Bunting
+jokingly.  "Come to think of it, it's high time The Avenger was at
+work again."  He laughed as he made his grim joke.  Then turned to
+young Chandler:  "Well, you'll be glad when its all over, my lad."
+
+"Glad in a way," said Chandler unwillingly.  "But one 'ud have liked
+to have caught him.  One doesn't like to know such a creature's at
+large, now, does one?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting had taken off her bonnet and jacket.  "I must just go
+and see about Mr. Sleuth's breakfast," she said in a weary,
+dispirited voice, and left them there.
+
+She felt disappointed, and very, very depressed.  As to the plot
+which had been hatching when she came in, that had no chance of
+success; Bunting would never dare let Daisy send out another
+telegram contradicting the first.  Besides, Daisy's stepmother
+shrewdly suspected that by now the girl herself wouldn't care to
+do such a thing.  Daisy had plenty of sense tucked away somewhere
+in her pretty little head.  If it ever became her fate to live as
+a married woman in London, it would be best to stay on the right
+side of Aunt Margaret.
+
+And when she came into her kitchen the stepmother's heart became
+very soft, for Daisy had got everything beautifully ready.  In fact,
+there was nothing to do but to boil Mr. Sleuth's two eggs.  Feeling
+suddenly more cheerful than she had felt of late, Mrs. Bunting took
+the tray upstairs.
+
+"As it was rather late, I didn't wait for you to ring, sir," she
+said.
+
+And the lodger looked up from the table where, as usual, he was
+studying with painful, almost agonising intentness, the Book.
+"Quite right, Mrs. Bunting - quite right!  I have been pondering
+over the command, 'Work while it is yet light.'"
+
+"Yes, sir?" she said, and a queer; cold feeling stole over her
+heart.  "Yes, sir?"
+
+"'The spirit is willing, but the flesh - the flesh is weak,'" said
+Mr. Sleuth, with a heavy, sigh.
+
+"You studies too hard, and too long - that's what's ailing you, sir,"
+said Mr. Sleuth's landlady suddenly.
+
+******
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went down again she found that a great deal had
+been settled in her absence; among other things, that Joe Chandler
+was going to escort Miss Daisy across to Belgrave Square.  He
+could carry Daisy's modest bag, and if they wanted to ride instead
+of walk, why, they could take the bus from Baker Street Station
+to Victoria - that would land them very near Belgrave Square.
+
+But Daisy seemed quite willing to walk; she hadn't had a walk, she
+declared, for a long, long time - and then she blushed rosy red,
+and even her stepmother had to admit to herself that Daisy was very
+nice looking, not at all the sort of girl who ought to be allowed to
+go about the London streets by herself.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Daisy's father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door,
+watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness.
+
+A yellow pall of fog had suddenly descended on London, and Joe had
+come a full half-hour before they expected him, explaining, rather
+lamely, that it was the fog which had brought him so soon.
+
+"If we was to have waited much longer, perhaps, 'twouldn't have been
+possible to walk a yard," he explained, and they had accepted,
+silently, his explanation.
+
+"I hope it's quite safe sending her off like that?"  Bunting looked
+deprecatingly at his wife.  She had already told him more than once
+that he was too fussy about Daisy, that about his daughter he was
+like an old hen with her last chicken.
+
+"She's safer than she would be, with you or me.  She couldn't have
+a smarter young fellow to look after her."
+
+"It'll be awful thick at Hyde Park Corner," said Bunting.  "It's
+always worse there than anywhere else.  If I was Joe I'd 'a taken
+her by the Underground Railway to Victoria - that 'ud been the best
+way, considering the weather 'tis."
+
+"They don't think anything of the weather, bless you!" said his
+wife.  "They'll walk and walk as long as there's a glimmer left for
+'em to steer by.  Daisy's just been pining to have a walk with that
+young chap.  I wonder you didn't notice how disappointed they both
+were when you was so set on going along with them to that horrid
+place."
+
+"D'you really mean that, Ellen?" Bunting looked upset.  "I understood
+Joe to say he liked my company."
+
+"Oh, did you?" said Mrs. Bunting dryly.  "I expect he liked it just
+about as much as we liked the company of that old cook who would go
+out with us when we was courting.  It always was a wonder to me how
+the woman could force herself upon two people who didn't want her."
+
+"But I'm Daisy's father; and an old friend of Chandler," said Bunting
+remonstratingly.  "I'm quite different from that cook.  She was
+nothing to us, and we was nothing to her."
+
+"She'd have liked to be something to you, I make no doubt," observed
+his Ellen, shaking her head, and her husband smiled, a little
+foolishly.
+
+By this time they were back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and 
+a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs.
+Bunting.  It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit.
+The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and
+she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very
+unseemly and silly curiosity concerning the lodger.  "You might
+just let me have one peep at him, Ellen?" she had pleaded, only
+that morning.  But Ellen had shaken her head.  "No, that I won't!
+He's a very quiet gentleman; but he knows exactly what he likes,
+and he don't like anyone but me waiting on him.  Why, even your
+father's hardly seen him."
+
+But that, naturally, had only increased Daisy's desire to view Mr.
+Sleuth.
+
+There was another reason why Mrs. Bunting was glad that her
+stepdaughter had gone away for two days.  During her absence young
+Chandler was far less likely to haunt them in the way he had taken
+to doing lately, the more so that, in spite of what she had said to
+her husband, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that Daisy would ask Joe
+Chandler to call at Belgrave Square.  'Twouldn't be human nature
+ - at any rate, not girlish human nature - not to do so, even if
+Joe's coming did anger Aunt Margaret.
+
+Yes, it was pretty safe that with Daisy away they, the Buntings,
+would be rid of that young chap for a bit, and that would be a
+good thing.
+
+When Daisy wasn't there to occupy the whole of his attention, Mrs.
+Bunting felt queerly afraid of Chandler.  After all, he was a
+detective - it was his job to be always nosing about, trying to
+find out things.  And, though she couldn't fairly say to herself
+that he had done much of that sort of thing in her house, he might
+start doing it any minute.  And then - then - where would she, and
+ - and Mr. Sleuth, be?
+
+She thought of the bottle of red ink - of the leather bag which
+must be hidden somewhere - and her heart almost stopped beating.
+Those were the sort of things which, in the stories Bunting was
+so fond of reading, always led to the detection of famous 
+criminals. . . .
+
+Mr. Sleuth's bell for tea rang that afternoon far earlier than
+usual.  The fog had probably misled him, and made him think it
+later than it was.
+
+When she went up, "I would like a cup of tea now, and just one
+piece of bread-and-butter," the lodger said wearily.  "I don't
+feel like having anything else this afternoon."
+
+"It's a horrible day," Mrs. Bunting observed, in a cheerier voice
+than usual.  "No wonder you don't feel hungry, sir.  And then it
+isn't so very long since you had your dinner, is it?"
+
+"No," he said absently.  "No, it isn't, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+She went down, made the tea, and brought it up again.  And then,
+as she came into the room, she uttered an exclamation of sharp
+dismay.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was dressed for going out.  He was wearing his long
+Inverness cloak, and his queer old high hat lay on the table,
+ready for him to put on.
+
+"You're never going out this afternoon, sir?" she asked falteringly.
+"Why, the fog's awful; you can't see a yard ahead of you!"
+
+Unknown to herself, Mrs. Bunting's voice had risen almost to a
+scream.  She moved back, still holding the tray, and stood between
+the door and her lodger, as if she meant to bar his way - to erect
+between Mr. Sleuth and the dark, foggy world outside a living
+barrier.
+
+"The weather never affects me at all," he said sullenly; and he
+looked at her with so wild and pleading a look in his eyes that,
+slowly, reluctantly, she moved aside.  As she did so she noticed
+for the first time that Mr. Sleuth held something in his right
+hand.  It was the key of the chiffonnier cupboard.  He had been
+on his way there when her coming in had disturbed him.
+
+It's very kind of you to be so concerned about me," he stammered,
+"but - but, Mrs. Bunting, you must excuse me if I say that I do
+not welcome such solicitude.  I prefer to be left alone.  I - I
+cannot stay in your house if I feel that my comings and goings are
+watched - spied upon."
+
+She pulled herself together.  "No one spies upon you, sir," she
+said, with considerable dignity.  "I've done my best to satisfy
+you - "
+
+"You have - you have!" he spoke in a distressed, apologetic tone.
+"But you spoke just now as if you were trying to prevent my doing
+what I wish to do - indeed, what I have to do.  For years I have
+been misunderstood - persecuted" - he waited a moment, then in
+a hollow voice added the one word, "tortured!  Do not tell me that
+you are going to add yourself to the number of my tormentors, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She stared at him helplessly.  "Don't you be afraid I'll ever be
+that, sir.  I only spoke as I did because - well, sir, because I
+thought it really wasn't safe for a gentleman to go out this
+afternoon.  Why, there's hardly anyone about, though we're so near
+Christmas."
+
+He walked across to the window and looked out.  "The fog is clearing
+somewhat; Mrs. Bunting," but there was no relief in his voice, rather
+was there disappointment and dread.
+
+Plucking up courage, she followed him.  Yes, Mr. Sleuth was right.
+The fog was lifting - rolling off in that sudden, mysterious way in
+which local fogs sometimes do lift in London.
+
+He turned sharply from the window.  "Our conversation has made me
+forget an important thing, Mrs. Bunting.  I should be glad if you
+would just leave out a glass of milk and some bread-and-butter for
+me this evening.  I shall not require supper when I come in, for
+after my walk I shall probably go straight upstairs to carry through
+a very difficult experiment."
+
+"Very good, sir."  And then Mrs. Bunting left the lodger.
+
+But when she found herself downstairs in the fog-laden hall, for it
+had drifted in as she and her husband had stood at the door seeing
+Daisy off, instead of going in to Bunting she did a very odd thing
+ - a thing she had never thought of doing in her life before.  She
+pressed her hot forehead against the cool bit of looking-glass let
+into the hat-and-umbrella stand.  "I don't know what to do!" she
+moaned to herself, and then, "I can't bear it!  I can't bear it!"
+
+But though she felt that her secret suspense and trouble was becoming
+intolerable, the one way in which she could have ended her misery
+never occurred to Mrs. Bunting.
+
+In the long history of crime it has very, very seldom happened that
+a woman has betrayed one who has taken refuge with her.  The
+timorous and cautious woman has not infrequently hunted a human
+being fleeing from his pursuer from her door, but she has not
+revealed the fact that he was ever there.  In fact, it may almost
+be said that such betrayal has never taken place unless the betrayer
+has been actuated by love of gain, or by a longing for revenge.  So
+far, perhaps because she is subject rather than citizen, her duty
+as a component part of civilised society weighs but lightly on
+woman's shoulders.
+
+And then - and then, in a sort of way, Mrs. Bunting had become
+attached to Mr. Sleuth.  A wan smile would sometimes light up his
+sad face when he saw her come in with one of his meals, and when
+this happened Mrs. Bunting felt pleased - pleased and vaguely
+touched.  In between those - those dreadful events outside, which
+filled her with such suspicion, such anguish and such suspense,
+she never felt any fear, only pity, for Mr. Sleuth.
+
+Often and often, when lying wide awake at night, she turned over
+the strange problem in her mind.  After all, the lodger must have
+lived somewhere during his forty-odd years of life.  She did not
+even know if Mr. Sleuth had any brothers or sisters; friends she
+knew he had none.  But, however odd and eccentric he was, he had
+evidently, or so she supposed, led a quiet, undistinguished kind
+of life, till - till now.
+
+What had made him alter all of a sudden - if, that is, he had
+altered?  That was what Mrs. Bunting was always debating fitfully
+with herself; and, what was more, and very terribly, to the point,
+having altered, why should he not in time go back to what he
+evidently had been - that is, a blameless, quiet gentleman?
+
+If only he would!  If only he would!
+
+As she stood in the hall, cooling her hot forehead, all these
+thoughts, these hopes and fears, jostled at lightning speed through
+her brain.
+
+She remembered what young Chandler had said the other day - that
+there had never been, in the history of the world, so strange a
+murderer as The Avenger had proved himself to be.
+
+She and Bunting, aye, and little Daisy too, had hung, fascinated,
+on Joe's words, as he had told them of other famous series of
+murders which had taken place in the past, not only in England but
+abroad - especially abroad.
+
+One woman, whom all the people round her believed to be a kind,
+respectable soul, had poisoned no fewer than fifteen people in order
+to get their insurance money.  Then there had been the terrible tale
+of an apparently respectable, contented innkeeper and his wife, who,
+living at the entrance to a wood, killed all those humble travellers
+who took shelter under their roof, simply for their clothes, and any
+valuables they possessed.  But in all those stories the murderer or
+murderers always had a very strong motive, the motive being, in
+almost every case, a wicked lust for gold.
+
+At last, after having passed her handkerchief over her forehead, she
+went into the room where Bunting was sitting smoking his pipe.
+
+"The fog's lifting a bit," she said in an ill-assured voice.  I hope
+that by this time Daisy and that Joe Chandler are right out of it."
+
+But the other shook his head silently.  "No such luck!" he said
+briefly.  "You don't know what it's like in Hyde Park, Ellen.  I
+expect 'twill soon be just as heavy here as 'twas half an hour ago!"
+
+She wandered over to the window, and pulled the curtain back.
+"Quite a lot of people have come out, anyway," she observed.
+
+"There's a fine Christmas show in the Edgware Road.  I was thinking
+of asking if you wouldn't like to go along there with me."
+
+"No," she said dully.  "I'm quite content to stay at home."
+
+She was listening - listening for the sounds which would betoken
+that the lodger was coming downstairs.
+
+At last she heard the cautious, stuffless tread of his rubber-soled
+shoes shuffling along the hall.  But Bunting only woke to the fact
+when the front door shut to.
+
+"That's never Mr. Sleuth going out?"  He turned on his wife,
+startled.  "Why, the poor gentleman'll come to harm - that he will!
+One has to be wide awake on an evening like this.  I hope he hasn't
+taken any of his money out with him."
+
+"'Tisn't the first time Mr. Sleuth's been out in a fog," said Mrs.
+Bunting sombrely.
+
+Somehow she couldn't help uttering these over-true words.  And then
+she turned, eager and half frightened, to see how Bunting had taken
+what she said.
+
+But he looked quite placid, as if he had hardly heard her.  "We
+don't get the good old fogs we used to get - not what people used
+to call 'London particulars.'  I expect the lodger feels like Mrs.
+Crowley - I've often told you about her, Ellen?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting nodded.
+
+Mrs. Crowley had been one of Bunting's ladies, one of those he had
+liked best - a cheerful, jolly lady, who used often to give her
+servants what she called a treat.  It was seldom the kind of treat
+they would have chosen for themselves, but still they appreciated
+her kind thought.
+
+"Mrs. Crowley used to say," went on Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic
+way, "that she never minded how bad the weather was in London, so
+long as it was London and not the country.  Mr. Crowley, he liked
+the country best, but Mrs. Crowley always felt dull-like there.
+Fog never kept her from going out - no, that it didn't.  She wasn't
+a bit afraid.  But - " he turned round and looked at his wife - "
+I am a bit surprised at Mr. Sleuth.  I should have thought him a
+timid kind of gentleman - "
+
+He waited a moment, and she felt forced to answer him.
+
+"I wouldn't exactly call him timid," she said, in a low voice, "but
+he is very quiet, certainly.  That's why he dislikes going out when
+there are a lot of people bustling about the streets.  I don't
+suppose he'll be out long."
+
+She hoped with all her soul that Mr. Sleuth would be in very soon
+ - that he would be daunted by the now increasing gloom.  
+
+Somehow she did not feel she could sit still for very long.  She
+got up, and went over to the farthest window.
+
+The fog had lifted, certainly.  She could see the lamp-lights on
+the other side of the Marylebone Road, glimmering redly; and
+shadowy figures were hurrying past, mostly making their way towards
+the Edgware Road, to see the Christmas shops.
+
+At last to his wife's relief, Bunting got up too.  He went over to
+the cupboard where he kept his little store of books, and took one
+out.
+
+"I think I'll read a bit," he said.  "Seems a long time since I've
+looked at a book.  The papers was so jolly interesting for a bit,
+but now there's nothing in 'em."
+
+His wife remained silent.  She knew what he meant.  A good many days
+had gone by since the last two Avenger murders, and the papers had
+very little to say about them that they hadn't said in different
+language a dozen times before.
+
+She went into her bedroom and came back with a bit of plain sewing.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was fond of sewing, and Bunting liked to see her so
+engaged.  Since Mr. Sleuth had come to be their lodger she had not
+had much time for that sort of work.
+
+It was funny how quiet the house was without either Daisy, or - or
+the lodger, in it.
+
+At last she let her needle remain idle, and the bit of cambric
+slipped down on her knee, while she listened, longingly, for Mr.
+Sleuth's return home.
+
+And as the minutes sped by she fell to wondering with a painful
+wonder if she would ever see her lodger again, for, from what she
+knew of Mr. Sleuth, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that if he got into any
+kind of - well, trouble outside, he would never betray where he
+had lived during the last few weeks.
+
+No, in such a case the lodger would disappear in as sudden a way
+as he had come.  And Bunting would never suspect, would never know,
+until, perhaps - God, what a horrible thought - a picture published
+in some newspaper might bring a certain dreadful fact to Bunting's
+knowledge.
+
+But if that happened - if that unthinkably awful thing came to pass,
+she made up her mind, here and now, never to say anything.  She also
+would pretend to be amazed, shocked, unutterably horrified at the
+astounding revelation.  
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"There he is at last, and I'm glad of it, Ellen.  'Tain't a night
+you would wish a dog to be out in."
+
+Bunting's voice was full of relief, but he did not turn round and
+look at his wife as he spoke; instead, he continued to read the
+evening paper he held in his hand.
+
+He was still close to the fire, sitting back comfortably in his
+nice arm-chair.  He looked very well - well and ruddy.  Mrs. Bunting
+stared across at him with a touch of sharp envy, nay, more, of
+resentment.  And this was very curious, for she was, in her own dry
+way, very fond of Bunting.
+
+"You needn't feel so nervous about him; Mr. Sleuth can look out for
+himself all right."
+
+Bunting laid the paper he had been reading down on his knee.  "I
+can't think why he wanted to go out in such weather," he said
+impatiently.
+
+"Well, it's none of your business, Bunting, now, is it?"
+
+"No, that's true enough.  Still, 'twould be a very bad thing for us
+if anything happened to him.  This lodger's the first bit of luck
+we've had for a terrible long time, Ellen."
+
+Mrs. Bunting moved a little impatiently in her high chair.  She
+remained silent for a moment.  What Bunting had said was too obvious
+to be worth answering.  Also she was listening, following in
+imagination her lodger's quick, singularity quiet progress - 
+"stealthy" she called it to herself - through the fog-filled,
+lamp-lit hall.  Yes, now he was going up the staircase.  What
+was that Bunting was saying ?
+
+"It isn't safe for decent folk to be out in such weather - no, that
+it ain't, not unless they have something to do that won't wait till
+to-morrow."  The speaker was looking straight into his wife's narrow,
+colourless face.  Bunting was an obstinate man, and liked to prove
+himself right.  "I've a good mind to speak to him about it, that
+I have!  He ought to be told that it isn't safe - not for the sort
+of man he is - to be wandering about the streets at night.  I read
+you out the accidents in Lloyd's - shocking, they were, and all
+brought about by the fog!  And then, that horrid monster 'ull soon
+be at his work again - "
+
+"Monster?" repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.
+
+She was trying to hear the lodger's footsteps overhead.  She was
+very curious to know whether he had gone into his nice sitting-room,
+or straight upstairs, to that cold experiment-room, as he now always
+called it.
+
+But her husband went on as if he had not heard her, and she gave up
+trying to listen to what was going on above.
+
+"It wouldn't be very pleasant to run up against such a party as that
+in the fog, eh, Ellen?"  He spoke as if the notion had a certain
+pleasant thrill in it after all.
+
+"What stuff you do talk!" said Mrs. Bunting sharply.  And then she
+got up.  Her husband's remarks had disturbed her.  Why couldn't they
+talk of something pleasant when they did have a quiet bit of time
+together?
+
+Bunting looked down again at his paper, and she moved quietly about
+the room.  Very soon it would be time for supper, and to-night she
+was going to cook her husband a nice piece of toasted cheese.  That
+fortunate man, as she was fond of telling him, with mingled contempt
+and envy, had the digestion of an ostrich, and yet he was rather
+fanciful, as gentlemen's servants who have lived in good places
+often are.
+
+Yes, Bunting was very lucky in the matter of his digestion.  Mrs.
+Bunting prided herself on having a nice mind, and she would never
+have allowed an unrefined word - such a word as "stomach," for
+instance, to say nothing of an even plainer term - to pass her
+lips, except, of course, to a doctor in a sick-room.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's landlady did not go down at once into her cold kitchen;
+instead, with a sudden furtive movement, she opened the door leading
+into her bedroom, and then, closing the door quietly, stepped back
+into the darkness, and stood motionless, listening.
+
+At first she heard nothing, but gradually there stole on her
+listening ears the sound of someone moving softly about in the
+room just overhead, that is, in Mr. Sleuth's bedroom.  But, try as
+she might, it was impossible for her to guess what the lodger was
+doing.
+
+At last she heard him open the door leading out on the little
+landing.  She could hear the stairs creaking.  That meant, no doubt,
+that Mr. Sleuth would pass the rest of the evening in the cheerless
+room above.  He hadn't spent any time up there for quite a long
+while-in fact, not for nearly ten days.  'Twas odd he chose to-night,
+when it was so foggy, to carry out an experiment.
+
+She groped her way to a chair and sat down.  She felt very tired - 
+strangely tired, as if  she had gone through some great physical
+exertion.
+
+Yes, it was true that Mr. Sleuth had brought her and Bunting luck,
+and it was wrong, very wrong, of her ever to forget that.
+
+As she sat there she also reminded herself, and not for the first
+time, what the lodger's departure would mean.  It would almost
+certainly mean ruin; just as his staying meant all sorts of good
+things, of which physical comfort was the least. If Mr. Sleuth
+stayed on with them, as he showed every intention of doing, it
+meant respectability, and, above all, security.
+
+Mrs. Bunting thought of Mr. Sleuth's money.  He never received a
+letter, and yet he must have some kind of income - so much was
+clear.  She supposed he went and drew his money, in sovereigns, out
+of a bank as he required it.
+
+Her mind swung round, consciously, deliberately, away from Mr.
+Sleuth.
+
+The Avenger?  What a strange name!  Again she assured herself that
+there would come a time when The Avenger, whoever he was, must feel
+satiated; when he would feel himself to be, so to speak, avenged.
+
+To go back to Mr. Sleuth; it was lucky that the lodger seemed so
+pleased, not only with the rooms, but with his landlord and landlady
+ - indeed, there was no real reason why Mr. Sleuth should ever wish
+to leave such nice lodgings.  
+ 
+******
+
+Mrs. Bunting suddenly stood up.  She made a strong effort, and shook
+off her awful sense of apprehension and unease.  Feeling for the
+handle of the door giving into the passage she turned it, and then,
+with light, firm steps, she went down into the kitchen.
+
+When they had first taken the house, the basement had been made by
+her care, if not into a pleasant, then, at any rate, into a very
+clean place.  She had had it whitewashed, and against the still
+white walls the gas stove loomed up, a great square of black iron
+and bright steel.  It was a large gas-stove, the kind for which one
+pays four shillings a quarter rent to the gas company, and here, in
+the kitchen, there was no foolish shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
+Mrs. Bunting was too shrewd a woman to have anything to do with that
+kind of business.  There was a proper gas-meter, and she paid for
+what she consumed after she had consumed it.
+
+Putting her candle down on the well-scrubbed wooden table, she
+turned up the gas-jet, and blew out the candle.
+
+Then, lighting one of the gas-rings, she put a frying-pan on the
+stove, and once more her mind reverted, as if in spite of herself,
+to Mr. Sleuth.  Never had there been a more confiding or trusting
+gentleman than the lodger, and yet in some ways he was so secret,
+so - so peculiar.
+
+She thought of the bag - that bag which had rumbled about so
+queerly in the chiffonnier.  Something seemed to tell her that
+tonight the lodger had taken that bag out with him.
+
+And then she thrust away the thought of the bag almost violently
+from her mind, and went back to the more agreeable thought of Mr.
+Sleuth's income, and of how little trouble he gave.  Of course,
+the lodger was eccentric, otherwise he wouldn't be their lodger
+at all - he would be living in quite a different sort of way with
+some of his relations, or with a friend in his own class.
+
+While these thoughts galloped disconnectedly through her mind,
+Mrs. Bunting went on with her cooking, preparing the cheese, cutting
+it up into little shreds, carefully measuring out the butter, doing
+everything, as was always her way, with a certain delicate and
+cleanly precision.
+
+And then, while in the middle of toasting the bread on which was to
+be poured the melted cheese, she suddenly heard sounds which startled
+her, made her feel uncomfortable.
+
+Shuffling, hesitating steps were creaking down the house.
+
+She looked up and listened.
+
+Surely the lodger was not going out again into the cold and foggy
+night - going out, as he had done the other evening, for a second
+time?  But no; the sounds she heard, the sounds of now familiar
+footsteps, did not continue down the passage leading to the front
+door.
+
+Instead -  Why, what was this she heard now?  She began to listen
+so intently that the bread she was holding at the end of the
+toasting-fork grew quite black.  With a start she became aware
+that this was so, and she frowned, vexed with herself.  That came
+of not attending to one's work.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was evidently about to do what he had never yet done.
+He was coming down into the kitchen.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the thudding sounds, treading heavily on the
+kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Bunting's heart began to beat as if in
+response.  She put out the flame of the gas-ring, unheedful of the
+fact that the cheese would stiffen and spoil in the cold air.
+
+Then she turned and faced the door.
+
+There came a fumbling at the handle, and a moment later the door
+opened, and revealed, as she had at once known and feared it would
+do, the lodger.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked even odder than usual.  He was clad in a plaid
+dressing-gown, which she had never seen him wear before, though
+she knew that he had purchased it not long after his arrival.  In
+his hand was a lighted candle.
+
+When he saw the kitchen all lighted up, and the woman standing in
+it, the lodger looked inexplicably taken aback, almost aghast.
+
+"Yes, sir?  What can I do for you, sir?  I hope you didn't ring, sir?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting held her ground in front of the stove.  Mr. Sleuth had
+no business to come like this into her kitchen, and she intended to
+let him know that such was her view.
+
+"No, I - I didn't ring," he stammered awkwardly.  "The truth is, I
+didn't know you were here, Mrs. Bunting.  Please excuse my costume.
+My gas-stove has gone wrong, or, rather, that shilling-in-the-slot
+arrangement has done so.  So I came down to see if you had a
+gas-stove.  I am going to ask you to allow me to use it to-night for
+an important experiment I wish to make."
+
+Mrs. Bunting's heart was beating quickly - quickly.  She felt
+horribly troubled, unnaturally so.  Why couldn't Mr. Sleuth's
+experiment wait till the morning?  She stared at him dubiously, but
+there was that in his face that made her at once afraid and pitiful.
+It was a wild, eager, imploring look.
+
+"Oh, certainly, sir; but you will find it very cold down here."
+
+"It seems most pleasantly warm," he observed, his voice full of
+relief, "warm and cosy, after my cold room upstairs."
+
+Warm and cosy?  Mrs. Bunting stared at him in amazement.  Nay, even
+that cheerless room at the top of the house must be far warmer and
+more cosy than this cold underground kitchen could possibly be.
+
+"I'll make you a fire, sir.  We never use the grate, but it's in
+perfect order, for the first thing I did after I came into the house
+was to have the chimney swept.  It was terribly dirty.  It might
+have set the house on fire."  Mrs. Bunting's housewifely instincts
+were roused.  "For the matter of that, you ought to have a fire in
+your bedroom this cold night."
+
+"By no means - I would prefer not.  I certainly do not want a fire
+there.  I dislike an open fire, Mrs. Bunting.  I thought I had told
+you as much."
+
+Mr. Sleuth frowned.  He stood there, a strange-looking figure, his
+candle still alight, just inside the kitchen door.
+
+"I shan't be very long, sir.  Just about a quarter of an hour.  You
+could come down then.  I'll have everything quite tidy for you.  Is
+there anything I can do to help you?"
+
+"I do not require the use of your kitchen yet - thank you all the
+same, Mrs. Bunting.  I shall come down later - altogether later -
+after you and your husband have gone to bed.  But I should be much
+obliged if you would see that the gas people come to-morrow and
+put my stove in order.  It might be done while I am out.  That the
+shilling-in-the-slot machine should go wrong is very unpleasant.
+It has upset me greatly."
+
+"Perhaps Bunting could put it right for you, sir.  For the matter
+of that, I could ask him to go up now.
+
+"No, no, I don't want anything of that sort done to-night.  Besides,
+he couldn't put it right.  I am something of an expert, Mrs. Bunting,
+and I have done all I could.  The cause of the trouble is quite
+simple.  The machine is choked up with shillings; a very foolish
+plan, so I always felt it to be."
+
+Mr. Sleuth spoke pettishly, with far more heat than he was wont to
+speak, but Mrs. Bunting sympathised with him in this matter.  She
+had always suspected that those slot machines were as dishonest as
+if they were human.  It was dreadful, the way they swallowed up
+the shillings!  She had had one once, so she knew.
+
+And as if he were divining her thoughts, Mr. Sleuth walked forward
+and stared at the stove.  "Then you haven't got a slot machine?" he
+said wonderingly.  "I'm very glad of that, for I expect my experiment
+will take some time.  But, of course, I shall pay you something for
+the use of the stove, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I wouldn't think of charging you anything for that.
+We don't use our stove very much, you know, sir.  I'm never in the
+kitchen a minute longer than I can help this cold weather."
+
+Mrs. Bunting was beginning to feel better.  When she was actually
+in Mr. Sleuth's presence her morbid fears would be lulled, perhaps
+because his manner almost invariably was gentle and very quiet.
+But still there came over her an eerie feeling, as, with him
+preceding her, they made a slow progress to the ground floor.
+
+Once there, the lodger courteously bade his landlady good-night,
+and proceeded upstairs to his own apartments.
+
+Mrs. Bunting returned to the kitchen.  Again she lighted the stove;
+but she felt unnerved, afraid of she knew not what.  As she was
+cooking the cheese, she tried to concentrate her mind on what she
+was doing, and on the whole she succeeded.  But another part of her
+mind seemed to be working independently, asking her insistent
+questions.
+
+The place seemed to her alive with alien presences, and once she
+caught herself listening - which was absurd, for, of course, she
+could not hope to hear what Mr. Sleuth was doing two, if not three,
+flights upstairs.  She wondered in what the lodger's experiments
+consisted.  It was odd that she had never been able to discover what
+it was he really did with that big gas-stove.  All she knew was
+that he used a very high degree of heat.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The Buntings went to bed early that night.  But Mrs. Bunting made
+up her mind to keep awake.  She was set upon knowing at what hour
+of the night the lodger would come down into her kitchen to carry
+through his experiment, and, above all, she was anxious to know
+how long he would stay there.
+
+But she had had a long and a very anxious day, and presently she
+fell asleep.
+
+The church clock hard by struck two, and, suddenly Mrs. Bunting
+awoke.  She felt put out sharply annoyed with herself.  How could
+she have dropped off like that?  Mr. Sleuth must have been down
+and up again hours ago!
+
+Then, gradually, she became aware that there was a faint acrid
+odour in the room.  Elusive, intangible, it yet seemed to encompass
+her and the snoring man by her side, almost as a vapour might have
+done.
+
+Mrs. Bunting sat up in bed and sniffed; and then, in spite of the
+cold, she quietly crept out of her nice, warm bedclothes, and
+crawled along to the bottom of the bed.  When there, Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady did a very curious thing; she leaned over the brass rail
+and put her face close to the hinge of the door giving into the
+hall.  Yes, it was from here that this strange, horrible odor was
+coming; the smell must be very strong in the passage.
+
+As, shivering, she crept back under the bedclothes, she longed to
+give her sleeping husband a good shake, and in fancy she heard
+herself saying, "Bunting, get up!  There's something strange and
+dreadful going on downstairs which we ought to know about."
+
+But as she lay there, by her husband's side, listening with painful
+intentness for the slightest sound, she knew very well that she
+would do nothing of the sort.
+
+What if the lodger did make a certain amount of mess  - a certain
+amount of smell - in her nice clean kitchen?  Was he not - was he
+not an almost perfect lodger?  If they did anything to upset him,
+where could they ever hope to get another like him?
+
+Three o'clock struck before Mrs. Bunting heard slow, heavy steps
+creaking up the kitchen stairs.  But Mr. Sleuth did not go straight
+up to his own quarters, as she had expected him to do.  Instead, he
+went to the front door, and, opening it, put on the chain.  Then he
+came past her door, and she thought - but could not be sure -  that
+he sat down on the stairs.
+
+At the end of ten minutes or so she heard him go down the passage
+again.  Very softly he closed the front door.  By then she had
+divined why the lodger had behaved in this funny fashion.  He wanted
+to get the strong, acrid smell of burning - was it of burning wool?
+ - out of the house.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting, lying there in the darkness, listening to the
+lodger creeping upstairs, felt as if she herself would never get
+rid of the horrible odour.
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt herself to be all smell.
+
+At last the unhappy woman fell into a deep, troubled sleep; and
+then she dreamed a most terrible and unnatural dream.  Hoarse
+voices seemed to be shouting in her ear: "The Avenger close here!
+The Avenger close here!" "'Orrible murder off the Edgware Road!"
+"The Avenger at his work again"'
+
+And even in her dream Mrs. Bunting felt angered -  angered and
+impatient.  She knew so well why she was being disturbed by this
+horrid nightmare!  It was because of Bunting - Bunting, who could
+think and talk of nothing else than those frightful murders, in
+which only morbid and vulgar-minded people took any interest.
+
+Why, even now, in her dream, she could hear her husband speaking
+to her about it:
+
+"Ellen " - so she heard Bunting murmur in her ear - "Ellen, my dear,
+I'm just going to get up to get a paper.  It's after seven o'clock."
+
+The shouting - nay, worse, the sound of tramping, hurrying feet
+smote on her shrinking ears.  Pushing back her hair off her forehead
+with both hands, she sat up and listened.
+
+It had been no nightmare, then, but something infinitely worse - 
+reality.
+
+Why couldn't Bunting have lain quiet abed for awhile longer, and
+let his poor wife go on dreaming?  The most awful dream would have
+been easier to bear than this awakening.
+
+She heard her husband go to the front door, and, as he bought the
+paper, exchange a few excited words with the newspaper-seller.  Then
+he came back.  There was a pause, and she heard him lighting the
+gas-ring in the sitting-room.
+
+Bunting always made his wife a cup of tea in the morning.  He had
+promised to do this when they first married, and he had never yet
+broken his word.  It was a very little thing and a very usual thing,
+no doubt, for a kind husband to do, but this morning the knowledge
+that he was doing it brought tears to Mrs. Bunting's pale blue eyes.
+This morning he seemed to be rather longer than usual over the job.
+
+When, at last, he came in with the little tray, Bunting found his
+wife lying with her face to the wall.
+
+"Here's your tea, Ellen," he said, and there was a thrill of eager,
+nay happy, excitement in his voice.
+
+She turned herself round and sat up.  "Well?" she asked.  "Well?
+Why don't you tell me about it?"
+
+"I thought you was asleep," he stammered out.  "I thought, Ellen,
+you never heard nothing."
+
+"How could I have slept through all that din?  Of course I heard.
+Why don't you tell me?"
+
+"I've hardly had time to glance at the paper myself," he said slowly.
+
+"You was reading it just now," she said severely, "for I heard the
+rustling.  You begun reading it before you lit the gas-ring.  Don't
+tell me!  What was that they was shouting about the Edgware Road?"
+
+"Well," said Bunting, "as you do know, I may as well tell you.  The
+Avenger's moving West - that's what he's doing.  Last time 'twas
+King's Cross - now 'tis the Edgware Road.  I said he'd come our way,
+and he has come our way!"
+
+"You just go and get me that paper," she commanded.  "I wants to
+see for myself."
+
+Bunting went into the next room; then he came back and handed her
+silently the odd-looking, thin little sheet.
+
+"Why, whatever's this?" she asked.  "This ain't our paper!"
+
+"'Course not," he answered, a trifle crossly.  "It's a special early
+edition of the Sun, just because of The Avenger.  Here's the bit
+about it" - he showed her the exact spot.  But she would have found
+it, even by the comparatively bad light of the gas-jet now flaring
+over the dressing-table, for the news was printed in large, clear
+characters: - 
+
+"Once more the murder fiend who chooses to call himself The Avenger
+has escaped detection.  While the whole attention of the police,
+and of the great army of amateur detectives who are taking an
+interest in this strange series of atrocious crimes, were
+concentrating their attention round the East End and King's Cross,
+he moved swift1y and silently Westward.  And, choosing a time when
+the Edgware Road is at its busiest and most thronged, did another
+human being to death with lightning-like quickness and savagery.
+
+"Within fifty yards of the deserted warehouse yard where he had
+lured his victim to destruction were passing up and down scores of
+happy, busy people, intent on their Christmas shopping.  Into that
+cheerful throng he must have plunged within a moment of committing
+his atrocious crime.  And it was only owing to the merest accident
+that the body was discovered as soon as it was - that is, just
+after midnight
+
+"Dr. Dowtray, who was called to the spot at once, is of opinion that
+the woman had been dead at least three hours, if not four.  It was at
+first thought - we were going to say, hoped - that this murder had
+nothing to do with the series which is now puzzling and horrifying
+the whole of the civilised world.  But no - pinned on the edge of the
+dead woman's dress was the usual now familiar triangular piece of
+grey paper - the grimmest visiting card ever designed by the wit of
+man!  And this time The Avenger has surpassed himself as regards his
+audacity and daring - so cold in its maniacal fanaticism and abhorrent
+wickedness."
+
+All the time that Mrs. Bunting was reading with slow, painful
+intentness, her husband was looking at her, longing, yet afraid, to
+burst out with a new idea which he was burning to confide even to his
+Ellen's unsympathetic ears.
+
+At last, when she had quite finished, she looked up defiantly.
+
+"Haven't you anything better to do than to stare at me like that?"
+she said irritably.  "Murder or no murder, I've got to get up!  Go
+away - do!"
+
+And Bunting went off into the next room.
+
+After he had gone, his wife lay back and closed her eyes.  She tried
+to think of nothing.  Nay, more - so strong, so determined was her
+will that for a few moments she actually did think of nothing.  She
+felt terribly tired and weak, brain and body both quiescent, as does
+a person who is recovering from a long, wearing illness.
+
+Presently detached, puerile thoughts drifted across the surface of
+her mind like little clouds across a summer sky.  She wondered if
+those horrid newspaper men were allowed to shout in Belgrave Square;
+she wondered if, in that case, Margaret, who was so unlike her
+brother-in-law, would get up and buy a paper.  But no.  Margaret
+was not one to leave her nice warm bed for such a silly reason as
+that.
+
+Was it to-morrow Daisy was coming back?  Yes - to-morrow, not
+to-day.  Well, that was a comfort, at any rate.  What amusing things
+Daisy would be able to tell about her visit to Margaret!  The girl
+had an excellent gift of mimicry.  And Margaret, with her precise,
+funny ways, her perpetual talk about "the family," lent herself to
+the cruel gift.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting's mind - her poor, weak, tired mind - wandered
+off to young Chandler.  A funny thing love was, when you came to
+think of it - which she, Ellen Bunting, didn't often do.  There was
+Joe, a likely young fellow, seeing a lot of young women, and pretty
+young women, too, - quite as pretty as Daisy, and ten times more
+artful - and yet there!  He passed them all by, had done so ever
+since last summer, though you might be sure that they, artful minxes,
+by no manner of means passed him by, - without giving them a thought!
+As Daisy wasn't here, he would probably keep away to-day.  There
+was comfort in that thought, too.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful
+turgid flood.  If Joe did come in, she must nerve herself to hear
+all that - that talk there'd be about The Avenger between him and
+Bunting.
+
+Slowly she dragged herself out of bed, feeling exactly as if she
+had just recovered from an illness which had left her very weak,
+very, very tired in body and soul.
+
+She stood for a moment listening - listening, and shivering, for
+it was very cold.  Considering how early it still was, there
+seemed a lot of coming and going in the Marylebone Road.  She could
+hear the unaccustomed sounds through her closed door and the tightly
+fastened windows of the sitting-room.  There must be a regular
+crowd of men and women, on foot and in cabs, hurrying to the scene
+of The Avenger's last extraordinary crime.
+
+She heard the sudden thud made by their usual morning paper falling
+from the letter-box on to the floor of the hall, and a moment later
+came the sound of Bunting quickly, quietly going out and getting it.
+She visualised him coming back, and sitting down with a sigh of
+satisfaction by the newly-lit fire.
+
+Languidly she began dressing herself to the accompaniment of distant
+tramping and of noise of passing traffic, which increased in volume
+and in sound as the moments slipped by.
+
+******
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went down into her kitchen everything looked just
+as she had left it, and there was no trace of the acrid smell she
+had expected to find there.  Instead, the cavernous, whitewashed
+room was full of fog, but she noticed that, though the shutters were
+bolted and barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had
+been widely opened to the air.  She had left them shut.
+
+Making a "spill" out of a twist of newspaper - she had been taught
+the art as a girl by one of her old mistresses - she stooped and
+flung open the oven-door of her gas-stove.  Yes, it was as she had
+expected a fierce heat had been generated there since she had last
+used the oven, and through to the stone floor below had fallen a
+mass of black, gluey soot.
+
+Mrs. Bunting took the ham and eggs that she had bought the previous
+day for her own and Bunting's breakfast upstairs, and broiled them
+over the gas-ring in their sitting-room.  Her husband watched her in
+surprised silence.  She had never done such a thing before.
+
+"I couldn't stay down there," she said; "it was so cold and foggy.
+I thought I'd make breakfast up here, just for to-day."
+
+"Yes," he said kindly; "that's quite right, Ellen.  I think you've
+done quite right, my dear."
+
+But, when it came to the point, his wife could not eat any of the
+nice breakfast she had got ready; she only had another cup of tea.
+
+"I'm afraid you're ill, Ellen?" Bunting asked solicitously.
+
+"No," she said shortly; "I'm not ill at all.  Don't be silly!  The
+thought of that horrible thing happening so close by has upset me,
+and put me off my food.  Just hark to them now!"
+
+Through their closed windows penetrated the sound of scurrying feet
+and loud, ribald laughter.  What a crowd; nay, what a mob, must be
+hastening busily to and from the spot where there was now nothing
+to be seen!
+
+Mrs. Bunting made her husband lock the front gate.  "I don't want
+any of those ghouls in here!" she exclaimed angrily.  And then,
+"What a lot of idle people there are in the world!" she said.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Bunting began moving about the room restlessly.  He would go to the
+window; stand there awhile staring out at the people hurrying past;
+then, coming back to the fireplace, sit down.
+
+But he could not stay long quiet.  After a glance at his paper, up
+he would rise from his chair, and go to the window again.
+
+"I wish you'd stay still," his wife said at last. And then, a few
+minutes later, "Hadn't you better put your hat and coat on and go
+out?" she exclaimed.
+
+And Bunting, with a rather shamed expression, did put on his hat
+and coat and go out.
+
+As he did so be told himself that, after all, he was but human; it
+was natural that he should be thrilled and excited by the dreadful,
+extraordinary thing which had just happened close by.  Ellen wasn't
+reasonable about such things.  How queer and disagreeable she had
+been that very morning - angry with him because he had gone out
+to hear what all the row was about, and even more angry when he had
+come back and said nothing, because he thought it would annoy her
+to hear about it!
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Bunting forced herself to go down again into the
+kitchen, and as she went through into the low, whitewashed place,
+a tremor of fear, of quick terror, came over her.  She turned and
+did what she had never in her life done before, and what she had
+never heard of anyone else doing in a kitchen.  She bolted the door.
+
+But, having done this, finding herself at last alone, shut off from
+everybody, she was still beset by a strange, uncanny dread.  She
+felt as if she were locked in with an invisible presence, which
+mocked and jeered, reproached and threatened her, by turns.
+
+Why had she allowed, nay encouraged, Daisy to go away for two days?
+Daisy, at any rate, was company - kind, young, unsuspecting company.
+With Daisy she could be her old sharp self.  It was such a comfort
+to be with someone to whom she not only need, but ought to, say
+nothing.  When with Bunting she was pursued by a sick feeling of
+guilt, of shame.  She was the man's wedded wife - in his stolid way
+he was very kind to her, and yet she was keeping from him something
+he certainly had a right to know.
+
+Not for worlds, however, would she have told Bunting of her dreadful
+suspicion - nay, of her almost certainty.
+
+At last she went across to the door and unlocked it.  Then she went
+upstairs and turned out her bedroom.  That made her feel a little
+better.
+
+She longed for Bunting to return, and yet in a way she was relieved
+by his absence.  She would have liked to feel him near by, and yet
+she welcomed anything that took her husband out of the house.
+
+And as Mrs. Bunting swept and dusted, trying to put her whole mind
+into what she was doing, she was asking herself all the time what
+was going on upstairs.
+
+What a good rest the lodger was having!  But there, that was only
+natural.  Mr. Sleuth, as she well knew, had been up a long time last
+night, or rather this morning.
+
+******
+
+Suddenly, the drawing-room bell rang.  But Mr. Sleuth's landlady did
+not go up, as she generally did, before getting ready the simple meal
+which was the lodger's luncheon and breakfast combined.  Instead, she
+went downstairs again and hurriedly prepared the lodger's food.
+
+Then, very slowly, with her heart beating queerly, she walked up, and
+just outside the sitting-room - for she felt sure that Mr. Sleuth had
+got up, that he was there already, waiting for her - she rested the
+tray on the top of the banisters and listened.  For a few moments she
+heard nothing; then through the door came the high, quavering voice
+with which she had become so familiar:
+
+"'She saith to him, stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in
+secret is pleasant.  But he knoweth not that the dead are there,
+and that her guests are in the depths of hell.'"
+
+There was a long pause.  Mrs. Bunting could hear the leaves of
+her Bible being turned over, eagerly, busily; and then again Mr.
+Sleuth broke out, this time in a softer voice:
+
+"'She hath cast down many wounded from her; yea, many strong men
+have been slain by her.'"  And in a softer, lower, plaintive tone
+came the words: "'I applied my heart to know, and to search, and
+to seek out wisdom and the reason of things; and to know the
+wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness.'"
+
+And as she stood there listening, a feeling of keen distress, of
+spiritual oppression, came over Mrs. Bunting.  For the first time
+in her life she visioned the infinite mystery, the sadness and
+strangeness, of human life.
+
+Poor Mr. Sleuth - poor unhappy, distraught Mr. Sleuth!  An
+overwhelming pity blotted out for a moment the fear, aye, and the
+loathing, she had been feeling for her lodger.
+
+She knocked at the door, and then she took up her tray.
+
+"Come in, Mrs. Bunting." Mr. Sleuth's voice sounded feebler, more
+toneless than usual.
+
+She turned the handle of the door and walked in.  The lodger was
+not sitting in his usual place; he had taken the little round table
+on which his candle generally rested when he read in bed, out of
+his bedroom, and placed it over by the drawing-room window.  On it
+were placed, open, the Bible and the Concordance.  But as his
+landlady came in, Mr. Sleuth hastily closed the Bible, and began
+staring dreamily out of the window, down at the sordid, hurrying
+crowd of men and women which now swept along the Marylebone Road.
+
+"There seem a great many people out today," he observed, without
+looking round.
+
+"Yes, sir, there do."
+
+Mrs. Bunting began busying herself with laying the cloth and
+putting out the breakfast-lunch, and as she did so she was seized
+with a mortal, instinctive terror of the man sitting there.
+
+At last Mr. Sleuth got up and turned round.  She forced herself to
+look at him.  How tired, how worn, he looked, and - how strange!
+
+Walking towards the table on which lay his meal, he rubbed his hands
+together with a nervous gesture - it was a gesture he only made when
+something had pleased, nay, satisfied him.  Mrs. Bunting, looking at
+him, remembered that he had rubbed his hands together thus when he
+had first seen the room upstairs, and realised that it contained a
+large gas-stove and a convenient sink.
+
+What Mr. Sleuth was doing now also reminded her in an odd way of a
+play she had once seen - a play to which a young man bad taken her
+when she was a girl, unnumbered years ago, and which had thrilled
+and fascinated her.  "Out, out, damned spot!" that was what the tall,
+fierce, beautiful lady who had played the part of a queen had said,
+twisting her hands together just as the lodger was doing now.
+
+"It's a fine day," said Mr. Sleuth, sitting down and unfolding his
+napkin.  "The fog has cleared.  I do not know if you will agree with
+me, Mrs. Bunting, but I always feel brighter when the sun is shining,
+as it is now, at any rate, trying to shine."  He looked at her
+inquiringly, but Mrs. Bunting could not speak.  She only nodded.
+However, that did not affect Mr. Sleuth adversely.
+
+He had acquired a great liking and respect for this well-balanced,
+taciturn woman.  She was the first woman for whom he had experienced
+any such feeling for many years past.
+
+He looked down at the still covered dish, and shook his head.  "I
+don't feel as if I could eat very much to-day," he said plaintively.
+And then he suddenly took a half-sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket.
+
+Already Mrs. Bunting had noticed that it was not the same waistcoat
+Mr. Sleuth had been wearing the day before.
+
+"Mrs. Bunting, may I ask you to come here?"
+
+And after a moment of hesitation his landlady obeyed him.
+
+"Will you please accept this little gift for the use you kindly
+allowed me to make of your kitchen last night?" he said quietly.
+"I tried to make as little mess as I could, Mrs. Bunting, but - 
+well, the truth is I was carrying out a very elaborate experiment "
+
+Mrs. Bunting held out her hand, she hesitated, and then she took
+the coin.  The fingers which for a moment brushed lightly against
+her palm were icy cold - cold and clammy.  Mr. Sleuth was evidently
+not well.
+
+As she walked down the stairs, the winter sun, a scarlet ball
+hanging in the smoky sky, glinted in on Mr. Sleuth's landlady, and
+threw blood-red gleams, or so it seemed to her, on to the piece of
+gold she was holding in her hand.
+
+******
+
+The day went by, as other days had gone by in that quiet household,
+but, of course, there was far greater animation outside the little
+house than was usually the case.
+
+Perhaps because the sun was shining for the first time for some
+days, the whole of London seemed to be making holiday in that part
+of the town.
+
+When Bunting at 1ast came back, his wife listened silently while he
+told her of the extraordinary excitement reigning everywhere.  And
+then, after he had been talking a long while, she suddenly shot a
+strange look at him.
+
+"I suppose you went to see the place?" she said.
+
+And guiltily he acknowledged that he had done so.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, there wasn't anything much to see - not now.  But, oh, Ellen,
+the daring of him!  Why, Ellen, if the poor soul had had time to cry
+out - which they don't believe she had - it's impossible someone
+wouldn't 'a heard her.  They say that if he goes on doing it like
+that - in the afternoon, like - he never will be caught.  He must
+have just got mixed up with all the other people within ten seconds
+of what he'd done!"
+
+During the afternoon Bunting bought papers recklessly - in fact, he
+must have spent the best part of six-pence.  But in spite of all the
+supposed and suggested clues, there was nothing - nothing at all new
+to read, less, in fact than ever before.
+
+The police, it was clear, were quite at a loss, and Mrs. Bunting
+began to feel curiously better, less tired, less ill, less - less
+terrified than she had felt through the morning.
+
+And then something happened which broke with dramatic suddenness the
+quietude of the day.
+
+They had had their tea, and Bunting was reading the last of the
+papers he had run out to buy, when suddenly there came a loud,
+thundering, double knock at the door.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled.  "Why, whoever can that be?" she
+said.
+
+But as Bunting got up she added quickly, "You just sit down again.
+I'll go myself.  Sounds like someone after lodgings.  I'll soon send
+them to the right-about!"
+
+And then she left the room, but not before there had come another
+loud double knock.
+
+Mrs. Bunting opened the front door.  In a moment she saw that the
+person who stood there was a stranger to her.  He was a big, dark
+man, with fierce, black moustaches.  And somehow - she could not
+have told you why - he suggested a policeman to Mrs. Bunting's mind.
+
+This notion of hers was confirmed by the very first words he uttered.
+For, "I'm here to execute a warrant!" he exclaimed in a theatrical,
+hollow tone.
+
+With a weak cry of protest Mrs. Bunting suddenly threw out her arms
+as if to bar the way; she turned deadly white - but then, in an
+instant the supposed stranger's laugh rang out, with loud, jovial,
+familiar sound!
+
+"There now, Mrs. Bunting!  I never thought I'd take you in as well
+as all that!"
+
+It was Joe Chandler - Joe Chandler dressed up, as she knew he
+sometimes, not very often, did dress up in the course of his work.
+
+Mrs. Bunting began laughing - laughing helplessly, hysterically,
+just as she had done on the morning of Daisy's arrival, when the
+newspaper-sellers had come shouting down the Marylebone Road.
+
+"What's all this about?" Bunting came out
+
+Young Chandler ruefully shut the front door.  "I didn't mean to
+upset her like this," he said, looking foolish; "'twas just my silly
+nonsense, Mr. Bunting."  And together they helped her into the
+sitting-room.
+
+But, once there, poor Mrs. Bunting went on worse than ever; she
+threw her black apron over her face, and began to sob hysterically.
+
+"'I made sure she'd know who I was when I spoke," went on the young
+fellow apologetically.  "But, there now, I have upset her.  I am
+sorry!"
+
+"It don't matter!" she exclaimed, throwing the apron off her face,
+but the tears were still streaming from her eyes as she sobbed and
+laughed by turns.  "Don't matter one little bit, Joe!  'Twas stupid
+of me to be so taken aback.  But, there, that murder that's happened
+close by, it's just upset me - upset me altogether to-day."
+
+"Enough to upset anyone - that was," acknowledged the young man
+ruefully.  "I've only come in for a minute, like.  I haven't no
+right to come when I'm on duty like this - "
+
+Joe Chandler was looking longingly at what remains of the meal were
+still on the table.
+
+"You can take a minute just to have a bite and a sup," said Bunting
+hospitably; "and then you can tell us any news there is, Joe.  We're
+right in the middle of everything now, ain't we?"  He spoke with
+evident enjoyment, almost pride, in the gruesome fact.
+
+Joe nodded.  Already his mouth was full of bread-and-butter.  He
+waited a moment, and then: "Well I have got one piece of news - not
+that I suppose it'll interest you very much."
+
+They both looked at him - Mrs. Bunting suddenly calm, though her
+breast still heaved from time to time.
+
+"Our Boss has resigned!" said Joe Chandler slowly, impressively.
+
+"No!  Not the Commissioner o' Police?" exclaimed Bunting.
+
+"Yes, he has.  He just can't bear what's said about us any longer
+ - and I don't wonder!  He done his best, and so's we all.  The
+public have just gone daft - in the West End, that is, to-day.  As
+for the papers, well, they're something cruel - that's what they
+are.  And the ridiculous ideas they print!  You'd never believe the
+things they asks us to do - and quite serious-like."
+
+"What d'you mean?" questioned Mrs. Bunting.  She really wanted to
+know.
+
+"Well, the Courier declares that there ought to be a house-to-house
+investigation - all over London.  Just think of it!  Everybody to
+let the police go all over their house, from garret to kitchen,
+just to see if The Avenger isn't concealed there.  Dotty, I calls
+it!  Why, 'twould take us months and months just to do that one
+job in a town like London."
+
+"I'd like to see them dare come into my house!" said Mrs. Bunting
+angrily.
+
+"It's all along of them blarsted papers that The Avenger went to
+work a different way this time," said Chandler slowly.
+
+Bunting had pushed a tin of sardines towards his guest, and was
+eagerly listening.  "How d'you mean?" he asked.  "I don't take
+your meaning, Joe."
+
+"Well, you see, it's this way.  The newspapers was always saying
+how extraordinary it was that The Avenger chose such a peculiar
+time to do his deeds - I mean, the time when no one's about the
+streets.  Now, doesn't it stand to reason that the fellow, reading
+all that, and seeing the sense of it, said to himself, 'I'll go on
+another tack this time'?  Just listen to this!"  He pulled a strip
+of paper, part of a column cut from a newspaper, out of his pocket:
+
+
+"'AN EX-LORD MAYOR OF LONDON ON THE AVENGER
+
+
+"'Will the murderer be caught?  Yes,' replied Sir John, 'he will
+certainly be caught - probably when he commits his next crime.  A
+whole army of bloodhounds, metaphorical and literal, will be on his
+track the moment he draws blood again.  With the whole community
+against him, he cannot escape, especially when it be remembered that
+he chooses the quietest hour in the twenty-four to commit his crimes.
+
+"'Londoners are now in such a state of nerves - if I may use the
+expression, in such a state of funk - that every passer-by, however
+innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his
+avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one and
+three in the morning.'
+
+"I'd like to gag that ex-Lord Mayor!" concluded Joe Chandler
+wrathfully.
+
+Just then the lodger's bell rang.
+
+"Let me go up, my dear," said Bunting.
+
+His wife still looked pale and shaken by the fright she had had.
+
+"No, no," she said hastily.  "You stop down here, and talk to Joe.
+I'll look after Mr. Sleuth.  He may be wanting his supper just a
+bit earlier than usual to-day."
+
+Slowly, painfully, again feeling as if her legs were made of cotton
+wool, she dragged herself up to the first floor, knocked at the door,
+and then went in.
+
+"You did ring, sir?" she said, in her quiet, respectful way.
+
+And Mr. Sleuth looked up.
+
+She thought - but, as she reminded herself afterwards, it might have
+been just her idea, and nothing else - that for the first time the
+lodger looked frightened - frightened and cowed.
+
+"I heard a noise downstairs," he said fretfully, "and I wanted to
+know what it was all about.  As I told you, Mrs. Bunting, when I
+first took these rooms, quiet is essential to me.".
+
+"It was just a friend of ours, sir.  I'm sorry you were disturbed.
+Would you like the knocker taken off to-morrow?  Bunting'll be
+pleased to do it if you don't like to hear the sound of the knocks."
+
+"Oh, no, I wouldn't put you to such trouble as that."  Mr. Sleuth
+looked quite relieved.  "Just a friend of yours, was it, Mrs.
+Bunting?  He made a great deal of noise."
+
+"Just a young fellow," she said apologetically.  "The son of one of
+Bunting's old friends.  He often comes here, sir; but he never did
+give such a great big double knock as that before.  I'll speak to
+him about it"
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. Bunting.  I would really prefer you did nothing of
+the kind.  It was just a passing annoyance - nothing more!"
+
+She waited a moment.  How strange that Mr. Sleuth said nothing of
+the hoarse cries which had made of the road outside a perfect Bedlam
+every hour or two throughout that day, But no, Mr. Sleuth made no
+allusion to what might well have disturbed any quiet gentleman at
+his reading.
+
+"I thought maybe you'd like to have supper a little earlier to-night,
+sir?"
+
+"Just when you like, Mrs. Bunting - just when it's convenient.  I
+do not wish to put you out in any way."
+
+She felt herself dismissed, and going out quietly, closed the door.
+
+As she did 'so, she heard the front door banging to.  She sighed
+ - Joe Chandler was really a very noisy young fellow.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mrs. Bunting slept well the night following that during which the
+lodger had been engaged in making his mysterious experiments in her
+kitchen.  She was so tired, so utterly exhausted, that sleep came
+to her the moment she laid her head upon her pillow.
+
+Perhaps that was why she rose so early the next morning.  Hardly
+giving herself time to swallow the tea Bunting had made and brought
+her, she got up and dressed.
+
+She had suddenly come to the conclusion that the hall and staircase
+required a thorough "doing down," and she did not even wait till
+they had eaten their breakfast before beginning her labours.  It
+made Bunting feel quite uncomfortable.  As he sat by the fire reading
+his morning paper - the paper which was again of such absorbing
+interest - he called out, "There's no need for so much hurry, Ellen.
+Daisy'll be back to-day.  Why don't you wait till she's come home to
+help you?"
+
+But from the hall where she was busy dusting, sweeping, polishing,
+his wife's voice came back: "Girls ain't no good at this sort of
+work.  Don't you worry about me.  I feel as if I'd enjoy doing an
+extra bit of cleaning to-day.  I don't like to feel as anyone could
+come in and see my place dirty."
+
+"No fear of that!" Bunting chuckled.  And then a new thought struck
+him.  "Ain't you afraid of waking the lodger?" he called out.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth slept most of yesterday, and all last night," she
+answered quickly.  "As it is, I study him over-much; it's a long,
+long time since I've done this staircase down."
+
+All the time she was engaged in doing the hall, Mrs. Bunting left
+the sitting-room door wide open.
+
+That was a queer thing of her to do, but Bunting didn't like to get
+up and shut her out, as it were.  Still, try as he would, he couldn't
+read with any comfort while all that noise was going on.  He had
+never known Ellen make such a lot of noise before.  Once or twice he
+looked up and frowned rather crossly.
+
+There came a sudden silence, and he was startled to see that.  Ellen
+was standing in the doorway, staring at him, doing nothing.
+
+"Come in," he said, "do!  Ain't you finished yet?"
+
+"I was only resting a minute," she said.  "You don't tell me nothing.
+I'd like to know if there's anything - I mean anything new - in the
+paper this morning."
+
+She spoke in a muffled voice, almost as if she were ashamed of her
+unusual curiosity; and her look of fatigue, of pallor, made Bunting
+suddenly uneasy.  "Come in  - do!" he repeated sharply.  "You've
+done quite enough - and before breakfast, too.  'Tain't necessary.
+Come in and shut that door."
+
+He spoke authoritatively, and his wife, for a wonder, obeyed him.
+
+She came in, and did what she had never done before - brought the
+broom with her, and put it up against the wall in the corner.
+
+Then she sat down.
+
+"I think I'll make breakfast up here," she said.  "I - I feel cold,
+Bunting."  And her husband stared at her surprised, for drops of
+perspiration were glistening on her forehead.
+
+He got up.  "All right.  I'll go down and bring the eggs up.  Don't
+you worry.  For the matter of that, I can cook them downstairs if
+you like."
+
+"No," she said obstinately.  "I'd rather do my own work.  You just
+bring them up here - that'll be all right.  To-morrow morning we'll
+have Daisy to help see to things."
+
+"Come over here and sit down comfortable in my chair," he suggested
+kindly.  "You never do take any bit of rest, Ellen.  I never see'd
+such a woman!"
+
+And again she got up and meekly obeyed him, walking across the room
+with languid steps.
+
+He watched her, anxiously, uncomfortably.
+
+She took up the newspaper he had just laid down, and Bunting took
+two steps towards her.
+
+"I'll show you the most interesting bit" he said eagerly.  "It's
+the piece headed, 'Our Special Investigator.' You see, they've
+started a special investigator of their own, and he's got hold of
+a lot of little facts the police seem to have overlooked.  The man
+who writes all that - I mean the Special Investigator - was a
+famous 'tec in his time, and he's just come back out of his
+retirement o' purpose to do this bit of work for the paper.  You
+read what he says - I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he ends by
+getting that reward!  One can see he just loves the work of
+tracking people down."
+
+"There's nothing to be proud of in such a job," said his wife
+listlessly.
+
+"He'll have something to be proud of if he catches The Avenger!"
+cried Bunting.  He was too keen about this affair to be put off
+by Ellen's contradictory remarks.  "You just notice that bit about
+the rubber soles.  Now, no one's thought o' that.  I'll just tell
+Chandler - he don't seem to me to be half awake, that young man
+don't."
+
+"He's quite wide awake enough without you saying things to him!
+How about those eggs, Bunting?  I feel quite ready for my breakfast
+even if you don't - "
+
+Mrs. Bunting now spoke in what her husband sometimes secretly
+described to himself as "Ellen's snarling voice.
+
+He turned away and left the room, feeling oddly troubled.  There
+was something queer about her, and he couldn't make it out.  He
+didn't mind it when she spoke sharply and nastily to him.  He was
+used to that.  But now she was so up and down; so different from
+what she used to be!  In old days she had always been the same, but
+now a man never knew where to have her.
+
+And as he went downstairs he pondered uneasily over his wife's
+changed ways and manner.
+
+Take the question of his easy chair.  A very small matter, no doubt,
+but he had never known Ellen sit in that chair - no, not even once,
+for a minute, since it had been purchased by her as a present for him.
+
+They had been so happy, so happy, and so - so restful, during that
+first week after Mr. Sleuth had come to them.  Perhaps it was the
+sudden, dramatic change from agonising anxiety to peace and security
+which had been too much for Ellen - yes, that was what was the matter
+with her, that and the universal excitement about these Avenger
+murders, which were shaking the nerves of all London.  Even Bunting,
+unobservant as he was, had come to realise that his wife took a
+morbid interest in these terrible happenings.  And it was the more
+queer of her to do so that at first she refused to discuss them, and
+said openly that she was utterly uninterested in murder or crime of
+any sort.
+
+He, Bunting, had always had a mild pleasure in such things.  In his
+time he had been a great reader of detective tales, and even now he
+thought there was no pleasanter reading.  It was that which had first
+drawn him to Joe Chandler, and made him welcome the young chap as
+cordially as he had done when they first came to London.
+
+But though Ellen had tolerated, she had never encouraged, that sort
+of talk between the two men.  More than once she had exclaimed
+reproachfully: "To hear you two, one would think there was no nice,
+respectable, quiet people left in the world!"
+
+But now all that was changed.  She was as keen as anyone could be
+to hear the latest details of an Avenger crime.  True, she took her
+own view of any theory suggested.  But there!  Ellen always had had
+her own notions about everything under the sun.  Ellen was a woman
+who thought for herself - a clever woman, not an everyday woman by
+any manner of means.
+
+While these thoughts were going disconnectedly through his mind,
+Bunting was breaking four eggs into a basin.  He was going to give
+Ellen a nice little surprise - to cook an omelette as a French chef
+had once taught him to do, years and years ago.  He didn't know how
+she would take his doing such a thing after what she had said; but
+never mind, she would enjoy the omelette when done.  Ellen hadn't
+been eating her food properly of late.
+
+And when he went up again, his wife, to his relief, and, it must be
+admitted, to his surprise, took it very well.  She had not even
+noticed how long he had been downstairs, for she had been reading
+with intense, painful care the column that the great daily paper
+they took in had allotted to the one-time famous detective.
+
+According to this Special Investigator's own account he had
+discovered all sorts of things that had escaped the eye of the
+police and of the official detectives.  For instance, owing, he
+admitted, to a fortunate chance, he had been at the place where
+the two last murders had been committed very soon after the double
+crime had been discovered - in fact within half an hour, and he
+had found, or so he felt sure, on the slippery, wet pavement
+imprints of the murderer's right foot.
+
+The paper reproduced the impression of a half-worn rubber sole.
+At the same time, he also admitted - for the Special Investigator
+was very honest, and he had a good bit of space to fill in the
+enterprising paper which had engaged him to probe the awful
+mystery - that there were thousands of rubber soles being worn in
+London. . . .
+
+And when she came to that statement Mrs. Bunting looked up, and
+there came a wan smile over her thin, closely-shut lips.  It was
+quite true - that about rubber soles; there were thousands of
+rubber soles being worn just now.  She felt grateful to the Special
+Investigator for having stated the fact so clearly.
+
+The column ended up with the words:
+
+"And to-day will take place the inquest on the double crime of ten
+days ago.  To my mind it would be well if a preliminary public
+inquiry could be held at once.  Say, on the very day the discovery
+of a fresh murder is made.  In that way alone would it be possible
+to weigh and sift the evidence offered by members of the general
+public.  For when a week or more has elapsed, and these same people
+have been examined and cross-examined in private by the police,
+their impressions have had time to become blurred and  hopelessly
+confused.  On that last occasion but one there seems no doubt
+that several people, at any rate two women and one man, actually
+saw the murderer hurrying from the scene of his atrocious double
+crime - this being so, to-day's investigation may be of the highest
+value and importance.  To-morrow I hope to give an account of
+the impression made on me by the inquest, and by any statements
+made during its course."
+
+Even when her husband had come in with the tray Mrs. Bunting had
+gone on reading, only lifting up her eyes for a moment.  At last he
+said rather crossly, "Put down that paper, Ellen, this minute!  The
+omelette I've cooked for you will be just like leather if you don't
+eat it."
+
+But once his wile had eaten her breakfast - and, to Bunting's
+mortification, she left more than half the nice omelette untouched
+ - she took the paper up again.  She turned over the big sheets,
+until she found, at the foot of one of the ten columns devoted to
+The Avenger and his crimes, the information she wanted, and then
+uttered an exclamation under her breath.
+
+What Mrs. Bunting had been looking for - what at last she had found
+ - was the time and place of the inquest which was to be held that
+day.  The hour named was a rather odd time - two o'clock in the
+afternoon, but, from Mrs. Bunting's point of view, it was most
+convenient.
+
+By two o'clock, nay, by half-past one, the lodger would have had
+his lunch; by hurrying matters a little she and Bunting would have
+had their dinner, and - and Daisy wasn't coming home till tea-time.
+
+She got up out of her husband's chair.  "I think you're right," she
+said, in a quick, hoarse tone.  "I mean about me seeing a doctor,
+Bunting.' I think I will go and see a doctor this very afternoon."
+
+"Wouldn't you like me to go with you?" he asked.
+
+"No, that I wouldn't.  In fact I wouldn't go at all you was to go
+with me."
+
+"All right," he said vexedly.  "Please yourself, my dear; you know
+best."
+
+"I should think I did know best where my own health is concerned."
+
+Even Bunting was incensed by this lack of gratitude.  "'Twas I said,
+long ago, you ought to go and see the doctor; 'twas you said you
+wouldn't!" he exclaimed pugnaciously.
+
+"Well, I've never said you was never right, have I?  At any rate,
+I'm going."
+
+"Have you a pain anywhere?"  He stared at her with a look of real
+solicitude on his fat, phlegmatic face.
+
+Somehow Ellen didn't look right, standing there opposite him.  Her
+shoulders seemed to have shrunk; even her cheeks had fallen in a
+little.  She had never looked so bad - not even when they had been
+half starving, and dreadfully, dreadfully worded.
+
+"Yes," she said briefly, "I've a pain in my head, at the back of
+my neck.  It doesn't often leave me; it gets worse when anything
+upsets me, like I was upset last night by Joe Chandler."
+
+"He was a silly ass to come and do a thing like that!" said Bunting
+crossly.  "I'd a good mind to tell him so, too.  But I must say,
+Ellen, I wonder he took you in - he didn't me!"
+
+"Well, you had no chance he should - you knew who it was," she said
+slowly.
+
+And Bunting remained silent, for Ellen was right.  Joe Chandler had
+already spoken when he, Bunting, came out into the hall, and saw
+their cleverly disguised visitor.
+
+"Those big black moustaches," he went on complainingly, "and that
+black wig - why, 'twas too ridic'lous - that's what I call it!"
+
+"Not to anyone who didn't know Joe," she said sharply.
+
+"Well, I don't know.  He didn't look like a real man - nohow.  If
+he's a wise lad, he won't let our Daisy ever see him looking like
+that!" and Bunting laughed, a comfortable laugh.
+
+He had thought a good deal about Daisy and young Chandler the last
+two days, and, on the whole, he was well pleased.   It was a dull,
+unnatural life the girl was leading with Old Aunt.  And Joe was
+earning good money.  They wouldn't have long to wait, these two
+young people, as a beau and his girl often have to wait, as he,
+Bunting, and Daisy's mother had had to do, for ever so long before
+they could be married.  No, there was no reason why they shouldn't
+be spliced quite soon - lf so the fancy took them.  And Bunting
+had very little doubt that so the fancy would take Joe, at any rate.
+
+But there was plenty of time.  Daisy wouldn't be eighteen till the
+week after next.  They might wait till she was twenty.  By that
+time Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might have come into quite
+a tidy little bit of money.
+
+"What are you smiling at?" said his wife sharply.
+
+And he shook himself.  "I - smiling?  At nothing that I knows of."
+Then he waited a moment.  "Well, if you will know, Ellen, I was
+just thinking of Daisy and that young chap Joe Chandler.  He is
+gone on her, ain't he?"
+
+"Gone?" And then Mrs. Bunting laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly
+laugh.  "Gone, Bunting?" she repeated.  "Why, he's out o' sight
+ - right, out of sight!"
+
+Then hesitatingly, and looking narrowly at her husband, she went on,
+twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke: -
+"I suppose he'll be going over this afternoon to fetch her?  Or - or
+d'you think he'll have to be at that inquest, Bunting?"
+
+"Inquest?  What inquest?"  He looked at her puzzled.
+
+"Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by King's
+Cross."
+
+"Oh, no; he'd have no call to be at the inquest. For the matter o'
+that, I know he's going over to fetch Daisy.  He said so last night
+ - just when 'you went up to the lodger."
+
+"That's just as well."  Mrs. Bunting spoke with considerable
+satisfaction.  "Otherwise I suppose you'd ha' had to go.  I wouldn't
+like the house left - not with us out of it.  Mr. Sleuth would be
+upset if there came a ring at the door."
+
+"Oh, I won't leave the house, don't you be afraid, Ellen - not while
+you're out"
+
+"Not even if I'm out a good while, Bunting."
+
+"No fear.  Of course, you'll be a long time if it's your idea to see
+that doctor at Ealing?"
+
+He looked at her questioningly, and Mrs. Bunting nodded.  Somehow
+nodding didn't seem as bad as speaking a lie.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Any ordeal is far less terrifying, far easier to meet with courage,
+when it is repeated, than is even a milder experience which is
+entirely novel.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had already attended an inquest, in the character of a
+witness, and it was one of the few happenings of her life which was
+sharply etched against the somewhat blurred screen of her memory.
+
+In a country house where the then Ellen Green had been staying for
+a fortnight with her elderly mistress, there had occurred one of
+those sudden, pitiful tragedies which occasionally destroy the
+serenity, the apparent decorum, of a large, respectable household.
+
+The under-housemaid, a pretty, happy-natured girl, had drowned
+herself for love of the footman, who had given his sweetheart cause
+for bitter jealousy.  The girl had chosen to speak of her troubles
+to the strange lady's maid rather than to her own fellow-servants,
+and it was during the conversation the two women had had together
+that the girl had threatened to take her own life.
+
+As Mrs. Bunting put on her outdoor clothes, preparatory to going
+out, she recalled very clearly all the details of that dreadful
+affair, and of the part she herself had unwillingly played in it.
+
+She visualised the country inn where the inquest on that poor,
+unfortunate creature had been held.
+
+The butler had escorted her from the Hall, for he also was to give
+evidence, and as they came up there had been a look of cheerful
+animation about the inn yard; people coming and going, many women
+as well as men, village folk, among whom the dead girl's fate had
+aroused a great deal of interest, and the kind of horror which those
+who live on a dull countryside welcome rather than avoid.
+
+Everyone there had been particularly nice and polite to her, to
+Ellen Green; there had been a time of waiting in a room upstairs in
+the old inn, and the witnesses had been accommodated, not only with
+chairs, but with cake and wine.
+
+She remembered how she had dreaded being a witness, how she had
+felt as if she would like to run away from her nice, easy place,
+rather than have to get up and tell the little that she knew of the
+sad business.
+
+But it had not been so very dreadful after all.  The coroner had
+been a kindly-spoken gentleman; in fact he had complimented her on
+the clear, sensible way she had given her evidence concerning the
+exact words the unhappy girl had used.
+
+One thing Ellen Green had said, in answer to a question put by
+an inquisitive juryman, had raised a laugh in the crowded,
+low-ceilinged room.  "Ought not Miss Ellen Green," so the man had
+asked, "to have told someone of the girl's threat?  If she had done
+so, might not the girl have been prevented from throwing herself
+into the lake?"  And she, the witness, had answered, with some
+asperity - for by that time the coroner's kind manner had put her
+at her ease - that she had not attached any importance to what the
+girl had threatened to do, never believing that any young woman
+could be so silly as to drown herself for love!
+
+******
+
+Vaguely Mrs. Bunting supposed that the inquest at which she was
+going to be present this afternoon would be like that country
+inquest of long ago.
+
+It had been no mere perfunctory inquiry; she remembered very well
+how little by little that pleasant-spoken gentleman, the coroner,
+had got the whole truth out - the story, that is, of how that
+horrid footman, whom she, Ellen Green, had disliked from the first
+minute she had set eyes on him, had, taken up with another young
+woman.  It had been supposed that this fact would not be elicited
+by the coroner; but it had been, quietly, remorselessly; more, the
+dead girl's letters had been read out - piteous, queerly expressed
+letters, full of wild love and bitter, threatening jealousy.  And
+the jury had censured the young man most severely; she remembered
+the look on his face when the people, shrinking back, had made a
+passage for him to slink out of the crowded room.
+
+Come to think of it now, it was strange she had never told Bunting
+that long-ago tale.  It had occurred years before she knew him, and
+somehow nothing had ever happened to make her tell him about it.
+
+She wondered whether Bunting had ever been to an inquest. She longed
+to ask him.  But if she asked him now, this minute, he might guess
+where she was thinking of going.
+
+And then, while still moving about her bedroom, she shook her head
+ - no, no, Bunting would never guess such a thing; he would never,
+never suspect her of telling him a lie.
+
+Stop - had she told a lie?  She did mean to go to the doctor after
+the inquest was finished - if there was time, that is.  She wondered
+uneasily how long such an inquiry was likely to last.  In this case,
+as so very little had been discovered, the proceedings would surely
+be very formal - formal and therefore short.
+
+She herself had one quite definite object - that of hearing the
+evidence of those who believed they had seen the murderer leaving
+the spot where his victims lay weltering in their still flowing
+blood.  She was filled with a painful, secret, and, yes, eager
+curiosity to hear how those who were so positive about the matter
+would describe the appearance of The Avenger.  After all, a lot of
+people must have seen him, for, as Bunting had said only the day
+before to young Chandler, The Avenger was not a ghost; he was a
+living man with some kind of hiding-place where he was known, and
+where he spent his time between his awful crimes.
+
+As she came back to the sitting-room, her extreme pallor struck her
+husband.
+
+"Why, Ellen," he said, "it is time you went to the doctor.  You
+looks just as if you was going to a funeral.  I'll come along with
+you as far as the station.  You're going by train, ain't you?  Not
+by bus, eh?  It's a very long way to Ealing, you know."
+
+"There you go!  Breaking your solemn promise to me the very first
+minute!"  But somehow she did not speak unkindly, only fretfully
+and sadly.
+
+And Bunting hung his head.  "Why, to be sure I'd gone and clean
+forgot the lodger!  But will you be all right, Ellen?  Why not wait
+till to-morrow, and take Daisy with you?"
+
+"I like doing my own business in my own way, and not in someone
+else's way!" she snapped out; and then more gently, for Bunting
+really looked concerned, and she did feel very far from well, "I'll
+be all right, old man.  Don't you worry about me!"
+
+As she turned to go across to the door, she drew the black shawl
+she had put over her long jacket more closely round her.
+
+She felt ashamed, deeply ashamed, of deceiving so kind a husband.
+And yet, what could she do?  How could she share her dreadful burden
+with poor Bunting? Why, 'twould be enough to make a man go daft.
+Even she often felt as if she could stand it no longer - as if she
+would give the world to tell someone - anyone - what it was that she
+suspected, what deep in her heart she so feared to be the truth.
+
+But, unknown to herself, the fresh outside air, fog-laden though it
+was, soon began to do her good.  She had gone out far too little the
+last few days, for she had had a nervous terror of leaving the house
+unprotected, as also a great unwillingness to allow Bunting to come
+into contact with the lodger.
+
+When she reached the Underground station she stopped short.  There
+were two ways of getting to St. Pancras - she could go by bus, or
+she could go by train.  She decided on the latter.  But before
+turning into the station her eyes strayed over the bills of the
+early afternoon papers lying on the ground.
+
+Two words,
+
+
+THE AVENGER,
+
+
+stared up at her in varying type.
+
+Drawing her black shawl yet a little closer about her shoulders,
+Mrs. Bunting looked down at the placards.  She did not feel inclined
+to buy a paper, as many of the people round her were doing.  Her eyes
+were smarting, even now, from their unaccustomed following of the
+close print in the paper Bunting took in.
+
+Slowly she turned, at last, into the Underground station.
+
+And now a piece of extraordinary good fortune befell Mrs. Bunting.
+
+The third-class carriage in which she took her place happened to be
+empty, save for the presence of a police inspector.  And once they
+were well away she summoned up courage, and asked him the question
+she knew she would have to ask of someone within the next few minutes.
+
+"Can you tell me," she said, in a low voice, "where death inquests
+are held " - she moistened her lips, waited a moment, and then
+concluded - " in the neighbourhood of King's Cross?"
+
+The man turned and, looked at her attentively.  She did not look at
+all the sort of Londoner who goes to an inquest - there are many
+such - just for the fun of the thing.  Approvingly, for he was a
+widower, he noted her neat black coat and skirt; and the plain
+Princess bonnet which framed her pale, refined face.
+
+"I'm going to the Coroner's Court myself." he said good-naturedly.
+"So you can come along of me.  You see there's that big Avenger
+inquest going on to-day, so I think they'll have had to make other
+arrangements for - hum, hum - ordinary cases."  And as she looked
+at him dumbly, he went on, "There'll be a mighty crowd of people at
+The Avenger inquest - a lot of ticket folk to be accommodated, to
+say nothing of the public."
+
+"That's the inquest I'm going to," faltered Mrs. Bunting.  She could
+scarcely get the words out.  She realised with acute discomfort,
+yes, and shame, how strange, how untoward, was that which she was
+going to do.  Fancy a respectable woman wanting to attend a murder
+inquest!
+
+During the last few days all her perceptions had be come sharpened
+by suspense and fear.  She realised now, as she looked into the
+stolid face of her unknown friend, how she herself would have
+regarded any woman who wanted to attend such an inquiry from a
+simple, morbid feeling of curiosity.  And yet - and yet that was
+just what she was about to do herself.
+
+"I've got a reason for wanting to go there," she murmured.  It was
+a comfort to unburden herself this little way even to a stranger.
+
+"Ah!" he said reflectively.  "A - a relative connected with one of
+the two victims' husbands, I presume?"
+
+And Mrs. Bunting bent her head.
+
+"Going to give evidence?" he asked casually, and then he turned and
+looked at Mrs. Bunting with far more attention than he had yet done.
+
+"Oh, no!"  There was a world of horror, of fear in the speaker's voice.
+
+And the inspector felt concerned and sorry.  "Hadn't seen her for
+quite a long time, I suppose?"
+
+"Never had, seen her.  I'm from the country."  Something impelled
+Mrs. Bunting to say these words.  But she hastily corrected herself,
+"At least, I was."
+
+"Will he be there?"
+
+She looked at him dumbly; not in the least knowing to whom he was
+alluding.
+
+"I mean the husband," went on the inspector hastily.  "I felt sorry
+for the last poor chap - I mean the husband of the last one - he
+seemed so awfully miserable.  You see, she'd been a good wife and a
+good mother till she took to the drink."
+
+"It always is so," breathed out Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"Aye." he waited a moment.  "D'you know anyone about the court?" he
+asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, don't you worry.  I'll take you in along o' me.  You'd never
+get in by yourself."
+
+They got out; and oh, the comfort of being in some one's charge, of
+having a determined man in uniform to look after one!  And yet even
+now there was to Mrs. Bunting something dream-like, unsubstantial
+about the whole business.
+
+"If he knew - if he only knew what I know!" she kept saying over
+and over again to herself as she walked lightly by the big, burly
+form of the police inspector.
+
+"'Tisn't far - not three minutes," he said suddenly.  "Am I walking
+too quick for you, ma'am?"'
+
+"No, not at all.  I'm a quick walker."
+
+And then suddenly they turned a corner and came on a mass of people,
+a densely packed crowd of men and women, staring at a mean-looking
+little door sunk into a high wall.
+
+"Better take my arm," the inspector suggested.  "Make way there!
+Make way!" he cried authoritatively; and he swept her through the
+serried ranks which parted at the sound of his voice, at the sight
+of his uniform.
+
+"Lucky you met me," he said, smiling.  "You'd never have got
+through alone.  And 'tain't a nice crowd, not by any manner of
+means."
+
+The small door opened just a little way, and they found themselves
+on a narrow stone-flagged path, leading into a square yard.  A few
+men were out there, smoking.
+
+Before preceding her into the building which rose at the back of
+the yard, Mrs. Bunting's kind new friend took out his watch.
+"There's another twenty minutes before they'll begin," he said.
+"There's the mortuary" - he pointed with his thumb to a low room
+built out to the right of the court.  "Would you like to go in and
+see them?" he whispered.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried, in a tone of extreme horror.  And he looked
+down at her with sympathy, and with increased respect.  She was a
+nice, respectable woman, she was.  She had not come here imbued
+with any morbid, horrible curiosity, but because she thought it
+her duty to do so.  He suspected her of being sister-in-law to
+one of The Avenger's victims.
+
+They walked through into a big room or hall, now full of men
+talking in subdued yet eager, animated tones.
+
+"I think you'd better sit down' here," he said considerately, and,
+leading her to one of the benches that stood out from the whitewashed
+walls - "unless you'd rather be with the witnesses, that is."
+
+But again she said, "Oh, no!"  And then, with an effort, "Oughtn't
+I to go into the court now, if it's likely to be so full?"
+
+"Don't you worry," he said kindly.  "I'll see you get a proper place.
+I must leave you now for a minute, but I'll come back in good time
+and look after you."
+
+She raised the thick veil she had pulled down over her face while
+they were going through that sinister, wolfish-looking crowd outside,
+and looked about her.
+
+Many of the gentlemen - they mostly wore tall hats and good overcoats
+ - standing round and about her looked vaguely familiar.  She picked
+out one at once.  He was a famous journalist, whose shrewd, animated
+face was familiar to her owing to the fact that it was widely
+advertised in connection with a preparation for the hair - the
+preparation which in happier, more prosperous days Bunting had had
+great faith in, and used, or so he always said, with great benefit to
+himself.  This gentleman was the centre of an eager circle; half a
+dozen men were talking to him, listening deferentially when he spoke,
+and each of these men, so Mrs. Bunting realised, was a Somebody.
+
+How strange, how amazing, to reflect that from all parts of London,
+from their doubtless important avocations, one unseen, mysterious
+beckoner had brought all these men here together, to this sordid
+place, on this bitterly cold, dreary day.  Here they were, all
+thinking of, talking of, evoking one unknown, mysterious personality
+ - that of the shadowy and yet terribly real human being who chose
+to call himself The Avenger.  And somewhere, not so very far away
+from them all The Avenger was keeping these clever, astute, highly
+trained minds - aye, and bodies, too - at bay.
+
+Even Mrs. Bunting, sitting here unnoticed, realised the irony of her
+presence among them.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that she had been sitting there a long
+time - it was really about a quarter of an hour - when her official
+friend came back.
+
+"Better come along now," he whispered; "it'll begin soon."
+
+She followed him out into a passage, up a row of steep stone steps,
+and so into the Coroner's Court.
+
+The court was big, well-lighted room, in some ways not unlike a
+chapel, the more so that a kind of gallery ran half-way round, a
+gallery evidently set aside for the general public, for it was now
+crammed to its utmost capacity.
+
+Mrs. Bunting glanced timidly towards the serried row of faces.  Had
+it not been for her good fortune in meeting the man she was now
+following, it was there that she would have had to try and make her
+way.  And she would have failed.  Those people had rushed in the
+moment the doors were opened, pushing, fighting their way in a way
+she could never have pushed or fought.
+  
+There were just a few women among them, set, determined-looking
+women, belonging to every class, but made one by their love of
+sensation and their power of forcing their way in where they wanted
+to be.  But the women were few; the great majority of those standing
+there were men - men who were also representative of every class of
+Londoner.
+
+The centre of the court was like an arena; it was sunk two or three
+steps below the surrounding gallery.  Just now it was comparatively
+clear of people, save for the benches on which sat the men who were
+to compose the jury.  Some way from these men, huddled together in
+a kind of big pew, stood seven people - three women and four men.
+
+"D'you see the witnesses?" whispered the inspector, pointing these
+out to her.  He supposed her to know one of them with familiar
+knowledge, but, if that were so, she made no sign.
+
+Between the windows, facing the whole room, was a kind of little
+platform, on which stood a desk and an arm-chair.  Mrs. Bunting
+guessed rightly that it was there the coroner would sit.  And to
+the left of the platform was the witness-stand, also raised
+considerably above the jury.
+
+Amazingly different, and far, far more grim and awe-inspiring than
+the scene of the inquest which had taken place so long ago, on that
+bright April day, in the village inn.  There the coroner had sat on
+the same level as the jury, and the witnesses had simply stepped
+forward one by one, and taken their place before him.
+
+Looking round her fearfully, Mrs. Bunting thought she would surely
+die if ever she were exposed to the ordeal of standing in that
+curious box-like stand, and she stared across at the bench where sat
+the seven witnesses with a feeling of sincere pity in her heart.
+
+But even she soon realised that her pity was wasted.  Each woman
+witness looked eager, excited, and animated; well pleased to be the
+centre of attention and attraction to the general public.  It was
+plain each was enjoying her part of important, if humble, actress
+in the thrilling drama which was now absorbing the attention of all
+London - it might almost be said of the whole world.
+
+Looking at these women, Mrs. Bunting wondered vaguely which was
+which.  Was it that rather draggle-tailed-looking young person who
+had certainly, or almost certainly, seen The Avenger within ten
+seconds of the double crime being committed?  The woman who, aroused
+by one of his victims' cry of terror, had rushed to her window and
+seen the murderer's shadowy form pass swiftly by in the fog?
+
+Yet another woman, so Mrs. Bunting now remembered, had given a most
+circumstantial account of what The Avenger looked like, for he, it
+was supposed, had actually brushed by her as he passed.
+
+Those two women now before her had been interrogated and
+cross-examined again and again, not only by the police, but by
+representatives of every newspaper in London.  It was from what they
+had both said - unluckily their accounts materially differed - that
+that official description of The Avenger had been worked up  - that
+which described him as being a good-looking, respectable young fellow
+of twenty-eight, carrying a newspaper parcel.
+
+As for the third woman, she was doubtless an acquaintance, a boon
+companion of the dead.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked away from the witnesses, and focused her gaze
+on another unfamiliar sight.  Specially prominent, running indeed
+through the whole length of the shut-in space, that is, from the
+coroner's high dais right across to the opening in the wooden barrier,
+was an ink-splashed table at which, when she had first taken her
+place, there had been sitting three men busily sketching; but now
+every seat at the table was occupied by tired, intelligent-looking
+men, each with a notebook, or with some loose sheets of paper,
+before him.
+
+"Them's the reporters," whispered her friend.  "They don't like
+coming till the last minute, for they has to be the last to go.
+At an ordinary inquest there are only two - maybe three - attending,
+but now every paper in the kingdom has pretty well applied for a
+pass to that reporters' table."
+
+He looked consideringly down into the well of the court.  "Now let
+me see what I can do for you - "
+
+Then he beckoned to the coroner's officer: "Perhaps you could put
+this lady just over there, in a corner by herself?  Related to a
+relation of the deceased, but doesn't want to be - "  He whispered
+a word or two, and the other nodded sympathetically, and looked at
+Mrs. Bunting with interest. "I'll put her just here," he muttered.
+"There's no one coming there to-day.  You see, there are only seven
+witnesses - sometimes we have a lot more than that."
+
+And he kindly put her on a now empty bench opposite to where the
+seven witnesses stood and sat with their eager, set faces, ready
+ - aye, more than ready - to play their part.
+
+For a moment every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but
+soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised
+that she had nothing to do with the case.  She was evidently there
+as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a "friend at
+court," and ,so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having to
+stand in the crowd.
+
+But she was not long left in isolation.  Very soon some of the
+important-looking gentlemen she had seen downstairs came into the
+court, and were ushered over to her seat while two or three among
+them, including the famous writer whose face was so familiar that
+it almost seemed to Mrs. Bunting like that of a kindly acquaintance,
+were accommodated at the reporters' table.
+  
+"Gentlemen, the Coroner."
+
+The jury stood up, shuffling their feet, and then sat down again;
+over the spectators there fell a sudden silence.
+
+And then what immediately followed recalled to Mrs. Bunting, for the
+first time, that informal little country inquest of long ago.
+
+First came the "Oyez!  Oyez!" the old Norman-French summons to all
+whose business it is to attend a solemn inquiry into the death
+ - sudden, unexplained, terrible - of a fellow-being.
+
+The jury - there were fourteen of them - all stood up again.  They
+raised their hands and solemnly chanted together the curious words
+of their oath.
+
+Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences 'twixt the coroner
+and his officer.
+
+Yes, everything was in order.  The jury had viewed the bodies - he
+quickly corrected himself - the body, for, technically speaking, the
+inquest just about to be held only concerned one body.
+
+And then, amid a silence so absolute that the slightest rustle could
+be heard through the court, the coroner - a clever-looking gentleman,
+though not so old as Mrs. Bunting thought he ought to have been to
+occupy so important a position on so important a day - gave a little
+history, as it were, of the terrible and mysterious Avenger crimes.
+
+He spoke very dearly, warming to his work as he went on.
+
+He told them that he had been present at the inquest held on one of
+The Avenger's former victims.  "I only went through professional
+curiosity," he threw in by way of parenthesis, "little thinking,
+gentlemen, that the inquest on one of these unhappy creatures would
+ever be held in my court."
+
+On and on, he went, though he had, in truth, but little to say, and
+though that little was known to every one of his listeners.
+
+Mrs. Bunting heard one of the older gentlemen sitting near her
+whisper to another: "Drawing it out all he can; that's what he's
+doing.  Having the time of his life, evidently!"  And then the other
+whispered back, so low that she could only just catch the words,
+"Aye, aye.  But he's a good chap - I knew his father; we were at
+school together.  Takes his job very seriously, you know - he does
+to-day, at any rate."
+
+******
+
+She was listening intently, waiting for a word, a sentence, which
+would relieve her hidden terrors, or, on the other hand, confirm
+them.  But the word, the sentence, was never uttered.
+
+And yet, at the very end of his long peroration, the coroner did
+throw out a hint which might mean anything - or nothing.
+
+"I am glad to say that we hope to obtain such evidence to-day as
+will in time lead to the apprehension of the miscreant who has
+committed, and is still committing, these terrible crimes."
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared uneasily up into the coroner's firm,
+determined-looking face.  What did he mean by that?  Was there any
+new evidence - evidence of which Joe Chandler, for instance, was
+ignorant?  And, as if in answer to the unspoken question, her heart
+gave a sudden leap, for a big, burly man had taken his place in the
+witness-box - a policeman who had not been sitting with the other
+witnesses.
+
+But soon her uneasy terror became stilled.  This witness was simply
+the constable who had found the first body.  In quick, business-like
+tones he described exactly what had happened to him on that cold,
+foggy morning ten days ago.  He was shown a plan, and he marked it
+slowly, carefully, with a thick finger.  That was the exact place
+ - no, he was making a mistake - that was the place where the other
+body had lain.  He explained apologetically that he had got rather
+mixed up between the two bodies - that of Johanna Cobbett and Sophy
+Hurtle.
+
+And then the coroner intervened authoritatively:  "For the purpose
+of this inquiry," he said, "we must, I think, for a moment consider
+the two murders together."
+
+After that, the witness went on far more comfortably; and as he
+proceeded, in a quick monotone, the full and deadly horror of
+The Avenger's acts came over Mrs. Bunting in a great seething flood
+of sick fear and - and, yes, remorse.
+
+Up to now she had given very little thought - if, indeed, any thought
+ - to the drink-sodden victims of The Avenger.  It was he who had
+filled her thoughts, - he and those who were trying to track him down.
+But now?  Now she felt sick and sorry she had come here to-day.  She
+wondered if she would ever be able to get the vision the policeman's
+words had conjured up out of her mind - out of her memory.
+
+And then there, came an eager stir of excitement and of attention
+throughout the whole court, for the policeman had stepped down out of
+the witness-box, and one of the women witnesses was being conducted to
+his place.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked with interest and sympathy at the woman,
+remembering how she herself had trembled with fear, trembled as that
+poor, bedraggled, common-looking person was trembling now.  The woman
+had looked so cheerful, so - so well pleased with herself till a
+minute ago, but now she had become very pale, and she looked round
+her as a hunted animal might have done.
+
+But the coroner was very kind, very soothing and gentle in his
+manner, just as that other coroner had been when dealing with Ellen
+Green at the inquest on that poor drowned girl.
+
+After the witness had repeated in a toneless voice the solemn words
+of the oath, she began to be taken, step by step, though her story.
+At once Mrs. Bunting realised that this was the woman who claimed
+to have seen The Avenger from her bedroom window.  Gaining confidence,
+as she went on, the witness described how she had heard a long-drawn,
+stifled screech, and, aroused from deep sleep, had instinctively
+jumped out of bed and rushed to her window.
+
+The coroner looked down at something lying on his desk.  "Let me
+see!  Here is the plan.  Yes - I think I understand that the house
+in which you are lodging exactly faces the alley where the two crimes
+were committed?"
+
+And there arose a quick, futile discussion.  The house did not face
+the alley, but the window of the witness's bedroom faced the alley.
+
+"A distinction without a difference," said the coroner testily.
+"And now tell us as clearly and quickly as you can what you saw when
+you looked out."
+
+There fell a dead silence on the crowded court.  And then the woman
+broke out, speaking more volubly and firmly than she had yet done.
+"I saw 'im!" she cried.  "I shall never forget it - no, not till my
+dying day!"  And she looked round defiantly.
+
+Mrs. Bunting suddenly remembered a chat one of the newspaper men had
+had with a person who slept under this woman's room.  That person
+had unkindly said she felt sure that Lizzie Cole had not got up that
+night - that she had made up the whole story.  She, the speaker, slept
+lightly, and that night had been tending a sick child.  Accordingly,
+she would have heard if there had been either the scream described
+by Lizzie Cole, or the sound of Lizzie Cole jumping out of bed.
+
+"We quite understand that you think you saw the" - the coroner
+hesitated - "the individual who had just perpetrated these terrible
+crimes.  But what we want to have from you is a description of him.
+In spite of the foggy atmosphere about which all are agreed, you
+say you saw him distinctly, walking along for some yards below your
+window.  Now, please, try and tell us what he was like."
+
+The woman began twisting and untwisting the corner of a coloured
+handkerchief she held in her hand.
+
+"Let us begin at the beginning," said the coroner patiently.  "What
+sort of a hat was this man wearing when you saw him hurrying from
+the passage?"
+
+"It was just a black 'at" said the witness at last, in a husky,
+rather anxious tone.
+
+"Yes - just a black hat.  And a coat - were you able to see what
+sort of a coat he was wearing?"
+
+"'E 'adn't got no coat" she said decidedly.  "No coat at all!  I
+remembers that very perticulerly.  I thought it queer, as it was
+so cold - everybody as can wears some sort o' coat this weather!"
+
+A juryman who had been looking at a strip of newspaper, and
+apparently not attending at all to what the witness was saying, here
+jumped up and put out his hand.
+
+"Yes?" the coroner turned to him.
+
+"I just want to say that this 'ere witness - if her name is Lizzie
+Cole, began by saying The Avenger was wearing a coat - a big, heavy
+coat.  I've got it here, in this bit of paper."
+
+"I never said so!" cried the woman passionately.  "I was made to
+say all those things by the young man what came to me from the 
+Evening Sun.  Just put in what 'e liked in 'is paper, 'e did - not
+what I said at all!"
+
+At this there was some laughter, quickly suppressed.
+
+"In future," said the coroner severely, addressing the juryman, who
+had now sat down again, "you must ask any question you wish to ask
+through your foreman, and please wait till I have concluded my
+examination of the witness."
+
+But this interruption, this - this accusation, had utterly upset
+the witness.  She began contradicting herself hopelessly.  The man
+she had seen hurrying by in the semi-darkness below was tall - no,
+he was short.  He was thin - no, he was a stoutish young man.  And
+as to whether he was carrying anything, there was quite an
+acrimonious discussion.
+
+Most positively, most confidently, the witness declared that she had
+seen a newspaper parcel under his arm; it had bulged out at the back
+ - so she declared.  But it was proved, very gently and firmly, that
+she had said nothing of the kind to the gentleman from Scotland Yard
+who had taken down her first account - in fact, to him she had
+declared confidently that the man had carried nothing - nothing at
+all; that she had seen his arms swinging up and down.
+
+One fact - if fact it could be called - the coroner did elicit.
+Lizzie Cole suddenly volunteered the statement that as he had passed
+her window he had looked up at her.  This was quite a new statement.
+
+"He looked up at you?" repeated the coroner.  "You said nothing of
+that in your examination."
+
+"I said nothink because I was scared - nigh scared to death!"
+
+"If you could really see his countenance, for we know the night was
+dark and foggy, will you please tell me what he was like?"
+
+But the coroner was speaking casually, his hand straying over his
+desk; not a creature in that court now believed the woman's story.
+
+"Dark!" she answered dramatically.  "Dark, almost black!  If you can
+take my meaning, with a sort of nigger look."
+
+And then there was a titter.  Even the jury smiled.  And sharply the
+coroner bade Lizzie Cole stand down.
+
+Far more credence was given to the evidence of the next witness.
+
+This was an older, quieter-looking woman, decently dressed in black.
+Being the wife of a night watchman whose work lay in a big warehouse
+situated about a hundred yards from the alley or passage where the
+crimes had taken place, she had gone out to take her husband some
+food he always had at one in the morning.  And a man had passed her,
+breathing hard and walking very quickly.  Her attention had been
+drawn to him because she very seldom met anyone at that hour, and
+because he had such an odd, peculiar look and manner.
+
+Mrs. Bunting, listening attentively, realised that it was very much
+from what this witness had said that the official description of The
+Avenger had been composed - that description which had brought such
+comfort to her, Ellen Bunting's, soul.
+
+This witness spoke quietly, confidently, and her account of the
+newspaper parcel the man was carrying was perfectly clear and
+positive.
+
+"It was a neat parcel," she said, "done up with string."
+
+She had thought it an odd thing for a respectably dressed young man
+to carry such a parcel - that was what had made her notice it.  But
+when pressed, she had to admit that it had been a very foggy night
+ - so foggy that she herself had been afraid of losing her way,
+though every step was familiar.
+
+When the third woman went into the box, and with sighs and tears
+told of her acquaintance with one of the deceased, with Johanna
+Cobbett, there was a stir of sympathetic attention.  But she had
+nothing to say throwing any light on the investigation, save that
+she admitted reluctantly that "Anny" would have been such a nice,
+respectable young woman if it hadn't been for the drink.
+
+Her examination was shortened as much as possible; and so was that
+of the next witness, the husband of Johanna Cobbett.  He was a very
+respectable-looking man, a foreman in a big business house at Croydon.
+He seemed to feel his position most acutely.  He hadn't seen his
+wife for two years; he hadn't had news of her for six months.  Before
+she took to drink she had been an admirable wife, and - and yes,
+mother.
+
+Yet another painful few minutes, to anyone who had a heart, or
+imagination to understand, was spent when the father of the murdered
+woman was in the box.  He had had later news of his unfortunate
+daughter than her husband had had, but of course he could throw no
+light at all on her murder or murderer.
+
+A barman, who had served both the women with drink just before the
+public-house closed for the night, was handled rather roughly.  He
+had stepped with a jaunty air into the box, and came out of it
+looking cast down, uneasy.
+
+And then there took place a very dramatic, because an utterly
+unexpected, incident.  It was one of which the evening papers made
+the utmost much to Mrs. Bunting's indignation.  But neither coroner
+nor jury - and they, after all, were the people who mattered - 
+thought a great deal of it.
+
+There had come a pause in the proceedings.  All seven witnesses had
+been heard, and a gentleman near Mrs. Bunting whispered, "They are
+now going to call Dr. Gaunt.  He's been in every big murder case for
+the last thirty years.  He's sure to have something interesting to
+say.  It was really to hear him I came."
+
+But before Dr. Gaunt had time even to get up from the seat with
+which he had been accommodated close to the coroner, there came a
+stir among the general public, or, rather, among those spectators
+who stood near the low wooden door which separated the official
+part of the court from the gallery.
+
+The coroner's officer, with an apologetic air, approached the
+coroner, and banded him up an envelope.  And again in an instant,
+there fell absolute silence on the court.
+
+Looking rather annoyed, the coroner opened the envelope.  He glanced
+down the sheet of notepaper it contained.  Then he looked up.
+
+"Mr. - " then he glanced down again.  "Mr. - ah - Mr. - is it Cannot?"
+he said doubtfully, "may come forward."
+
+There ran a titter though the spectators, and the coroner frowned.
+
+A neat, jaunty-looking old gentleman, in a nice fur-lined overcoat,
+with a fresh, red face and white side-whiskers, was conducted from
+the place where he had been standing among the general public, to
+the witness-box.
+
+"This is somewhat out of order, Mr. - er - Cannot," said the
+coroner severely.  "You should have sent me this note before the
+proceedings began.  This gentleman," he said, addressing the jury,
+"informs me that he has something of the utmost importance to
+reveal in connection with our investigation."
+
+"I have remained silent - I have locked what I knew within my own
+breast" - began Mr. Cannot in a quavering voice, "because I am so
+afraid of the Press!  I knew if I said anything, even to the police,
+that my house would be besieged by reporters and newspaper men. . . .
+I have a delicate wife, Mr. Coroner.  Such a state of things - the
+state of things I imagine - might cause her death - indeed, I hope
+she will never read a report of these proceedings.  Fortunately, she
+has an excellent trained nurse - "
+
+"You will now take the oath," said the coroner sharply.  He already
+regretted having allowed this absurd person to have his say.
+
+Mr. Cannot took the oath with a gravity and decorum which had been
+lacking in most of those who had preceded him.
+
+"I will, address myself to the jury," he began.
+
+"You will do nothing of the sort," broke in the coroner.  "Now,
+please attend to me.  You assert in your letter that you know who
+is the - the - "
+
+"The Avenger," put in Mr. Cannot promptly.
+
+"The perpetrator of these crimes.  You further declare that you met
+him on the very night he committed the murder we are now
+investigating?"
+
+"I do so declare," said Mr. Cannot confidently.  "Though in the best
+of health myself," - he beamed round the court, a now amused,
+attentive court - "it is my fate to be surrounded by sick people, to
+have only ailing friends.  I have to trouble you with my private
+affairs, Mr. Coroner, in order to explain why I happened to be out
+at so undue an hour as one o'clock in the morning - "
+
+Again a titter ran through the court.  Even the jury broke into
+broad smiles.
+
+"Yes," went on the witness solemnly, "I was with a sick friend - in
+fact, I may say a dying friend, for since then he has passed away.
+I will not reveal my exact dwelling-place; you, sir, have it on my
+notepaper.  It is not necessary to reveal it, but you will understand
+me when I say that in order to come home I had to pass through a
+portion of the Regent's Park; and it was there - to be exact, about
+the middle of Prince's Terrace - when a very peculiar-looking
+individual stopped and accosted me."
+
+Mrs. Bunting's hand shot up to her breast. A feeling of deadly fear
+took possession of her.
+
+"I mustn't faint," she said to herself hurriedly.  "I mustn't faint!
+Whatever's the matter with me?"  She took out her bottle of
+smelling-salts, and gave it a good, long sniff.
+
+"He was a grim, gaunt man, was this stranger, Mr. Coroner, with a
+very odd-looking face.  I should say an educated man - in common
+parlance, a gentleman.  What drew my special attention to him was
+that he was talking aloud to himself - in fact, he seemed to be
+repeating poetry.  I give you my word, I had no thought of The
+Avenger, no thought at all.  To tell you the truth, I thought this
+gentleman was a poor escaped lunatic, a man who'd got away from his
+keeper.  The Regent's Park, sir, as I need hardly tell you, is a
+most quiet and soothing neighbourhood - "
+
+And then a member of the general public gave a loud guffaw.
+
+"I appeal to you; sir," the old gentleman suddenly cried out "to
+protect me from this unseemly levity!  I have not come here with
+any other object than that of doing my duty as a citizen!"
+
+"I must ask you to keep to what is strictly relevant" said the
+coroner stiffly.  "Time is going on, and I have another important
+witness to call - a medical witness.  Kindly tell me, as shortly as
+possible, what made you suppose that this stranger could possibly
+be - " with an effort he brought out for the first time since the
+proceedings began, the words, "The Avenger?"
+
+"I am coming to that!" said Mr. Cannot hastily.  "I am coming to
+that!  Bear with me a little longer, Mr. Coroner.  It was a foggy
+night, but not as foggy as it became later.  And just when we were
+passing one an-other, I and this man, who was talking  aloud to
+himself - he, instead of going on, stopped and turned towards
+me.  That made me feel queer and uncomfortable, the more so that
+there was a very wild, mad look on his face.  I said to him, as
+soothingly as possible, 'A very foggy night, sir.'  And he said,
+'Yes - yes, it is a foggy night, a night fit for the commission of
+dark and salutary deeds.'  A very strange phrase, sir, that - 'dark
+and salutary deeds.'  He looked at the coroner expectantly - 
+
+"Well?  Well, Mr. Cannot?  Was that all?  Did you see this person
+go off in the direction of - of King's Cross, for instance?"
+
+"No." Mr. Cannot reluctantly shook his head.  "No, I must honestly
+say I did not.  He walked along a certain way by my side, and then
+he crossed the road and was lost in the fog."
+
+"That will do," said the coroner.  He spoke more kindly.  "I thank
+you, Mr. Cannot, for coming here and giving us what you evidently
+consider important information."
+
+Mr. Cannot bowed, a funny, little, old-fashioned bow, and again some
+of those present tittered rather foolishly.
+
+As he was stepping down from the witness-box, he turned and looked
+up at the coroner, opening his lips as he did so.  There was a
+murmur of talking going on, but Mrs. Bunting, at any rate, heard
+quite distinctly what it was that he said:
+
+"One thing I have forgotten, sir, which may be of importance.  The
+man carried a bag - a rather light-coloured leather bag, in his left
+hand.  It was such a bag, sir, as might well contain a long-handled
+knife."
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked at the reporters' table.  She remembered suddenly
+that she had told Bunting about the disappearance of Mr. Sleuth's bag.
+And then a feeling of intense thankfulness came over her; not a
+single reporter at the long, ink-stained table had put down that last
+remark of Mr. Cannot.  In fact, not one of them had heard it.
+
+Again the last witness put up his hand to command attention.  And
+then silence did fall on the court.
+
+"One word more," he said in a quavering voice.  "May I ask to be
+accommodated with a seat for the rest of the proceedings?  I see
+there is some room left on the witnesses' bench."  And, without
+waiting for permission, he nimbly stepped across and sat down.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled.  Her friend, the inspector, was
+bending over her.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to come along now," he said urgently.  - "I
+don't suppose you want to hear the medical evidence.  It's always
+painful for a female to hear that.  And there'll be an awful rush
+when the inquest's over.  I could get you away quietly now."
+
+She rose, and, pulling her veil down over her pale face, followed
+him obediently.
+
+Down the stone staircase they went, and through the big, now empty,
+room downstairs.
+
+"I'll let you out the back way," he said.  "I expect you're tired,
+ma'am, and will like to get home to a cup o' tea."
+
+"I don't know how to thank you!"  There were tears in her eyes.
+She was trembling with excitement and emotion.  "You have been good
+to me."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," he said a little awkwardly.  "I expect you
+went though a pretty bad time, didn't you?"
+
+"Will they be having that old gentleman again?" she spoke in a
+whisper, and looked up at him with a pleading, agonised look.
+
+"Good Lord,' no!  Crazy old fool!  We're troubled with a lot of
+those sort of people, you know, ma'am, and they often do have funny
+names, too.  You see, that sort is busy all their lives in the City,
+or what not; then they retires when they gets about sixty, and
+they're fit to hang themselves with dulness.  Why, there's hundreds
+of lunies of the sort to be met in London.  You can't go about at
+night and not meet 'em.  Plenty of 'em!"
+
+"Then you don't think there was anything in what he said?" she
+ventured.
+
+"In what that old gent said?  Goodness - no!" he laughed
+good-naturedly.  "But I'll tell you what I do think.  If it wasn't
+for the time that had gone by, I should believe that the second
+witness had seen that crafty devil - " he lowered his voice.  "But,
+there, Dr. Gaunt declares most positively - so did two other medical
+gentlemen - that the poor creatures had been dead hours when they
+was found.  Medical gentlemen are always very positive about their
+evidence.  They have to be -  otherwise who'd believe 'em?  If we'd
+time I could tell you of a case in which - well, 'twas all because
+of Dr. Gaunt that the murderer escaped.  We all knew perfectly well
+the man we caught did it, but he was able to prove an alibi as to
+the time Dr.  Gaunt said the poor soul was killed.  
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+It was not late even now, for the inquest had begun very punctually,
+but Mrs. Bunting felt that no power on earth should force her to go
+to Ealing.  She felt quite tired out and as if she could think of
+nothing.
+
+Pacing along very slowly, as if she were an old, old woman, she
+began listlessly turning her steps towards home.  Somehow she felt
+that it would do her more good to stay out in the air than take the
+train.  Also she would thus put off the moment - the moment to which
+she looked forward with dread and dislike - when she would have to
+invent a circumstantial story as to what she had said to the doctor,
+and what the doctor had said to her.
+
+Like most men and women of his class, Bunting took a great interest
+in other people's ailments, the more interest that he was himself so
+remarkably healthy.  He would feel quite injured if Ellen didn't
+tell him everything that had happened; everything, that is, that the
+doctor had told her.
+
+As she walked swiftly along, at every corner, or so it seemed to her,
+and outside every public-house, stood eager boys selling the latest
+edition of the afternoon papers to equally eager buyers.  "Avenger
+Inquest?" they shouted exultantly.  "All the latest evidence!"  At
+one place, where there were a row of contents-bills pinned to the
+pavement by stones, she stopped and looked down.  "Opening of the
+Avenger Inquest. What is he really like?  Full description."  On yet
+another ran the ironic query: "Avenger Inquest. Do you know him?"
+
+And as that facetious question stared up at her in huge print, Mrs.
+Bunting turned sick - so sick and faint that she did what she had
+never done before in her life - she pushed her way into a
+public-house, and, putting two pennies down on the counter, asked
+for, and received, a glass of cold water.
+
+As she walked along the now gas-lit streets, she found her mind
+dwelling persistently - not on the inquest at which she had been
+present, not even on The Avenger, but on his victims.
+
+Shudderingly, she visualised the two cold bodies lying in the
+mortuary.  She seemed also to see that third body, which, though
+cold, must yet be warmer than the other two, for at this time
+yesterday The Avenger's last victim had been alive, poor soul - 
+alive and, according to a companion of hers whom the papers had
+already interviewed, particularly merry and bright.
+
+Hitherto Mrs. Bunting had been spared in any real sense a vision of
+The Avenger's victims.  Now they haunted her, and she wondered
+wearily if this fresh horror was to be added to the terrible fear
+which encompassed her night and day.
+
+As she came within sight of home, her spirit suddenly lightened.
+The narrow, drab-coloured little house, flanked each side by others
+exactly like it in every single particular, save that their front
+yards were not so well kept, looked as if it could,  aye, and would,
+keep any secret closely hidden.
+
+For a moment, at any rate, The Avenger's victims receded from her
+mind.  She thought of them no more.  All her thoughts were
+concentrated on Bunting - Bunting and Mr. Sleuth.  She wondered what
+had happened during her absence - whether the lodger had rung his
+bell, and, if so, how he had got on with Bunting, and Bunting with
+him?
+
+She walked up the little flagged path wearily, and yet with a
+pleasant feeling of home-coming.  And then she saw that Bunting must
+have been watching for her behind the now closely drawn curtains,
+for before she could either knock or ring he had opened the door.
+
+"I was getting quite anxious about you," he exclaimed.  "Come in,
+Ellen, quick!  You must be fair perished a day like now - and you
+out so little as you are.  Well?  I hope you found the doctor all
+right?"  He looked at her with affectionate anxiety.
+
+And then there came a sudden, happy thought to Mrs. Bunting.  "No,"
+she said slowly, "Doctor Evans wasn't in.  I waited, and waited, and
+waited, but he never came in at all.  "Twas my own fault" she added
+quickly.  Even at such a moment as this she told herself that though
+she had, in a sort of way, a kind of right to lie to her husband,
+she had no sight to slander the doctor who had been so kind to her
+years ago.  "I ought to have sent him a card yesterday night," she
+said.  "Of course, I was a fool to go all that way, just on chance
+of finding a doctor in.  It stands to reason they've got to go out
+to people at all times of day."
+
+"I hope they gave you a cup of tea?" he said.
+
+And again she hesitated, debating a point with herself: if the
+doctor had a decent sort of servant, of course, she, Ellen Bunting,
+would have been offered a cup of tea, especially if she explained
+she'd known him a long time.
+
+She compromised.  "I was offered some," she said, in a weak, tired
+voice.  "But there, Bunting, I didn't feel as if I wanted it.  I'd
+be very grateful for a cup now - if you'd just make it for me over
+the ring."
+
+"'Course I will," he said eagerly.  "You just come in and sit down,
+my dear.  Don't trouble to take your things off now - wait till
+you've had tea."
+
+And she obeyed him.  "Where's Daisy?" she asked suddenly.  "I thought
+the girl would be back by the time I got home."
+
+"She ain't coming home to-day" - there was an odd, sly, smiling look
+on Bunting's face.
+
+"Did she send a telegram?" asked Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"No.  Young Chandler's just come in and told me.  He's been over
+there and, - would you believe it, Ellen?  - he's managed to make
+friends with Margaret.  Wonderful what love will do, ain't it?  He
+went over there just to help Daisy carry her bag back, you know,
+and then Margaret told him that her lady had sent her some money
+to go to the play, and she actually asked Joe to go with them this
+evening - she and Daisy - to the pantomime.  Did you ever hear o'
+such a thing?"
+
+"Very nice for them, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bunting absently.  But
+she was pleased - pleased to have her mind taken off herself.  "Then
+when is that girl coming home?" she asked patiently.
+
+"Well, it appears that Chandler's got to-morrow morning off too - 
+this evening and to-morrow morning.  He'll be on duty all night,
+but he proposes to go over and bring Daisy back in time for early
+dinner.  Will that suit you, Ellen?"
+
+"Yes.  That'll be all right," she said.  "I don't grudge the girl
+her bit of pleasure.  One's only young once.  By the way, did the
+lodger ring while I was out?"
+
+Bunting turned round from the gas-ring, which he was watching to
+see the kettle boil.  "No," he said.  "Come to think of it, it's
+rather a funny thing, but the truth is, Ellen, I never gave Mr.
+Sleuth a thought.  You see, Chandler came in and was telling me all
+about Margaret, laughing-like, and then something else happened
+while you was out, Ellen."
+
+"Something else happened?" she said in a startled voice.  Getting
+up from her chair she came towards her husband: "What happened?
+Who came?"
+
+"Just a message for me, asking if I could go to-night to wait at a
+young lady's birthday party.  In Hanover Terrace it is.  A waiter
+ - one of them nasty Swiss fellows as works for nothing - fell out
+just at the last minute and so they had to send for me."
+
+His honest face shone with triumph.  The man who had taken over his
+old friend's business in Baker Street had hitherto behaved very
+badly to Bunting, and that though Bunting had been on the books for
+ever so long, and had always given every satisfaction.  But this new
+man had never employed him - no, not once.
+
+"I hope you didn't make yourself too cheap?" said his wife jealously.
+
+"No, that I didn't!  I hum'd and haw'd a lot; and I could see the
+fellow was quite worried - in fact, at the end he offered me
+half-a-crown more.  So I graciously consented!"
+
+Husband and wife laughed more merrily than they had done for a long
+time.
+
+"You won't mind being alone, here?  I don't count the lodger - he's
+no good - "  Bunting looked at her anxiously.  He was only prompted
+to ask the question because lately Ellen had been so queer, so
+unlike herself.  Otherwise it never would have occurred to him that
+she could be afraid of being alone in the house.  She had often been
+so in the days when he got more jobs.
+
+She stared at him, a little suspiciously.  "I be afraid?" she echoed.
+"Certainly not.  Why should I be?  I've never been afraid before.
+What d'you exactly mean by that, Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, nothing.  I only thought you might feel funny-like, all alone
+on this ground floor.  You was so upset yesterday when that young
+fool Chandler came, dressed up, to the door."
+
+"I shouldn't have been frightened if he'd just been an ordinary
+stranger," she said shortly.  "He said something silly to me - just
+in keeping with his character-like, and it upset me.  Besides, I
+feel better now."
+
+As she was sipping gratefully her cup of tea, there came a noise
+outside, the shouts of newspaper-sellers.
+
+"I'll just run out," said Bunting apologetically, "and see what
+happened at that inquest to-day.  Besides, they may have a clue
+about the horrible affair last night.  Chandler was full of it - 
+when he wasn't talking about Daisy and Margaret, that is.  He's
+on to-night, luckily not till twelve o'clock; plenty of time to
+escort the two of 'em back after the play.  Besides, he said
+he'll put them into a cab and blow the expense, if the panto'
+goes on too long for him to take 'em home."
+
+"On to-night?".  repeated Mrs. Bunting.  "Whatever for?"
+
+"Well, you see, The Avenger's always done 'em in couples, so to
+speak.  They've got an idea that he'll have a try again to-night.
+However, even so, Joe's only on from midnight till five o'clock.
+Then he'll go and turn in a bit before going off to fetch Daisy,
+Fine thing to be young, ain't it, Ellen?"
+
+"I can't believe that he'd go out on such a night as this!"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Bunting, staring at her.  Ellen had spoken
+so oddly, as if to herself, and in so fierce and passionate a tone.
+
+"What do I mean?" she repeated - and a great fear clutched at her
+heart.  What had she said?  She had been thinking aloud.
+
+"Why, by saying he won't go out.  Of course, he has to go out.
+Besides, he'll have been to the play as it is.  'Twould be a pretty
+thing if the police didn't go out, just because it was cold!"
+
+"I - I was thinking of The Avenger," said Mrs. Bunting.  She looked
+at her husband fixedly.  Somehow she had felt impelled to utter
+those true words.
+
+"He don't take no heed of heat nor cold," said Bunting sombrely.
+"I take it the man's dead to all human feeling - -saving, of
+course, revenge.
+
+"So that's your idea about him, is it?"  She looked across at her
+husband.  Somehow this dangerous, this perilous conversation between
+them attracted her strangely.  She felt as if she must go on with it.
+"D'you think he was the man that woman said she saw?  That young
+man what passed her with a newspaper parcel?"
+
+"Let me see," he said slowly.  "I thought that 'twas from the bedroom
+window a woman saw him?"
+
+"No, no.  I mean the other woman, what was taking her husband's
+breakfast to him in the warehouse.  She was far the most
+respectable-looking woman of the two," said Mrs. Bunting impatiently.
+
+And then, seeing her husband's look of utter, blank astonishment,
+she felt a thrill of unreasoning terror.  She must have gone suddenly
+mad to have said what she did!  Hurriedly she got up from her chair.
+"There, now," she said; "here I am gossiping all about nothing when
+I ought to be seeing about the lodger's supper.  It was someone in
+the train talked to me about that person as thinks she saw The
+Avenger."
+
+Without waiting for an answer, she went into her bedroom, lit the
+gas, and shut the door.  A moment later she heard Bunting go out to
+buy the paper they had both forgotten during their dangerous
+discussion.
+
+As she slowly, languidly took off her nice, warm coat and shawl,
+Mrs. Bunting found herself shivering.  It was dreadfully cold, quite
+unnaturally cold even for the time of year.
+
+She looked longingly towards the fireplace.  It was now concealed
+by the washhand-stand, but how pleasant it would be to drag that
+stand aside and light a bit of fire, especially as Bunting was going
+to be out to-night.  He would have to put on his dress clothes, and
+she didn't like his dressing in the sitting-room.  It didn't suit
+her ideas that he should do so.  How if she did light the fire here,
+in their bedroom?  It would be nice for her to have bit of fire to
+cheer her up after he had gone.
+
+Mrs. Bunting knew only too well that she would have very little
+sleep the coming night.  She looked over, with shuddering distaste,
+at her nice, soft bed.  There she would lie, on that couch of little
+ease, listening - listening. . . .
+
+She went down to the kitchen.  Everything was ready for Mr. Sleuth's
+supper, for she had made all her preparations before going out so
+as not to have to hurry back before it suited her to do so.
+
+Leaning the tray for a moment on the top of the banisters, she
+listened.  Even in that nice warm drawing-room, and with a good
+fire, how cold the lodger must feel sitting studying at the table!
+But unwonted sounds were coming through the door.  Mr. Sleuth was
+moving restlessly about the room, not sitting reading, as was his
+wont at this time of the evening.
+
+She knocked, and then waited a moment.
+
+There came the sound of a sharp click, that of the key turning in
+the lock of the chiffonnier cupboard - or so Mr. Sleuth's landlady
+could have sworn.
+
+There was a pause - she knocked again.
+
+"Come in," said Mr. Sleuth loudly, and she opened the door and
+carried in the tray.
+
+"You are a little earlier than usual, are you not Mrs. Bunting?"
+he said, with a touch of irritation in his voice.
+
+"I don't think so, sir, but I've been out.  Perhaps I lost count of
+the time.  I thought you'd like your breakfast early, as you had
+dinner rather sooner than usual."
+
+"Breakfast?  Did you say breakfast, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure!  I meant supper."  He looked at
+her fixedly.  It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that there was a terrible
+questioning look in his dark, sunken eyes.
+
+"Aren't you well?" he said slowly.  "You don't look well, Mrs.
+Bunting."
+
+"No, sir," she said.  "I'm not well.  I went over to see a doctor
+this afternoon, to Ealing, sir."
+
+"I hope he did you good, Mrs. Bunting" - the lodger's voice had
+become softer, kinder in quality.
+
+"It always does me good to see the doctor," said Mrs. Bunting
+evasively.
+
+And then a very odd smile lit up Mr. Sleuth's face.  "Doctors are a
+maligned body of men," he said.  "I'm glad to hear you speak well of
+them.  They do their best, Mrs. Bunting.  Being human they are liable
+to err, but I assure you they do their best."
+
+"That I'm sure they do, sir " - she spoke heartily, sincerely.
+Doctors had always treated her most kindly, and even generously.
+
+And then, having laid the cloth, and put the lodger's one hot dish
+upon it, she went towards the door.  "Wouldn't you like me to bring
+up another scuttleful of coals, sir?  it's bitterly cold - getting
+colder every minute.  A fearful night to have to go out in - " she
+looked at him deprecatingly.
+
+And then Mr. Sleuth did something which startled her very much.
+Pushing his chair back, he jumped up and drew himself to his full
+height.
+
+"What d'you mean?" he stammered.  "Why did you say that, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She stared at him, fascinated, affrighted.  Again there came an
+awful questioning look over his face.
+
+"I was thinking of Bunting, sir.  He's got a job to-night.  He's
+going to act as waiter at a young lady's birthday party.  I was
+thinking it's a pity he has to turn out, and in his thin clothes,
+too" - she brought out her words jerkily.
+
+Mr. Sleuth seemed somewhat reassured, and again he sat down.  "Ah!"
+he said.  "Dear me - I'm sorry to hear that!  I hope your husband
+will not catch cold, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+And then she shut the door, and went downstairs.
+
+******
+
+Without telling Bunting what she meant to do, she dragged the heavy
+washhand-stand away from the chimneypiece, and lighted the fire.
+
+Then in some triumph she called Bunting in.
+
+"Time for you to dress," she cried out cheerfully, "and I've got a
+little bit of fire for you to dress by."
+
+As he exclaimed at her extravagance, "Well, 'twill be pleasant for
+me, too; keep me company-like while you're out; and make the room
+nice and warm when you come in.  You'll be fair perished, even
+walking that short way," she said.
+
+And then, while her husband was dressing, Mrs. Bunting went upstairs
+and cleared away Mr. Sleuth's supper.
+
+The lodger said no word while she was so engaged - no word at all.
+
+He was sitting away from the table, rather an unusual thing for him
+to do, and staring into the fire, his hands on his knees.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked lonely, very, very lonely and forlorn.  Somehow, a
+great rush of pity, as well as of horror, came over Mrs. Bunting's
+heart.  He was such a - a - she searched for a word in her mind, but
+could only find the word "gentle " - he was such a nice, gentle
+gentleman, was Mr. Sleuth.  Lately he had again taken to leaving his
+money about, as he had done the first day or two, and with some
+concern his landlady had seen that the store had diminished a good
+deal.  A very simple calculation had made her realise that almost the
+whole of that missing money had come her way, or, at any rate, had
+passed through her hands.
+
+Mr. Sleuth never stinted himself as to food, or stinted them, his
+landlord and his landlady, as to what he had said he would pay.
+And Mrs. Bunting's conscience pricked her a little, for he hardly
+ever used that room upstairs - that room for which he had paid extra
+so generously.  If Bunting got another job or two through that nasty
+man in Baker Street, - and now that the ice had been broken between
+them it was very probable that he would do so, for he was a very
+well-trained, experienced waiter - then she thought she would tell
+Mr. Sleuth that she no longer wanted him to pay as much as he was
+now doing.
+
+She looked anxiously, deprecatingly, at his long, bent back.
+
+"Good-night, sir," she said at last.
+
+Mr. Sleuth turned round.  His face looked sad and worn.
+
+"I hope you'll sleep well, sir."
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I shall sleep well.  But perhaps I shall take a
+little turn first. Such is my way, Mrs. Bunting; after I have been
+studying all day I require a little exercise."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't go out to-night," she said deprecatingly.  "'Tisn't
+fit for anyone to be out in the bitter cold."
+
+"And yet - and yet" - he looked at her attentively -  "there will
+probably be many people out in the streets to-night."
+
+"A many more than usual, I fear, sir."
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Sleuth quickly.  "Is it not a strange thing,
+Mrs. Bunting, that people who have all day in which to amuse
+themselves should carry their revels far into the night?"
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking of revellers, sir; I was thinking" - she
+hesitated, then, with a gasping effort Mrs. Bunting brought out the
+words, "of the police."
+
+"The police?"  He put up his right hand and stroked his chin two or
+three times with a nervous gesture.  "But what is man - what is man's
+puny power or strength against that of God, or even of those over
+whose feet God has set a guard?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked at his landlady with a kind of triumph lighting up
+his face, and Mrs. Bunting felt a shuddering sense of relief.  Then
+she had not offended her lodger?  She had not made him angry by that,
+that - was it a hint she had meant to convey to him?
+
+"Very true, sir," she said respectfully.  "But Providence means us
+to take care o' ourselves too."  And then she closed the door behind
+her and went downstairs.
+
+But Mr. Sleuth's landlady did not go on, down to the kitchen.  She
+came into her sitting-room, and, careless of what Bunting would think
+the next morning, put the tray with the remains of the lodger's meal on
+her table.  Having done that, and having turned out the gas in the
+passage and the sitting-room, she went into her bedroom and closed the
+door.
+
+The fire was burning brightly and clearly.  She told herself that
+she did not need any other light to undress by.
+
+What was it made the flames of the fire shoot up, shoot down, in
+that queer way?  But watching it for awhile, she did at last doze
+off a bit.
+
+And then - and then Mrs. Bunting woke with a sudden thumping of her
+heart.  Woke to see that the fire was almost out - woke to hear a
+quarter to twelve chime out - woke at last to the sound she had been
+listening for before she fell asleep - the sound of Mr. Sleuth,
+wearing his rubber-soled shoes, creeping downstairs, along the
+passage, and so out, very, very quietly by the front door.
+
+But once she was in bed Mrs. Bunting turned restless.  She tossed
+this way and that, full of discomfort and unease.  Perhaps it was
+the unaccustomed firelight dancing on the walls, making queer shadows
+all round her, which kept her so wide awake.
+
+She lay thinking and listening - listening and thinking.  It even
+occurred to her to do the one thing that might have quieted her
+excited brain - to get a book, one of those detective stories of
+which Bunting had a slender store in the next room, and then,
+lighting the gas, to sit up and read.
+
+No, Mrs. Bunting had always been told it was very wrong to read in
+bed, and she was not in a mood just now to begin doing anything that
+she had been told was wrong. . . .
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+It was a very cold night - so cold, so windy, so snow-laden was the
+atmosphere, that everyone who could do so stayed indoors.
+
+Bunting, however, was now on his way home from what had proved a
+really pleasant job.  A remarkable piece of luck had come his way
+this evening, all the more welcome because it was quite unexpected!
+The young lady at whose birthday party he had been present in
+capacity of waiter had come into a fortune that day, and she had had
+the gracious, the surprising thought of presenting each of the hired
+waiters with a sovereign!
+
+This gift, which had been accompanied by a few kind words, had gone
+to Bunting's heart.  It had confirmed him in his Conservative
+principles; only gentlefolk ever behaved in that way; quiet,
+old-fashioned, respectable, gentlefolk, the sort of people of whom
+those nasty Radicals know nothing and care less!
+
+But the ex-butler was not as happy as he should have been.
+Slackening his footsteps, he began to think with puzzled concern of
+how queer his wife had seemed lately.  Ellen had become so nervous,
+so "jumpy," that he didn't know what to make of her sometimes.  She
+had never been really good-tempered - your capable, self -respecting
+woman seldom is - but she had never been like what she was now.  And
+she didn't get better as the days went on; in fact she got worse.
+Of late she had been quite hysterical, and for no reason at all!
+Take that little practical joke of young Joe Chandler.  Ellen knew
+quite well he often had to go about in some kind of disguise, and yet
+how she had gone on, quite foolish-like - not at all as one would
+have expected her to do.
+
+There was another queer thing about her which disturbed him in more
+senses than one.  During the last three weeks or so Ellen had taken
+to talking in her sleep.  "No, no, no!" she had cried out, only the
+night before.  "It isn't true - I won't have it said - it's a lie!"
+And there had been a wail of horrible fear and revolt in her usually
+quiet, mincing voice.
+
+******
+
+Whew!  it was cold; and he had stupidly forgotten his gloves.
+
+He put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and began walking
+more quickly.
+
+As h& tramped steadily along, the ex-butler suddenly caught sight
+of his lodger walking along the opposite side of the solitary street
+ - one of those short streets leading off the broad road which
+encircles Regent's Park.
+
+Well!  This was a funny time o' night to be taking a stroll for
+pleasure, like!
+
+Glancing across, Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth's tall, thin figure
+was rather bowed, and that his head was bent toward the ground.  His
+left arm was thrust into his long Inverness tape, and so was quite
+hidden, but the other side of the cape bulged out, as if the lodger
+were carrying a bag or parcel in the hand which hung down straight.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was walking rather quickly, and as he walked he talked
+aloud, which, as Bunting knew, is not unusual with gentlemen who live
+much alone.  It was clear that he had not yet become aware of the
+proximity of his landlord.
+
+Bunting told himself that Ellen was right.  Their lodger was
+certainly a most eccentric, peculiar person.  Strange, was it not,
+that that odd, luny-like gentleman should have made all the
+difference to his, Bunting's, and Mrs. Bunting's happiness and
+comfort in life?
+
+Again glancing across at Mr. Sleuth, he reminded himself, not for
+the first time, of this perfect lodger's one fault - his odd dislike
+to meat, and to what Bunting vaguely called to himself, sensible food.
+
+But there, you can't have everything!  The more so that the lodger
+was not one of those crazy vegetarians who won't eat eggs and cheese.
+No, he was reasonable in this, as in everything else connected with
+his dealings with the Buntings.
+
+As we know, Bunting saw far less of the lodger than did his wife.
+Indeed, he had been upstairs only three or four times since Mr.
+Sleuth had been with them, and when his landlord had had occasion
+to wait on him the lodger had remained silent.  Indeed, their
+gentleman had made it very clear that he did not like either the
+husband or wife to come up to his rooms without being definitely
+asked to do so.
+
+Now, surely, would be a good opportunity for a little genial
+conversation?  Bunting felt pleased to see his lodger; it increased
+his general comfortable sense of satisfaction.
+
+So it was that the a-butler, still an active man for his years,
+crossed over the road, and, stepping briskly forward, began trying
+to overtake Mr. Sleuth.  But the more he hurried along, the more the
+other hastened, and that without ever turning round to see whose
+steps he could hear echoing behind him on the now freezing pavement.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's own footsteps were quite inaudible - an odd circumstance,
+when you came to think of it - as Bunting did think of it later,
+lying awake by Mrs. Bunting's side in the pitch darkness.  What it
+meant of course, was that the lodger had rubber soles on his shoes.
+Now Bunting had never had a pair of rubber-soled shoes sent down to
+him to dean.  He had always supposed the lodger had only one pair of
+outdoor boots.
+
+The two men - the pursued and the pursuer - at last turned into the
+Marylebone Road; they were now within a few hundred yards of home.
+Plucking up courage, Bunting called out, his voice echoing freshly
+on the still air:
+
+"Mr Sleuth, sir?  Mr. Sleuth!"
+
+The lodger stopped and turned round.
+
+He had been walking so quickly, and he was in so poor a physical
+condition, that the sweat was pouring down his face.
+
+"Ah!  So it's you, Mr. Bunting?  I heard footsteps behind me, and
+I hurried on.  I wish I'd known that it was you; there are so many
+queer characters about at night in London."
+
+"Not on a night like this, sir.  Only honest folk who have business
+out of doors would be out such a night as this.  It is cold, sir!"
+
+And then into Bunting's slow and honest mind there suddenly crept
+the query as to what on earth Mr. Sleuth's own business out could be
+on this bitter night.
+
+"Cold?" the lodger repeated; he was panting a little, and his words
+came out sharp and quick through his thin lips.  "I can't say that
+I find it cold, Mr. Bunting.  When the snow falls, the air always
+becomes milder."
+
+"Yes, sir; but to-night there's such a sharp east wind.  Why, it
+freezes the very marrow in one's bones!  Still, there's nothing like
+walking in cold weather to make one warm, as you seem to have found,
+sir."
+
+Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth kept his distance in a rather strange
+way; he walked at the edge of the pavement, leaving the rest of it,
+on the wall side, to his landlord.
+
+"I lost my way," he said abruptly.  "I've been over Primrose Hill to
+see a friend of mine, a man with whom I studied when I was a lad,
+and then, coming back, I lost my way.
+
+Now they had come right up to the little gate which opened on the
+shabby, paved court in front of the house - that gate which now was
+never locked.
+
+Mr. Sleuth, pushing suddenly forward, began walking up the flagged
+path, when, with a "By your leave, sir," the ex-butler, stepping
+aside, slipped in front of his lodger, in order to open the front
+door for him.
+
+As he passed by Mr. Sleuth, the back of Bunting's bare left hand
+brushed lightly against the long Inverness cape the lodger was
+wearing, and, to Bunting's surprise, the stretch of cloth against
+which his hand lay for a moment was not only damp, damp maybe from
+stray flakes of snow which had settled upon it, but wet - wet and
+gluey.
+
+Bunting thrust his left hand into his pocket; it was with the other
+that he placed the key in the lock of the door.
+
+The two men passed into the hail together.
+
+The house seemed blackly dark in comparison with the lighted-up
+road outside, and as he groped forward, closely followed by the
+lodger, there came over Bunting a sudden, reeling sensation of
+mortal terror, an instinctive, assailing knowledge of frightful
+immediate danger.
+
+A stuffless voice - the voice of his first wife, the long-dead
+girl to whom his mind so seldom reverted nowadays - uttered into
+his ear the words, "Take care!"
+
+And then the lodger spoke.  His voice was harsh and grating,
+though not loud.
+
+"I'm afraid, Mr. Bunting, that you must have felt something dirty,
+foul, on my coat?  It's too long a story to tell you now, but I
+brushed up against a dead animal, a creature to whose misery some
+thoughtful soul had put an end, lying across a bench on Primrose
+Hill."
+
+"No, sir, no.  I didn't notice nothing.  I scarcely touched you,
+sir."
+
+It seemed as if a power outside himself compelled Bunting to utter
+these lying words.  "And now, sir, I'll be saying good-night to you,"
+he said.
+
+Stepping back he pressed with all the strength that was in him
+against the wall, and let the other pass him.  There was a pause,
+and then - "Good-night," returned Mr. Sleuth, in a hollow voice.
+Bunting waited until the lodger had gone upstairs, and then,
+lighting the gas, he sat down there, in the hall.  Mr. Sleuth's 
+landlord felt very queer - queer and sick.
+
+He did not draw his left hand out of his pocket till he heard Mr.
+Sleuth shut the bedroom door upstairs.  Then he held up his left
+hand and looked at it curiously; it was flecked, streaked with
+pale reddish blood.
+
+Taking off his boots, he crept into the room where his wife lay
+asleep.  Stealthily he walked across to the wash-hand-stand, and
+dipped a hand into the water-jug.
+
+"Whatever are you doing?  What on earth are you doing?" came a
+voice from the bed, and Bunting started guiltily.
+
+"I'm just washing my hands."
+
+"Indeed, you're doing nothing of the sort!  I never heard of such
+a thing - putting your hand into the water in which I was going to
+wash my face to-morrow morning!"
+
+"I'm very sorry, Ellen," he said meekly; "I meant to throw it away.
+You don't suppose I would have let you wash in dirty water, do you?"
+
+She said no more, but, as he began undressing himself, Mrs. Bunting
+lay staring at him in a way that made her husband feel even more
+uncomfortable than he was already.
+
+At last he got into bed.  He wanted to break the oppressive silence
+by telling Ellen about the sovereign the young lady had given him,
+but that sovereign now seemed to Bunting of no more account than if
+it had been a farthing he had picked up in the road outside.
+
+Once more his wife spoke, and he gave so great a start that it shook
+the bed.
+
+"I suppose that you don't know that you've left the light burning in
+the hall, wasting our good money?" she observed tartly.
+
+He got up painfully and opened the door into the passage.  It was as
+she had said; the gas was flaring away, wasting their good money - or,
+rather, Mr. Sleuth's good money.  Since he had come to be their lodger
+they had not had to touch their rent money.
+
+Bunting turned out the light and groped his way back to the room, and
+so to bed.  Without speaking again to each other, both husband and
+wife lay awake till dawn.
+
+The next morning Mr. Sleuth's landlord awoke with a start; he felt
+curiously heavy about the limbs, and tired about the eyes.
+
+Drawing his watch from under his pillow, he saw that it was seven
+o'clock.  Without waking his wife, he got out of bed and pulled the
+blind a little to one side.  It was snowing heavily, and, as is the
+way when it snows, even in London, everything was strangely,
+curiously still.  After he had dressed he went out into the passage.
+As he had at once dreaded and hoped, their newspaper was already
+lying on the mat.  It was probably the sound of its being pushed
+through the letter-box which had waked him from his unrestful
+sleep.
+
+He picked the paper up and went into the sitting-room then,
+shutting the door behind him carefully, he spread the newspaper
+wide open on the table, and bent over it.
+
+As Bunting at last looked up and straightened himself, an expression
+of intense relief shone upon his stolid face.  The item of news he
+had felt certain would be printed in big type on the middle sheet
+was not there.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Feeling amazingly light-hearted, almost light-headed, Bunting lit
+the gas-ring to make his wife her morning cup of tea.
+
+While he was doing it, he suddenly heard her call out:
+
+"Bunting!" she cried weakly.  "Bunting!"  Quickly he hurried in
+response to her call.  "Yes," he said.  "What is it, my dear?  I
+won't be a minute with your tea." And he smiled broadly, rather
+foolishly.
+
+She sat up and looked at him, a dazed expression on her face.
+
+"What are you grinning at?" she asked suspiciously.
+
+"I've had a wonderful piece of luck," he explained.  "But you was
+so cross last night that I simply didn't dare tell you about it."
+
+"Well, tell me now," she said in a low voice.
+
+"I had a sovereign given me by the young lady.  You see, it was her
+birthday party, Ellen, and she'd come into a nice bit of money, and
+she gave each of us waiters a sovereign."
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no comment.  Instead, she lay back and closed her
+eyes.
+
+"What time d'you expect Daisy?" she asked languidly.  "You didn't
+say what time Joe was going to fetch her, when we was talking about
+it yesterday."
+
+"Didn't I?  Well, I expect they'll be in to dinner."
+
+"I wonder, how long that old aunt of hers expects us to keep her?"
+said Mrs. Bunting thoughtfully.  All the cheer died out of Bunting's
+round face.  He became sullen and angry.  It would be a pretty thing
+if he couldn't have his own daughter for a bit - especially now that
+they were doing so well!
+
+"Daisy'll stay here just as long as she can," he said shortly.
+"It's too bad of you, Ellen, to talk like that!  She helps you all
+she can; and she brisks us both up ever so much.  Besides, 'twould
+be cruel - cruel to take the girl away just now, just as she and
+that young chap are making friends-like.  One would suppose that
+even you would see the justice o' that!"
+
+But Mrs. Bunting made no answer.
+
+Bunting went off, back into the sitting-room.  The water was boiling
+now, so he made the tea; and then, as he brought the little tray in,
+his heart softened.  Ellen did look really ill - ill and wizened.
+He wondered if she had a pain about which she wasn't saying anything.
+She had never been one to grouse about herself.
+
+"The lodger and me came in together last night," he observed
+genially.  "He's certainly a funny kind of gentleman.  It wasn't
+the sort of night one would have chosen to go out for a walk, now
+was it?  And yet he must'a been out a long time if what he said
+was true."
+
+"I don't wonder a quiet gentleman like Mr. Sleuth hates the
+crowded streets," she said slowly.  "They gets worse every day - 
+that they do!  But go along now; I want to get up."
+
+He went back into their sitting-room, and, having laid the fire
+and put a match to it, he sat down comfortably with his newspaper.
+
+Deep down in his heart Bunting looked back to this last night with
+a feeling of shame and self-rebuke.  Whatever had made such horrible
+thoughts and suspicions as had possessed him suddenly come into his
+head?  And just because of a trifling thing like that blood.  No
+doubt Mr. Sleuth's nose had bled - that was what had happened;
+though, come to think of it, he had mentioned brushing up against
+a dead animal.
+
+Perhaps Ellen was right after all.  It didn't do for one to be
+always thinking of dreadful subjects, of murders and such-like.  It
+made one go dotty - that's what it did.
+
+And just as he was telling himself that, there came to the door a
+loud knock, the peculiar rat-tat-tat of a telegraph boy.  But before
+he had time to get across the room, let alone to the front door,
+Ellen had rushed through the room, clad only in a petticoat and
+shawl.
+
+"I'll go," she cried breathlessly.  "I'll go, Bunting; don't you
+trouble."
+
+He stared at her, surprised, and followed her into the hall.
+
+She put out a hand, and hiding herself behind the door, took the
+telegram from the invisible boy.  "You needn't wait," she said.
+"If there's an answer we'll send it out ourselves."  Then she tore
+the envelope open - "Oh!" she said with a gasp of relief.  "It's
+only from Joe Chandler, to say he can't go over to fetch Daisy this
+morning.  Then you'll have to go."
+
+She walked back into their sitting-room.  "There!" she said.
+"There it is, Bunting.  You just read it."
+
+"Am on duty this morning.  Cannot fetch Miss Daisy as arranged. -
+Chandler."
+
+"I wonder why he's on duty?" said Bunting slowly, uncomfortably.
+"I thought Joe's hours was as regular as clockwork - that nothing
+could make any difference to them.  However, there it is.  I suppose
+it'll do all right if I start about eleven o'clock?  It may have
+left off snowing by then.  I don't feel like going out again just
+now.  I'm pretty tired this morning."
+
+"You start about twelve," said his wife quickly.
+
+"That'll give plenty of time."
+
+The morning went on quietly, uneventfully.  Bunting received a
+letter from Old Aunt saying Daisy must come back next Monday, a
+little under a week from now.  Mr. Sleuth slept soundly, or, at
+any rate, he made no sign of being awake; and though Mrs. Bunting
+often, stopped to listen, while she was doing her room, there
+came no sounds at all from overhead.
+
+Scarcely aware that it was so, both Bunting and his wife felt more
+cheerful than they had done for a long time.  They had quite a
+pleasant little chat when Mrs. Bunting came and sat down for a bit,
+before going down to prepare Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
+
+"Daisy will be surprised to see you - not to say disappointed!" she
+observed, and she could not help laughing a little to herself at
+the thought.  And when, at eleven, Bunting got up to go, she made
+him stay on a little longer.  "There's no such great hurry as that,"
+she said good-temperedly.  "It'll do quite well if you're there by
+half-past twelve.  I'll get dinner ready myself.  Daisy needn't help
+with that.  I expect Margaret has worked her pretty hard."
+
+But at last there came the moment when Bunting had to start, and
+his wife went with him to the front door.  It was still snowing,
+less heavily, but still snowing.  There were very few people coming
+and going, and only just a few cabs and carts dragging cautiously
+along through the slush.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was still in the kitchen when there came a ring and a
+knock at the door - a now very familiar ring and knock.  "Joe thinks
+Daisy's home again by now!" she said, smiling to herself.
+
+Before the door was well open, she heard Chandler's voice.  "Don't
+be scared this time, Mrs. Bunting!"  But though not exactly scared,
+she did give a gasp of surprise.  For there stood Joe, made up to
+represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection,
+with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his
+seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, and greenish-black pot hat.
+
+"I haven't a minute," he said a little breathlessly.  "But I thought
+I'd just run in to know if Miss Daisy was safe home again.  You got
+my telegram all right?  I couldn't send no other kind of message."
+
+"She's not back yet.  Her father hasn't been gone long after her."
+Then, struck by a look in his eyes, "Joe, what's the matter?" she
+asked quickly.
+
+There came a thrill of suspense in her voice, her face grew drawn,
+while what little colour there was in it receded, leaving it very
+pale.
+
+"Well," he said.  "Well, Mrs. Bunting, I've no business to say
+anything about it - but I will tell you !"
+
+He walked in and shut the door of the sitting-room carefully behind
+him.  "There's been another of 'em!" he whispered.  "But this time
+no one is to know anything about it - not for the present, I mean,"
+he corrected himself hastily.  "The Yard thinks we've got a clue - 
+and a good clue, too, this time."
+
+"But where - and how?" faltered Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"Well, 'twas just a bit of luck being able to keep it dark for the
+present" - he still spoke in that stifled, hoarse whisper.  "The
+poor soul' was found dead on a bench on Primrose Hill.  And just by
+chance 'twas one of our fellows saw the body first. He was on his
+way home, over Hampstead way.  He knew where he'd be able to get an
+ambulance quick, and he made a very clever, secret job of it.  I
+'spect he'll get promotion for that!"
+
+"What about the clue?" asked Mrs. Bunting, with dry lips.  "You said
+there was a clue?"
+
+"Well, I don't rightly understand about the clue myself.  All I
+knows is it's got something to do with a public-house, 'The Hammer
+and Tongs,' which isn't far off there.  They feels sure The Avenger
+was in the bar just on closing - time."
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting sat down.  She felt better now.  It was natural
+the police should suspect a public-house loafer.  "Then that's why you
+wasn't able to go and fetch Daisy, I suppose?"
+
+He nodded.  "Mum's the word, Mrs. Bunting!  It'll all be in the last
+editions of the evening newspapers - it can't be kep' out.  There'd be
+too much of a row if 'twas!"
+
+"Are you going off to that public-house now?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I am.  I've got a awk'ard job - to try and worm something out
+of the barmaid."
+
+"Something out of the barmaid?" repeated Mrs. Bunting nervously. 
+"Why, whatever for?"
+
+He came and stood close to her.  "They think 'twas a gentleman," he
+whispered.
+
+"A gentleman?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared at Chandler with a scared expression.  "Whatever
+makes them think such a silly thing as that?"
+
+"Well, just before closing-time a very peculiar-looking gent, with a
+leather bag in his hand, went into the bar and asked for a glass of
+milk.  And what d'you think he did?  Paid for it with a sovereign!
+He wouldn't take no change - just made the girl a present of it!
+That's why the young woman what served him seems quite unwilling to
+give him away.  She won't tell now what he was like.  She doesn't
+know what he's wanted for, and we don't want her to know just yet.
+That's one reason why nothing's being said public about it.  But
+there!  I really must be going now.  My time'll be up at three
+o'clock.  I thought of coming in on the way back, and asking you for
+a cup o' tea, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Do," she said.  "Do, Joe.  You'll be welcome," but there was no
+welcome in her tired voice.
+
+She let him go alone to the door, and then she went down to her
+kitchen, and began cooking Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
+
+The lodger would be sure to ring soon; and then any minute Bunting
+and Daisy might be home, and they'd want something, too.  Margaret
+always had breakfast even when "the family" were away, unnaturally
+early.
+
+As she bustled about Mrs. Bunting tried to empty her mind of all
+thought.  But it is very difficult to do that when one is in a state
+of torturing uncertainty.  She had not dared to ask Chandler what
+they supposed that man who had gone into the public-house was really
+like.  It was fortunate, indeed, that the lodger and that inquisitive
+young chap had never met face to face.
+
+At last Mr. Sleuth's bell rang - a quiet little tinkle.  But when
+she went up with his breakfast the lodger was not in his sitting-room.
+
+Supposing him to be still in his bedroom, Mrs. Bunting put the cloth
+on the table, and then she heard the sound of his footsteps coming
+down the stairs, and her quick ears detected the slight whirring
+sound which showed that the gas-stove was alight.  Mr. Sleuth had
+already lit the stove; that meant that he would carry out some
+elaborate experiment this afternoon.
+
+"Still snowing?" he said doubtfully.  "How very, very quiet and
+still London is when under snow, Mrs. Bunting.  I have never known
+it quite as quiet as this morning.  Not a sound, outside or in.  A
+very pleasant change from the shouting which sometimes goes on in
+the Marylebone Road."
+
+"Yes," she said dully.  "It's awful quiet to-day - too quiet to my
+thinking.  'Tain't natural-like."
+
+The outside gate swung to, making a noisy clatter in the still air.
+
+"Is that someone coming in here?" asked Mr. Sleuth, drawing a quick,
+hissing breath.  "Perhaps you will oblige me by going to the window
+and telling me who it is, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+And his landlady obeyed him.
+
+"It's only Bunting, sir - Bunting and his daughter."
+
+"Oh!  Is that all?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth hurried after her, and she shrank back a little.  She
+had never been quite so near to the lodger before, save on that
+first day when she had been showing him her rooms.
+
+Side by side they stood, looking out of the window.  And, as if
+aware that someone was standing there, Daisy turned her bright face
+up towards the window and smiled at her stepmother, and at the
+lodger, whose face she could only dimly discern.
+
+"A very sweet-looking young girl," said Mr. Sleuth thoughtfully.
+And then he quoted a little bit of poetry, and this took Mrs.
+Bunting very much aback.
+
+"Wordsworth," he murmured dreamily.  "A poet too little read
+nowadays, Mrs. Bunting; but one with a beautiful feeling for nature,
+for youth, for innocence."
+
+"Indeed, sir?" Mrs. Bunting stepped back a little.  "Your breakfast
+will be getting cold, sir, if you don't have it now."
+
+He went back to the table, obediently, and sat down as a child
+rebuked might have done.,
+
+And then his landlady Left him.
+
+"Well?" said Bunting cheerily.  "Everything went off quite all right.
+And Daisy's a lucky girl - that she is! Her Aunt Margaret gave her
+five shillings."
+
+But Daisy did not look as pleased as her father thought she ought
+to do.
+
+"I hope nothing's happened to Mr. Chandler," she said a little
+disconsolately.  "The very last words he said to me last night was
+that he'd be there at ten o'clock.  I got quite fidgety as the time
+went on and he didn't come."
+
+"He's been here," said Mrs. Bunting slowly.
+
+"Been here?" cried her husband.  "Then why on earth didn't he go and
+fetch Daisy, if he'd time to come here?"
+
+"He was on the way to his job," his wife answered.  "You run along,
+child, downstairs.  Now that you are here you can make yourself
+useful."
+
+And Daisy reluctantly obeyed.  She wondered what it was her
+stepmother didn't want her to hear.
+
+"I've something to tell you, Bunting."
+
+"Yes?" He looked across uneasily.  "Yes, Ellen?"
+
+"There's been another o' those murders.  But the police don't want
+anyone to know about it - not yet.  That's why Joe couldn't go over
+and fetch Daisy.  They're all on duty again."
+
+Bunting put out his hand and clutched hold of the edge of the
+mantelpiece.  He had gone very red, but his wife was far too much
+concerned with her own feelings and sensations to notice it.
+
+There was a long silence between them.  Then he spoke, making a
+great effort to appear unconcerned.
+
+"And where did it happen?" he asked.  "Close to the other one?"
+
+She hesitated, then: "I don't know.  He didn't say.  But hush!"
+she added quickly.  "Here's Daisy!  Don't let's talk of that horror
+in front of her-like.  Besides, I promised Chandler I'd be mum."
+
+And he acquiesced.
+
+"You can be laying the cloth, child, while I go up and clear away
+the lodger's breakfast."  Without waiting for an answer, she hurried
+upstairs.
+
+Mr. Sleuth had left the greater part of the nice lemon sole untouched.
+"I don't feel well to-day," he said fretfully.  "And, Mrs. Bunting?
+I should be much obliged if your husband would lend me that paper I
+saw in his hand.  I do not often care to look at the public prints,
+but I should like to do so now.
+
+She flew downstairs.  "Bunting," she said a little breathlessly,
+"the lodger would like you just to lend him the Sun."
+
+Bunting handed it over to her.  "I've read it through," he observed.
+"You can tell him that I don't want it back again."
+
+On her way up she glanced down at the pink sheet.  Occupying a third
+of the space was an irregular drawing, and under it was written, in
+rather large characters:
+
+"We are glad to be able to present our readers with an authentic
+reproduction of the footprint of the half-worn rubber sole which
+was almost certainly worn by The Avenger when he committed his
+double murder ten days ago."
+
+She went into the sitting-room.  To her relief it was empty.
+
+"Kindly put the paper down on the table," came Mr. Sleuth's muffled
+voice from the upper landing.
+
+She did so.  "Yes, sir.  And Bunting don't want the paper back
+again, sir.  He says he's read it."  And then she hurried out of
+the room.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+All afternoon it went on snowing; and the three of them sat there,
+listening and waiting - Bunting and his wife hardly knew for what;
+Daisy for the knock which would herald Joe Chandler.
+
+And about four there came the now familiar sound.
+
+Mrs. Bunting hurried out into the passage, and as she opened the
+front door she whispered, "We haven't said anything to Daisy yet.
+Young girls can't keep secrets."
+
+Chandler nodded comprehendingly.  He now looked the low character
+he had assumed to the life, for he was blue with cold, disheartened,
+and tired out.
+
+Daisy gave a little cry of shocked surprise, of amusement, of
+welcome, when she saw how cleverly he was disguised.
+
+"I never!" she exclaimed.  "What a difference it do make, to be
+sure!  Why, you looks quite horrid, Mr. Chandler."
+
+And, somehow, that little speech of hers amused her father so much
+that he quite cheered up.  Bunting had been very dull and quiet
+all that afternoon.
+
+"It won't take me ten minutes to make myself respectable again,"
+said the young man rather ruefully.
+
+His host and hostess, looking at him eagerly, furtively, both came
+to the conclusion that he had been unsuccessful - that he had failed,
+that is, in getting any information worth having.  And though, in a
+sense, they all had a pleasant tea together, there was an air of
+constraint, even of discomfort, over the little party.
+
+Bunting felt it hard that he couldn't ask the questions that were
+trembling on his lips; he would have felt it hard any time during
+the last month to refrain from knowing anything Joe could tell him,
+but now it seemed almost intolerable to be in this queer kind of
+half suspense.  There was one important fact he longed to know,
+and at last came his opportunity of doing so, for Joe Chandler rose
+to leave, and this time it was Bunting who followed him out into
+the hall.
+
+"Where did it happen?" he whispered.  "Just tell me that, Joe?"
+
+"Primrose Hill," said the other briefly.  "You'll know all about it
+in a minute or two, for it'll be all in the last editions of the
+evening papers.  That's what's been arranged."
+
+"No arrest I suppose?"
+
+Chandler shook his head despondently.  "No," he said, "I'm inclined
+to think the Yard was on a wrong tack altogether this time.  But one
+can only do one's best. I don't know if Mrs. Bunting told you I'd
+got to question a barmaid about a man who was in her place just
+before closing-time.  Well, she's said all she knew, and it's as
+clear as daylight to me that the eccentric old gent she talks about
+was only a harmless luny.  He gave her a sovereign just because she
+told him she was a teetotaller!"  He laughed ruefully.
+
+Even Bunting was diverted at the notion.  "Well, that's a queer
+thing for a barmaid to be!" he exclaimed.  "She's niece to the people
+what keeps the public," explained Chandler; and then he went out of
+the front door with a cheerful "So long!"
+
+When Bunting went back into the sitting-room Daisy had disappeared.
+She had gone downstairs with the tray.  "Where's my girl?" he said
+irritably.
+
+"She's just taken the tray downstairs."
+
+He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called out sharply,
+"Daisy!  Daisy, child!  Are you down there?"
+
+"Yes, father," came her eager, happy voice.
+
+"Better come up out of that cold kitchen."
+
+He turned and came back to his wife.  "Ellen, is the lodger in?  I
+haven't heard him moving about.  Now mind what I says, please!  I
+don't want Daisy to be mixed up with him."
+
+"Mr. Sleuth don't seem very well to-day," answered Mrs. Bunting
+quietly.  "'Tain't likely I should let Daisy have anything to do
+with him.  Why, she's never even seen him.  'Tain't likely I should
+allow her to begin waiting on him now."
+
+But though she was surprised and a little irritated by the tone in
+which Bunting had spoken, no glimmer of the truth illumined her mind.
+So accustomed had she become to bearing alone the burden of her awful
+secret, that it would have required far more than a cross word or
+two, far more than the fact that Bunting looked ill and tired, for
+her to have come to suspect that her secret was now shared by another,
+and that other her husband.
+
+Again and again the poor soul had agonised and trembled at the
+thought of her house being invaded by the police, but that was only
+because she had always credited the police with supernatural powers
+of detection.  That they should come to know the awful fact she kept
+hidden in her breast would have seemed to her, on the whole, a
+natural thing, but that Bunting should even dimly suspect it appeared
+beyond the range of possibility.
+
+And yet even Daisy noticed a change in her father.  He sat cowering
+over the fire - saying nothing, doing nothing.
+
+"Why, father, ain't you well?" the girl asked more than once.
+
+And, looking up, he would answer, "Yes, I'm well enough, nay girl,
+but I feels cold.  It's awful cold.  I never did feel anything like
+the cold we've got just now."
+
+
+At eight the now familiar shouts and cries began again outside.
+
+"The Avenger again!" "Another horrible crime!"  "Extra speshul
+edition!" - such were the shouts, the exultant yells, hurled through
+the clear, cold air.  They fell, like bombs into the quiet room.
+
+Both Bunting and his wife remained silent, but Daisy's cheeks grew
+pink with excitement, and her eye sparkled.
+
+"Hark, father!  Hark, Ellen!  D'you hear that?" she exclaimed
+childishly, and even clapped her hands.  "I do wish Mr. Chandler
+had been here.  He would 'a been startled!"
+
+"Don't, Daisy!" and Bunting frowned.
+
+Then, getting up, he stretched himself.  "It's fair getting on my
+mind," he said, "these horrible things happening.  I'd like to get
+right away  from London, just as far as I could - that I would!"
+
+"Up to John-o'-Groat's?" said Daisy, laughing.  And then, "Why,
+father, ain't you going out to get a paper?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose I must."
+
+Slowly he went out of the room, and, lingering a moment in the hall,
+he put on his greatcoat and hat.  Then he opened the front door,
+and walked down the flagged path.  Opening the iron gate, he stepped
+out on the pavement, then crossed the road to where the newspaper-boys
+now stood.
+
+The boy nearest to him only had the Sun - a late edition of the paper
+he had already read.  It annoyed Bunting to give a penny for a
+ha'penny rag of which he already knew the main contents.  But there
+was nothing else to do.
+
+Standing under a lamp-post, he opened out the newspaper.  It was
+bitingly cold; that, perhaps, was why his hand shook as he looked
+down at the big headlines.  For Bunting had been very unfair to the
+enterprise of the editor of his favourite evening paper.  This
+special edition was full of new matter - new matter concerning
+The Avenger.
+
+First, in huge type right across the page, was the brief statement
+that The Avenger had now committed his ninth crime, and that he had
+chosen quite a new locality, namely, the lonely stretch of rising
+ground known to Londoners as Primrose Hill.
+
+"The police." so Bunting read, "are very reserved as to the
+circumstances which led to the finding of the body of The Avenger's
+latest victim.  But we have reason to believe that they possess
+several really important clues, and that one of them is concerned
+with the half-worn rubber sole of which we are the first to reproduce
+an outline to-day.  (See over page.)"
+
+And Bunting, turning the sheet round about, saw the irregular outline
+he had already seen in the early edition of the Sun, that purporting
+to be a facsimile of the imprint left by The Avenger's rubber sole.
+
+He stared down at the rough outline which took up so much of the
+space which should have been devoted to reading matter with a queer,
+sinking feeling of terrified alarm.  Again and again criminals had
+been tracked by the marks their boots or shoes had made at or near
+the scenes of their misdoings.
+
+Practically the only job Bunting did in his own house of a menial
+kind was the cleaning of the boots and shoes.  He had already
+visualised early this very afternoon the little row with which he
+dealt each morning - first came his wife's strong, serviceable
+boots, then his own two pairs, a good deal patched and mended, and
+next to his own Mr. Sleuth's strong, hardly worn, and expensive
+buttoned boots.  Of late a dear little coquettish high-heeled pair
+of outdoor shoes with thin, paperlike soles, bought by Daisy for
+her trip to London, had ended the row.  The girl had worn these
+thin shoes persistently, in defiance of Ellen's reproof and advice,
+and he, Bunting, had only once had to clean her more sensible
+country pair, and that only because the others had become wet though
+the day he and she had accompanied young Chandler to Scotland Yard.
+
+Slowly he returned across the road.  Somehow the thought of going
+in again, of hearing his wife's sarcastic comments, of parrying
+Daisy's eager questions, had become intolerable.  So he walked
+slowly, trying to put off the evil moment when he would have to tell
+them what was in his paper.
+
+The lamp under which he had stood reading was not exactly opposite
+the house.  It was rather to the right of it.  And when, having
+crossed over the roadway, he walked along the pavement towards his
+own gate, he heard odd, shuffling sounds coming from the inner side
+of the low wall which shut off his little courtyard from the pavement.
+
+Now, under ordinary circumstances Bunting would have rushed forward
+to drive out whoever was there.  He and his wife had often had
+trouble, before the cold weather began, with vagrants seeking shelter
+there.  But to-night he stayed outside, listening intently, sick
+with suspense and fear.
+
+Was it possible that their place was being watched - already?  He
+thought it only too likely.  Bunting, like Mrs. Bunting, credited
+the police with almost supernatural powers, especially since he
+had paid that visit to Scotland Yard.
+
+But to Bunting's amazement, and, yes, relief, it was his lodger who
+suddenly loomed up in the dim light.
+
+Mr. Sleuth must have been stooping down, for his tall, lank form
+had been quite concealed till he stepped forward from behind the
+low wall on to the flagged path leading to the front door.
+
+The lodger was carrying a brown paper parcel, and, as he walked
+along, the new boots he was wearing creaked, and the tap-tap of
+hard nail-studded heels rang out on the flat-stones of the narrow
+path.
+
+Bunting, still standing outside the gate, suddenly knew what it was
+his lodger had been doing on the other side of the low wall.  Mr.
+Sleuth had evidently been out to buy himself another pair of new
+boots, and then be had gone inside the gate and had put them on,
+placing his old footgear in the paper in which the new pair had
+been wrapped.
+
+The ex-butler waited - waited quite a long time, not only until Mr.
+Sleuth had let himself into the house, but till the lodger had had
+time to get well away, upstairs.
+
+Then he also walked up the flagged pathway, and put his latchkey in
+the door.  He lingered as long over the job of hanging his hat and
+coat up in the hall as he dared, in fact till his wife called out
+to him.  Then he went in, and throwing the paper down on the table,
+he said sullenly: "There it is!  You can see it all for yourself - 
+not that there's very much to see," and groped his way to the fire.
+
+His wife looked at him in sharp alarm.  "Whatever have you done to
+yourself?" she exclaimed.  "You're ill - that's what it is, Bunting.
+You got a chill last night!"
+
+"I told you I'd got a chill," he muttered.  "'Twasn't last night,
+though; 'twas going out this morning, coming back in the bus.
+Margaret keeps that housekeeper's room o' hers like a hothouse - 
+that's what she does.  'Twas going out from there into the biting
+wind, that's what did for me.  It must be awful to stand about in
+such weather; 'tis a wonder to me how that young fellow, Joe Chandler,
+can stand the life - being out in all weathers like he is."
+
+Bunting spoke at random, his one anxiety being to get away from what
+was in the paper, which now lay, neglected, on the table.
+
+"Those that keep out o' doors all day never do come to no harm,"
+said his wife testily.  "But if you felt so bad, whatever was you
+out so long for, Bunting?  I thought you'd gone away somewhere!
+D'you mean you only went to get the paper?"
+
+"I just stopped for a second to look at it under the lamp," he
+muttered apologetically.
+
+"That was a silly thing to do!"
+
+"Perhaps it was," he admitted meekly.
+
+Daisy had taken up the paper.  "Well, they don't say much," she
+said disappointedly.  "Hardly anything at all!  But perhaps Mr.
+Chandler 'll be in soon again.  If so, he'll tell us more about it."
+
+"A young girl like you oughtn't to want to know anything about
+murders," said her stepmother severely.  "Joe won't think any the
+better of you for your inquisitiveness about such things.  If I
+was you, Daisy, I shouldn't say nothing about it if he does come in
+ - which I fair tell you I hope he won't.  I've seen enough of that
+young chap to-day."
+
+"He didn't come in for long - not to-day," said Daisy, her lip
+trembling.
+
+"I can tell you one thing that'll surprise you, my dear" - Mrs.
+Bunting looked significantly at her step-daughter.  She also wanted
+to get away from that dread news - which yet was no news.
+
+"Yes?" said Daisy, rather defiantly.  "What is it, Ellen?"
+
+"Maybe you'll be surprised to hear that Joe did come in this morning.
+He knew all about that affair then, but he particular asked that
+you shouldn't be told anything about it."
+
+"Never!" cried Daisy, much mortified.
+
+"Yes," went on her stepmother ruthlessly.  "You just ask your father
+over there if it isn't true."
+
+"'Tain't a healthy thing to speak overmuch about such happenings,"
+said Bunting heavily.
+
+"If I was Joe," went on Mrs. Bunting, quickly pursuing her advantage,
+"I shouldn't want to talk about such horrid things when I comes in
+to have a quiet chat with friends.  But the minute he comes in that
+poor young chap is set upon - mostly, I admit, by your father," she
+looked at her husband severely.  "But you does your share, too,
+Daisy!  You asks him this, you asks him that - he's fair puzzled
+sometimes.  It don't do to be so inquisitive."
+
+******
+
+And perhaps because of this little sermon on Mrs. Bunting's part
+when young Chandler did come in again that evening, very little was
+said of the new Avenger murder.
+
+Bunting made no reference to it at all, and though Daisy said a
+word, it was but a word.  And Joe Chandler thought he had never
+spent a pleasanter evening in his life - for it was he and Daisy
+who talked all the time, their elders remaining for the most part
+silent.
+
+Daisy told of all that she had done with Aunt Margaret.  She
+described the long, dull hours and the queer jobs her aunt set her
+to do - the washing up of all the fine drawing-room china in a big
+basin lined with flannel, and how terrified she (Daisy) had been
+lest there should come even one teeny little chip to any of it.
+Then she went on to relate some of the funny things Aunt Margaret
+had told her about "the family."
+
+There came a really comic tale, which hugely interested and delighted
+Chandler.  This was of how Aunt Margaret's lady had been taken in by
+an impostor - an impostor who had come up, just as she was stepping
+out of her carriage, and pretended to have a fit on the doorstep.
+Aunt Margaret's lady, being a soft one, had insisted on the man
+coming into the hall, where he had been given all kinds of
+restoratives.  When the man had at last gone off, it was found that
+he had "wolfed" young master's best walking-stick, one with a fine
+tortoise-shell top to it.  Thus had Aunt Margaret proved to her lady
+that the man had been shamming, and her lady had been very angry - 
+near had a fit herself!
+
+"There's a lot of that about," said Chandler, laughing.
+"Incorrigible rogues and vagabonds - that's what those sort of people
+are!"
+
+And then he, in his turn, told an elaborate tale of an exceptionally
+clever swindler whom he himself had brought to book.  He was very
+proud of that job, it had formed a white stone in his career as a
+detective.  And even Mrs. Bunting was quite interested to hear about
+it.
+
+Chandler was still sitting there when Mr. Sleuth's bell rang.  For
+awhile no one stirred; then Bunting looked questioningly at his wife.
+
+"Did you hear that?" he said.  "I think, Ellen, that was the lodger's
+bell."
+
+She got up, without alacrity, and went upstairs.
+
+"I rang," said Mr. Sleuth weakly, "to tell you I don't require any
+supper to-night, Mrs. Bunting.  Only a glass of milk, with a lump
+of sugar in it.  That is all I require - nothing more.  I feel very
+very far from well"  - and he had a hunted, plaintive expression on
+his face.  "And then I thought your husband would like his paper
+back again, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+Mrs. Bunting, looking at him fixedly, with a sad intensity of gaze
+of which she was quite unconscious, answered, "Oh, no, sir!
+Bunting don't require that paper now.  He read it all through."
+Something impelled her to add, ruthlessly, "He's got another paper
+by now, sir.  You may have heard them come shouting outside.  Would
+you like me to bring you up that other paper, sir?"
+
+And Mr. Sleuth shook his head.  "No," he said querulously.  "I much
+regret now having asked for the one paper I did read, for it
+disturbed me, Mrs. Bunting.  There was nothing of any value in it - 
+there never is in any public print.  I gave up reading newspapers
+years ago, and I much regret that I broke though my rule to-day."
+
+As if to indicate to her that he did not wish for any more
+conversation, the lodger then did what he had never done before in
+his landlady's presence.  He went over to the fireplace and
+deliberately turned his back on her.
+
+She went down and brought up the glass of milk and the lump of
+sugar he had asked for.
+
+Now he was in his usual place, sitting at the table, studying the
+Book.
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went back to the others they were chatting
+merrily.  She did not notice that the merriment was confined to the
+two young people.
+
+"Well?" said Daisy pertly.  "How about the lodger, Ellen?  Is he
+all right?"
+
+"Yes," she said stiffly.  "Of course he is!"
+
+"'He must feel pretty dull sitting up there all by himself - awful
+lonely-like, I call it," said the girl.
+
+But her, stepmother remained silent.
+
+"Whatever does he do with himself all day?" persisted Daisy.
+
+"Just now he's reading the Bible," Mrs. Bunting answered, shortly
+and dryly.
+
+"Well, I never!  That's a funny thing for a gentleman to do!"
+
+And Joe, alone of her three listeners, laughed - a long hearty peal
+of amusement.
+
+"There's nothing to laugh at," said Mrs. Bunting sharply.  "I should
+feel ashamed of being caught laughing at anything connected with the
+Bible."
+
+And poor Joe became suddenly quite serious.  This was the first time
+that Mrs. Bunting had ever spoken really nastily to him, and he
+answered very humbly, "I beg pardon.  I know I oughtn't to have
+laughed at anything to do with the Bible, but you see, Miss Daisy
+said it so funny-like, and, by all accounts, your lodger must be a
+queer card, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"He's no queerer than many people I could mention," she said quickly;
+and with these enigmatic words she got up, and left the room.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Each hour of the days that followed held for Bunting its full meed
+of aching fear and suspense.
+
+The unhappy man was ever debating within himself what course he
+should pursue, and, according to his mood and to the state of his
+mind at any particular moment, he would waver between various
+widely-differing lines of action.
+
+He told himself again and again, and with fretful unease, that the
+most awful thing about it all was that he wasn't sure.  If only he
+could have been sure, he might have made up his mind exactly what
+it was he ought to do.
+
+But when telling himself this he was deceiving himself, and he was
+vaguely conscious of the fact; for, from Bunting's point of view,
+almost any alternative would have been preferable to that which to
+some, nay, perhaps to most, householders would have seemed the only
+thing to do, namely, to go to the police.  But Londoners of Bunting's
+class have an uneasy fear of the law.  To his mind it would be ruin
+for him and for his Ellen to be mixed up publicly in such a terrible
+affair.  No one concerned in the business would give them and their
+future a thought, but it would track them to their dying day, and,
+above all, it would make it quite impossible for them ever to get
+again into a good joint situation.  It was that for which Bunting,
+in his secret soul, now longed with all his heart.
+
+No, some other way than going to the police must be found - and he
+racked his slow brain to find it.
+
+The worst of it was that every hour that went by made his future
+course more difficult and more delicate, and increased the awful
+weight on his conscience.
+
+If only he really knew!  If only he could feel quite sure!  And
+then he would tell himself that, after all, he had very little to
+go upon; only suspicion - suspicion, and a secret, horrible
+certainty that his suspicion was justified.
+
+And so at last Bunting began to long for a solution which he knew
+to be indefensible from every point of view; he began to hope, that
+is, in the depths of his heart, that the ledger would again go out
+one evening on his horrible business and be caught - red-handed.
+
+But far from going out on any business, horrible or other, Mr.
+Sleuth now never went out at all.  He kept upstairs, and often spent
+quite a considerable part of his day in bed.  He still felt, so he
+assured Mrs. Bunting, very far from well.  He had never thrown off
+the chill he had caught on that bitter night he and his landlord
+had met on their several ways home.
+
+Joe Chandler, too, had become a terrible complication to Daisy's
+father.  The detective spent every waking hour that he was not on
+duty with the Buntings; and Bunting, who at one time had liked him
+so well and so cordially, now became mortally afraid of him.
+
+But though the young man talked of little else than The Avenger,
+and though on one evening he described at immense length the
+eccentric-looking gent who had given the barmaid a sovereign,
+picturing Mr. Sleuth with such awful accuracy that both Bunting and
+Mrs. Bunting secretly and separately turned sick when they listened
+to him, he never showed the slightest interest in their lodger.
+
+At last there came a morning when Bunting and Chandler held a strange
+conversation about The Avenger.  The young fellow had come in earlier
+than usual, and just as he arrived Mrs. Bunting and Daisy were
+starting out to do some shopping.  The girl would fain have stopped
+behind, but her stepmother had given her a very peculiar, disagreeable
+look, daring her, so to speak, to be so forward, and Daisy had gone
+on with a flushed, angry look on her pretty face.
+
+And then, as young Chandler stepped through into the sitting-room,
+it suddenly struck Bunting that the young man looked unlike himself
+ - indeed, to the ex-butler's apprehension there was something almost
+threatening in Chandler's attitude.
+
+"I want a word with you, Mr. Bunting," he began abruptly, falteringly.
+"And I'm glad to have the chance now that Mrs. Bunting and Miss Daisy
+are out."
+
+Bunting braced himself to hear the awful words - the accusation of
+having sheltered a murderer, the monster whom all the world was
+seeking, under his roof.  And then he remembered a phrase, a
+horrible legal phrase - "Accessory after the fact."  Yes, he had
+been that, there wasn't any doubt about it!
+
+"Yes?" he said.  "What is it, Joe?" and then the unfortunate man
+sat down in his chair.  "Yes?" he said again uncertainly; for young
+Chandler had now advanced to the table, he was looking at Bunting
+fixedly - the other thought threateningly.  "Well, out with it,
+Joe!  Don't keep me in suspense."
+
+And then a slight smile broke over the young man's face.  "I don't
+think what I've got to say can take you by surprise, Mr. Bunting."
+
+And Bunting wagged his head in a way that might mean anything - yes
+or no, as the case might be.
+
+The two men looked at one another for what seemed a very, very long
+time to the elder of them.  And then, making a great effort, Joe
+Chandler brought out the words, "Well, I suppose you know what it
+is I want to talk about.  I'm sure Mrs. Bunting would, from a look
+or two she's lately cast on me.  It's your daughter -  it's Miss
+Daisy."
+
+And then Bunting gave a kind of cry, 'twixt a sob and a laugh.
+"My girl?" he cried.  "Good Lord, Joe!  Is that all you wants to
+talk about?  Why, you fair frightened me - that you did!"
+
+And, indeed, the relief was so great that the room swam round as
+he stared across it at his daughter's lover, that lover who was
+also the embodiment of that now awful thing to him, the law.  He
+smiled, rather foolishly, at his visitor; and Chandler felt a sharp
+wave of irritation, of impatience sweep over his good-natured soul.
+Daisy's father was an old stupid - that's what he was.
+
+And then Bunting grew serious.  The room ceased to go round.  "As
+far as I'm concerned," he said, with a good deal of solemnity, even
+a little dignity, "you have my blessing, Joe.  You're a very likely
+young chap, and I had a true respect for your father."
+
+"Yes," said Chandler, "that's very kind of you, Mr. Bunting.  But
+how about her - her herself?"
+
+Bunting stared at him.  It pleased him to think that Daisy hadn't
+given herself away, as Ellen was always hinting the girl was doing.
+
+"I can't answer for Daisy," he said heavily.  "You'll have to ask
+her yourself - that's not a job any other man can do for you, my lad."
+
+"I never gets a chance.  I never sees her, not by our two selves,"
+said Chandler, with some heat.  "You don't seem to understand, Mr.
+Bunting, that I never do see Miss Daisy alone," he repeated.  "I
+hear now that she's going away Monday, and I've only once had the
+chance of a walk with her.  Mrs. Bunting's very particular, not to
+say pernickety in her ideas, Mr. Bunting - "
+
+"That's a fault on the right side, that is - with a young girl,"
+said Bunting thoughtfully.
+
+And Chandler nodded.  He quite agreed that as regarded other young
+chaps Mrs. Bunting could not be too particular.
+
+"She's been brought up like a lady, my Daisy has," went on Bunting,
+with some pride.  "That Old Aunt of hers hardly lets her out of her
+sight."
+
+"I was coming to the old aunt," said Chandler heavily.  "Mrs.
+Bunting she talks as if your daughter was going to stay with that
+old woman the whole of her natural life - now is that right?  That's
+what I wants to ask you, Mr. Bunting, - is that right?"
+
+"I'll say a word to Ellen, don't you fear," said Bunting abstractedly.
+
+His mind had wandered off, away from Daisy and this nice young chap,
+to his now constant  anxious preoccupation.  "You come along
+to-morrow," he said, "and I'll see you gets your walk with Daisy.
+It's only right you and she should have a chance of seeing one
+another without old folk being by; else how's the girl to tell
+whether she likes you or not!  For the matter of that, you hardly
+knows her, Joe - "  He looked at the young man consideringly.
+
+Chandler shook his head impatiently.  "I knows her quite as well as
+I wants to know her," he said.  "I made up my mind the very first
+time I see'd her, Mr. Bunting."
+
+"No!  Did you really?" said Bunting.  "Well, come to think of it,
+I did so with her mother; aye, and years after, with Ellen, too.
+But I hope you'll never want no second, Chandler,"
+
+"God forbid!" said the young man under his breath.  And then he
+asked, rather longingly, "D'you think they'll be out long now, Mr.
+Bunting?"
+
+And Bunting woke up to a due sense of hospitality.  "Sit down, sit
+down; do!" he said hastily.  "I don't believe they'll be very long.
+They've only got a little bit of shopping to do."
+
+And then, in a changed, in a ringing, nervous tone, he asked, "And
+how about your job, Joe?  Nothing new, I take it?  I suppose you're
+all just waiting for the next time?"
+
+"Aye - that's about the figure of it." Chandler's voice had also
+changed; it was now sombre, menacing.  "We're fair tired of it - 
+beginning to wonder when it'll end, that we are!"
+
+"Do you ever try and make to yourself a picture of what the master's
+like?" asked Bunting.  Somehow, he felt he must ask that.
+
+"Yes," said Joe slowly.  "I've a sort of notion - a savage,
+fierce-looking devil, the chap must be.  It's that description that
+was circulated put us wrong.  I don't believe it was the man that
+knocked up against that woman in the fog - no, not one bit I don't.
+But I wavers, I can't quite make up my mind.  Sometimes I think it's
+a sailor - the foreigner they talks about, that goes away for eight
+or nine days in between, to Holland maybe, or to France.  Then,
+again, I says to myself that it's a butcher, a man from the Central
+Market.  Whoever it is, it's someone used to killing, that's flat."
+
+"Then it don't seem to you possible - ?" (Bunting got up and walked
+over to the window.)  "You don't take any stock, I suppose, in that
+idea some of the papers put out, that the man is" - then he
+hesitated and brought out, with a gasp - "a gentleman?"
+
+Chandler looked at him, surprised.  "No," he said deliberately.
+"I've made up my mind that's quite a wrong tack, though I knows that
+some of our fellows - big pots, too - are quite sure that the fellow
+what gave the girl the sovereign is the man we're looking for.  You
+see, Mr. Bunting, if that's the fact - well, it stands to reason the
+fellow's an escaped lunatic; and if he's an escaped lunatic he's got
+a keeper, and they'd be raising a hue and cry after him; now,
+wouldn't they?"
+
+"You don't think," went on Bunting, lowering his voice, "that he
+could be just staying somewhere, lodging like?"
+
+" D'you mean that The Avenger may be a toff, staying in some
+West-end hotel, Mr. Bunting?  Well, things almost as funny as that
+'ud be have come to pass."  He smiled as if the notion was a funny
+one.
+
+"Yes, something o' that sort," muttered Bunting.
+
+"Well, if your idea's correct, Mr.- Bunting - "
+
+"I never said 'twas my idea," said Bunting, all in a hurry.
+
+"Well, if that idea's correct then, 'twill make our task more
+difficult than ever.  Why, 'twould be looking for a needle in a
+field of hay, Mr. Bunting!  But there!  I don't think it's
+anything quite so unlikely as that - not myself I don't."  He
+hesitated.  "There's some of us" - he lowered his voice-" that
+hopes he'll betake himself off - The Avenger, I mean - to another
+big city, to Manchester or to Edinburgh.  There'd be plenty of
+work for him to do there," and Chandler chuckled at his own grim
+joke.
+
+And then, to both men's secret relief, for Bunting was now
+mortally afraid of this discussion concerning The Avenger and
+his doings, they heard Mrs. Bunting's key in the lock.
+
+Daisy blushed rosy-red with pleasure when she saw that young
+Chandler was still there.  She had feared that when they got home
+he would be gone, the more so that Ellen, just as if she was doing
+it on purpose, had lingered aggravatingly long over each small
+purchase.
+
+"Here's Joe come to ask if he can take Daisy out for a walk,"
+blurted out Bunting.
+
+"My mother says as how she'd like you to come to tea, over at
+Richmond," said Chandler awkwardly, "I just come in to see whether
+we could fix it up, Miss Daisy."  And Daisy looked imploringly at
+her stepmother.
+
+"D'you mean now - this minute?" asked Mrs. Bunting tartly.
+
+"No, o' course not" - Bunting broke in hastily.  "How you do go on,
+Ellen!"
+
+"What day did your mother mention would be convenient to her?"
+asked Mrs. Bunting, looking at the young man satirically.
+
+Chandler hesitated.  His mother had not mentioned any special day
+ - in fact, his mother had shown a surprising lack of anxiety to
+see Daisy at all.  But he had talked her round.
+
+"How about Saturday?" suggested Bunting.  "That's Daisy's' birthday.
+'Twould be a birthday treat for her to go to Richmond, and she's
+going back to Old Aunt on Monday."
+
+"I can't go Saturday," said Chandler disconsolately.  "I'm on duty
+Saturday."
+
+"Well, then, let it be Sunday," said Bunting firmly.  And his wife
+looked at him surprised; he seldom asserted himself so much in her
+presence.
+
+"What do you say, Miss Daisy?" said Chandler.
+
+"Sunday would be very nice," said Daisy demurely.  And then, as the
+young man took up his hat, and as her stepmother did not stir, Daisy
+ventured to go out into the hall with him for a minute.
+
+Chandler shut the door behind them, and so was spared the hearing
+of Mrs. Bunting's whispered remark: "When I was a young woman folk
+didn't gallivant about on Sunday; those who was courting used to
+go to church together, decent-like - "
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Daisy's eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully.  Her father gave
+her what he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth
+birthday - a watch.  It was a pretty little silver watch, which
+Bunting had bought secondhand on the last day he had been happy - 
+it seemed a long, long time ago now.
+
+Mrs. Bunting thought a silver watch a very extravagant present but
+she was far too wretched, far too absorbed in her own thoughts, to
+trouble much about it.  Besides, in such matters she had generally
+had the good sense not to interfere between her husband and his
+child.
+
+In the middle of the birthday morning Bunting went out to buy
+himself some more tobacco.  He had never smoked so much as in the
+last four days, excepting, perhaps, the week that had followed on
+his leaving service.  Smoking a pipe had then held all the exquisite
+pleasure which we are told attaches itself to the eating of forbidden
+fruit.
+
+His tobacco had now become his only relaxation; it acted on his
+nerves as an opiate, soothing his fears and helping him to think.
+But he had been overdoing it, and it was that which now made him
+feel so "jumpy," so he assured himself, when he found himself
+starting at any casual sound outside, or even when his wife spoke
+to him suddenly.
+
+Just now Ellen and Daisy were down in the kitchen, and Bunting
+didn't quite like the sensation of knowing that there was only
+one pair of stairs between Mr. Sleuth and himself.  So he quietly
+slipped out of the house without telling Ellen that he was going
+out.
+
+In the last four days Bunting had avoided his usual haunts; above
+all, he had avoided even passing the time of day to his
+acquaintances and neighbours.  He feared, with a great fear, that
+they would talk to him of a subject which, because it filled his
+mind to the exclusion of all else, might make him betray the
+knowledge - no, not knowledge, rather the - the suspicion - that
+dwelt within him.
+
+But to-day the unfortunate man had a curious, instinctive longing
+for human companionship - companionship, that is, other than that
+of his wife and of his daughter.
+
+This longing for a change of company finally led him into a small,
+populous thoroughfare hard by the Edgeware Road.  There were more
+people there than usual just now, for the housewives of the
+neighbourhood were doing their Saturday marketing for Sunday.  The
+ex-butler turned into a small old-fashioned shop where he generally
+bought his tobacco.
+
+Bunting passed the time of day with the tobacconist, and the two
+fell into desultory talk, but to his customer's relief and surprise
+the man made no allusion to the subject of which all the
+neighbourhood must still be talking.
+
+And then, quite suddenly, while still standing by the counter, and
+before he had paid for the packet of tobacco he held in his hand,
+Bunting, through the open door, saw with horrified surprise that
+Ellen, his wife, was standing, alone, outside a greengrocer's shop
+just opposite.
+
+Muttering a word of apology, he rushed out of the shop and across
+the road.
+
+"Ellen!" he gasped hoarsely, "you've never gone and left my little
+girl alone in the house with the lodger?
+
+Mrs. Bunting's face went yellow with fear.  "I thought you was
+indoors," she cried.  "You was indoors!  Whatever made you come out
+for, without first making sure I'd stay in?"
+
+Bunting made no answer; but, as they stared at each other in
+exasperated silence, each now knew that the other knew.
+
+They turned and scurried down the crowded street.  "Don't run," he
+said suddenly; "we shall get there just as quickly if we walk fast.
+People are noticing you, Ellen.  Don't run."
+
+He spoke breathlessly, but it was breathlessness induced by fear
+and by excitement, not by the quick pace at which they were walking.
+
+At last they reached their own gate, and Bunting pushed past in
+front of his wife.
+
+After all, Daisy was his child; Ellen couldn't know how he was
+feeling.
+
+He seemed to take the path in one leap, then fumbled for a moment
+with his latchkey.
+
+Opening wide the door, "Daisy!" he called out, in a wailing voice,
+"Daisy, my dear!  where are you?"
+
+"Here I am, father.  What is it?"
+
+"She's all right " Bunting turned a grey face to his wife.  "She's
+all right Ellen."
+
+He waited a moment, leaning against the wall of the passage.  "It
+did give me a turn," he said, and then, warningly, "Don't frighten
+the girl, Ellen."
+
+Daisy was standing before the fire in their sitting room, admiring
+herself in the glass.
+
+"Oh, father," she exclaimed, without turning round, "I've seen the
+lodger!  He's quite a nice gentleman, though, to be sure, he does
+look a cure.  He rang his bell, but I didn't like to go up; and so
+he came down to ask Ellen for something.  We had quite a nice
+little chat - that we had.  I told him it was my birthday, and he
+asked me and Ellen to go to Madame Tussaud's with him this
+afternoon."  She laughed, a little self-consciously.  "Of course,
+I could see he was 'centric, and then at first he spoke so funnily.
+'And who be you?' he says, threatening-like.  And I says to him,
+'I'm Mr. Bunting's daughter, sir.'  'Then you're a very fortunate
+girl ' - that's what he says, Ellen - 'to 'ave such a nice
+step-mother as you've got.  That's why,' he says, 'you look such
+a good, innocent girl.'  And then he quoted a bit of the Prayer
+Book.  'Keep innocency,' he says, wagging his head at me.  Lor'!
+It made me feel as if I was with Old Aunt again."
+
+"I won't have you going out with the lodger - that's flat."
+
+Bunting spoke in a muffled, angry tone.  He was wiping his forehead
+with one hand, while with the other he mechanically squeezed the
+little packet of tobacco, for which, as he now remembered, he had
+forgotten to pay.
+
+Daisy pouted.  "Oh, father, I think you might let me have a treat
+on my birthday!  I told him that Saturday wasn't a very good day - 
+at least, so I'd heard - for Madame Tussaud's.  Then he said we
+could go early, while the fine folk are still having their dinners."
+She turned to her stepmother, then giggled happily.  "He particularly
+said you was to come, too.  The lodger has a wonderful fancy for you,
+Ellen; if I was father, I'd feel quite jealous!"
+
+Her last words were cut across by a, tap-tap on the door.
+
+Bunting and his wife looked at each other apprehensively.  Was it
+possible that, in their agitation, they had left the front door
+open, and that someone, some merciless myrmidon of the law, had
+crept in behind them?
+
+Both felt a curious thrill of satisfaction when they saw that it
+was only Mr. Sleuth - Mr. Sleuth dressed for going out; the tall
+hat he had worn when he had first come to them was in his hand, but
+he was wearing a coat instead of his Inverness cape.
+
+"I heard you come in " - he addressed Mrs. Bunting in his high,
+whistling, hesitating voice - "and so I've come down to ask you if
+you and Miss Bunting will come to Madame Tussaud's now.  I have
+never seen those famous waxworks, though I've heard of the place
+all my life."
+
+As Bunting forced himself to look fixedly at his lodger, a sudden
+doubt bringing with it a sense of immeasurable relief, came to
+Mr. Sleuth's landlord.
+
+Surely it was inconceivable that this gentle, mild-mannered
+gentleman could be the monster of cruelty and cunning that Bunting
+had now for the terrible space of four days believed him to be!
+
+He tried to catch his wife's eye, but Mrs. Bunting was looking away,
+staring into vacancy.  She still, of course, wore the bonnet and
+cloak in which she had just been out to do her marketing.  Daisy
+was already putting on her hat and coat.
+
+"Well?" said Mr. Sleuth.  Then Mrs. Bunting turned, and it seemed
+to his landlady that he was looking at her threateningly.  "Well?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  We'll come in a minute," she said dully.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Madame Tussaud's had hitherto held pleasant memories for Mrs. Bunting.
+In the days when she and Bunting were courting they often spent there
+part of their afternoon-out.
+
+The butler had an acquaintance, a man named Hopkins, who was one of
+the waxworks staff, and this man had sometimes given him passes for
+"self and lady."  But this was the first time Mrs. Bunting had been
+inside the place since she had come to live almost next door, as it
+were, to the big building.
+
+They walked in silence to the familiar entrance, and then, after
+the ill-assorted trio had gone up the great staircase and into the
+first gallery, Mr. Sleuth suddenly stopped short.  The presence of
+those curious, still, waxen figures which suggest so strangely death
+in life, seemed to surprise and affright him.
+
+Daisy took quick advantage of the lodger's hesitation and unease.
+
+"Oh, Ellen," she cried, "do let us begin by going into the Chamber
+of Horrors!  I've never been in there.  Old Aunt made father promise
+he wouldn't take me the only time I've ever been here.  But now that
+I'm eighteen I can do just as I like; besides, Old Aunt will never
+know."
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked down at her, and a smile passed for a moment over
+his worn, gaunt face.
+
+"Yes," he said, "let us go into the Chamber of Horrors; that's a
+good idea, Miss Bunting.  I've always wanted to see the Chamber of
+Horrors."
+
+They turned into the great room in which the Napoleonic relics were
+then kept, and which led into the curious, vault-like chamber where
+waxen effigies of dead criminals stand grouped in wooden docks.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was at once disturbed and relieved to see her husband's
+old acquaintance, Mr. Hopkins, in charge of the turnstile admitting
+the public to the Chamber of Horrors.
+
+"Well, you are a stranger," the man observed genially.  "I do believe
+that this is the very first time I've seen you in here, Mrs. Bunting,
+since you was married!"
+
+"Yes," she said, "that is so.  And this is my husband's daughter,
+Daisy; I expect you've heard of her, Mr. Hopkins.  And this" - she
+hesitated a moment - "is our lodger, Mr. Sleuth."
+
+But Mr. Sleuth frowned and shuffled away.  Daisy, leaving her
+stepmother's side, joined him.
+
+Two, as all the world knows, is company, three is none.  Mrs.
+Bunting put down three sixpences.
+
+"Wait a minute," said Hopkins; "you can't go into the Chamber of
+Horrors just yet.  But you won't have to wait more than four or
+five minutes, Mrs. Bunting.  It's this way, you see; our boss is
+in there, showing a party round." He lowered his voice.  "It's
+Sir John Burney - I suppose you know who Sir John Burney is?"
+
+"No," she answered indifferently, "I don't know that I ever heard
+of him."
+
+She felt slightly - oh, very sightly - uneasy about Daisy.  She
+would have liked her stepdaughter to keep well within sight and
+sound, but Mr. Sleuth was now taking the girl down to the other
+end of the room.
+
+"Well, I hope you never will know him - not in any personal sense,
+Mrs. Bunting."  The man chuckled.  "He's the Commissioner of Police
+ - the new one - that's what Sir John Burney is.  One of the
+gentlemen he's showing round our place is the Paris Police boss - 
+whose job is on all fours, so to speak, with Sir John's.  The
+Frenchy has brought his daughter with him, and there are several
+other ladies.  Ladies always likes horrors, Mrs. Bunting; that's
+our experience here.  'Oh, take me to the Chamber of Horrors ' - 
+that's what they say the minute they gets into this here building!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked at him thoughtfully.  It occurred to Mr. Hopkins
+that she was very wan and tired; she used to look better in the old
+days, when she was still in service, before Bunting married her.
+
+"Yes," she said; "that's just what my stepdaughter said just now.
+'Oh, take me to the Chamber of Horrors' - that's exactly what she
+did say when we got upstairs."
+
+******
+
+A group of people, all talking and laughing together; were advancing,
+from within the wooden barrier, toward the turnstile.
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared at them nervously.  She wondered which of them
+was the gentleman with whom Mr. Hopkins had hoped she would never be
+brought into personal contact; she thought she could pick him out
+among the others.  He was a tall, powerful, handsome gentleman, with
+a military appearance.
+
+Just now he was smiling down into the face of a young lady.
+"Monsieur Barberoux is quite right," he was saying in a loud,
+cheerful voice, "our English law is too kind to the criminal,
+especially to the murderer.  If we conducted our trials in the
+French fashion, the place we have just left would be very much
+fuller than it is to-day.  A man of whose guilt we are absolutely
+assured is oftener than not acquitted, and then the public taunt
+us with 'another undiscovered crime!"'
+
+"D'you mean, Sir John, that murderers sometimes escape scot-free?
+Take the man who has been committing all these awful murders this
+last month?  I suppose there's no doubt he'll be hanged - if he's
+ever caught, that is!"
+
+Her girlish voice rang out, and Mrs. Bunting could hear every word
+that was said.
+
+The whole party gathered round, listening eagerly.  "Well, no."
+He spoke very deliberately.  "I doubt if that particular murderer
+ever will be hanged."
+
+"You mean that you'll never catch him?" the girl spoke with a touch
+of airy impertinence in her clear voice.
+
+"I think we shall end by catching him - because" - he waited a moment,
+then added in a lower voice - "now don't give me away to a newspaper
+fellow, Miss Rose - because now I think we do know who the murderer
+in question is - "
+
+Several of those standing near by uttered expressions of surprise and
+incredulity.
+
+"Then why don't you catch him?" cried the girl indignantly.
+
+"I didn't say we knew where he was; I only said we knew who he was,
+or, rather, perhaps I ought to say that I personally have a very
+strong suspicion of his identity."
+
+Sir John's French colleague looked up quickly.  "De Leipsic and
+Liverpool man?" he said interrogatively.
+
+The other nodded.  "Yes, I suppose you've had the case turned up?"
+
+Then, speaking very quickly, as if he wished to dismiss the subject
+from his own mind, and from that of his auditors, he went on:
+
+"Four murders of the kind were committed eight years ago - two in
+Leipsic, the others, just afterwards, in Liverpool, - and there were
+certain peculiarities connected with the crimes which made it clear
+they were committed by the same hand.  The perpetrator was caught,
+fortunately for us, red-handed, just as he was leaving the house of
+his last victim, for in Liverpool the murder was committed in a
+house.  I myself saw the unhappy man - I say unhappy, for there is
+no doubt at all that he was mad " - he hesitated, and added in a
+lower tone-" suffering from an acute form of religious mania.
+I myself saw him, as I say, at some length.  But now comes the really
+interesting point.  I have just been informed that a month ago this
+criminal lunatic, as we must of course regard him, made his escape
+from the asylum where he was confined.  He arranged the whole
+thing with extraordinary cunning and intelligence, and we should
+probably have caught him long ago, were it not that he managed, when
+on his way out of the place, to annex a considerable sum of money
+in gold, with which the wages of the asylum staff were about to be
+paid.  It is owing to that fact that his escape was. very wrongly,
+concealed - "
+
+He stopped abruptly, as if sorry he had said so much, and a moment
+later the party were walking in Indian file through the turnstile,
+Sir John Burney leading the
+way.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked straight before her.  She felt -  so she
+expressed it to her husband later - as if she had been turned to
+stone.
+
+Even had she wished to do so, she had neither the time nor the power
+to warn her lodger of his danger, for Daisy and her companion were
+now coming down the room, bearing straight for the Commissioner of
+Police.  In another moment Mrs. Bunting's lodger and Sir John Burney
+were face to face.
+
+Mr. Sleuth swerved to one side; there came a terrible change over
+his pale, narrow face; it became discomposed, livid with rage and
+terror.
+
+But, to Mrs. Bunting's relief - yes, to her inexpressible relief
+ - Sir John Burney and his friends swept on.  They passed Mr. Sleuth
+and the girl by his side, unaware, or so it seemed to her, that
+there was anyone else in the room hut themselves.
+
+"Hurry up, Mrs. Bunting," said the turnstile-keeper; "you and your
+friends will have the place all to yourselves for a bit."  From an
+official he had become a man, and it was the man in Mr. Hopkins that
+gallantly addressed pretty Daisy Bunting: "It seems strange that a
+young lady like you should want to go in and see all those 'orrible
+frights," he said jestingly.
+
+"Mrs. Bunting, may I trouble you to come over here for a moment?"
+
+The words were hissed rather than spoken by Mr. Sleuth's lips.
+
+His landlady took a doubtful step towards him.
+
+"A last word with you, Mrs. Bunting." The lodger's face was still
+distorted with fear and passion.  "Do not think to escape the
+consequences of your hideous treachery.  I trusted you, Mrs. Bunting,
+and you betrayed me!  Put I am protected by a higher power, for
+I still have much to do."  Then, his voice sinking to a whisper, he
+hissed out "Your end will be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a
+two-edged sword.  Your feet shall go down to death, and your steps
+take hold on hell."
+
+Even while Mr. Sleuth was muttering these strange, dreadful words,
+he was looking round, glancing this way and that, seeking a way of
+escape.
+
+At last his eyes became fixed on a small placard placed above a
+curtain.  "Emergency Exit" was written there.  Mrs. Bunting thought
+he was going to make a dash for the place; but Mr. Sleuth did
+something very different.  Leaving his landlady's side, he walked
+over to the turnstile, he fumbled in his pocket for a moment, and
+then touched the man on the arm.  "I feel ill," he said, speaking
+very rapidly; "very ill indeed!  It is the atmosphere of this place.
+I want you to let me out by the quickest way.  It would be a pity
+for me to faint here - especially with ladies about." 
+
+His left hand shot out and placed what he had been fumbling for in
+his pocket on the other's bare palm.  "I see there's an emergency
+exit over there.  Would it be possible for me to get out that way?"
+
+"Well, yes, sir; I think so."
+
+The man hesitated; he felt a slight, a very sight, feeling of
+misgiving.  He looked at Daisy, flushed and smiling, happy and
+unconcerned, and then at Mrs. Bunting.  She was very pale; but
+surely her lodger's sudden seizure was enough to make her feel
+worried.  Hopkins felt the half -sovereign pleasantly tickling his
+palm.  The Paris Prefect of Police had given him only half-a-crown
+ - mean, shabby foreigner!
+
+"Yes, sir; I can let you out that way," he said at last, "and p'raps
+when you're standing out in the air, on the iron balcony, you'll feel
+better.  But then, you know, sir, you'll have to come round to the
+front if you wants to come in again, for those emergency doors only
+open outward."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sleuth hurriedly.  "I quite understand!  If I
+feel better I'll come in by the front way, and pay another shilling
+ - that's only fair."
+
+"You needn't do that if you'll just explain what happened here."
+
+The man went and pulled the curtain aside, and put his shoulder
+against the door.  It burst open, and the light, for a moment,
+blinded Mr. Sleuth.
+
+He passed his hand over his eyes.  "Thank you," he muttered, "thank
+you.  I shall get all right out there."
+
+An iron stairway led down into a small stable yard, of which the
+door opened into a side street.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked round once more; he really did feel very ill - 
+ill and dazed.  How pleasant it would be to take a flying leap over
+the balcony railing and find rest, eternal rest, below.
+
+But no - he thrust the thought the temptation, from him.  Again a
+convulsive look of rage came over his face.  He had remembered his
+landlady.  How could the woman whom he had treated so generously have
+betrayed him to his arch-enemy?  - to the official, that is, who had
+entered into a conspiracy years ago to have him confined - him, an
+absolutely sane man with a great avenging work to do in the world - 
+in a lunatic asylum.
+
+He stepped out into the open air, and the curtain, falling-to behind
+him, blotted out the tall, thin figure from the little group of
+people who had watched him disappear.
+
+Even Daisy felt a little scared.  "He did look bad, didn't he, now?"
+she turned appealingly to Mr. Hopkins.
+
+"Yes, that he did, poor gentleman - your lodger, too?" he looked
+sympathetically at Mrs. Bunting.
+
+She moistened her lips with her tongue.  "Yes," she repeated dully,
+"my lodger."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+In vain Mr. Hopkins invited Mrs. Bunting and her pretty stepdaughter
+to step through into the Chamber of Horrors.  "I think we ought to
+go straight home," said Mr. Sleuth's landlady decidedly.  And Daisy
+meekly assented.  Somehow the girl felt confused, a little scared by
+the lodger's sudden disappearance.  Perhaps this unwonted feeling of
+hers was induced by the look of stunned surprise and, yes, pain, on
+her step-mother's face.
+
+Slowly they made their way out of the building, and when they got
+home it was Daisy who described the strange way Mr. Sleuth had been
+taken.
+
+"I don't suppose he'll be long before he comes "home," said Bunting
+heavily, and he cast an anxious, furtive look at his wife.  She
+looked as if stricken in a vital part; he saw from her face that
+there was something wrong -  very wrong indeed.
+
+The hours dragged on.  All three felt moody and ill at ease.  Daisy
+knew there was no chance that young Chandler would come in to-day.
+
+About six o'clock Mrs. Bunting went upstairs.  She lit the gas in
+Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room and looked about her with a fearful glance.
+Somehow everything seemed to speak to her of the lodger, there lay
+her Bible and his Concordance, side by side on the table, exactly
+as he had left chew, when he had come downstairs and suggested that
+ill-starred expedition to his landlord's daughter.  She took few
+steps forward, listening the while anxiously for the familiar sound
+of the click in the door which would tell her that the lodger had
+come back, and then she went over to the window and looked out.
+
+What a cold night for a man to be wandering about, homeless,
+friendless, and, as she suspected with a pang, with but very little
+money on him!
+
+Turning abruptly, she went into the lodger's bedroom and opened the
+drawer of the looking-glass.
+
+Yes, there lay the much-diminished heap of sovereigns.  If only he
+had taken his money out with him!  She wondered painfully whether he
+had enough on his person to secure a good night's lodging, and then
+suddenly she remembered that which brought relief to her mind.  The
+lodger had given something to that Hopkins fellow - either a sovereign
+or half a sovereign, she wasn't sure which.
+
+The memory of Mr. Sleuth's cruel words to her, of his threat, did
+not disturb her overmuch.  It had been a mistake - all a mistake.
+Far from betraying Mr. Sleuth, she had sheltered him - kept his awful
+secret as she could not have kept it had she known, or even dimly
+suspected, the horrible fact with which Sir John Burney's words had
+made her acquainted; namely, that Mr. Sleuth was victim of no
+temporary aberration, but that he was, and had been for years, a
+madman, a homicidal maniac.
+
+In her ears there still rang the Frenchman's half careless yet
+confident question, "De Leipsic and Liverpool man?"
+
+Following a sudden impulse, she went back into the sitting-room,
+and taking a black-headed pin out of her bodice stuck it amid the
+leaves of the Bible.  Then she opened the Book, and looked at the
+page the pin had marked: - 
+
+"My tabernacle is spoiled and all my cords are broken . . .   
+There is none to stretch forth my tent any more and to set up my
+curtains."
+
+At last leaving the Bible open, Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and
+as she opened the door of her sitting-room Daisy came towards her
+stepmother.
+
+"I'll go down and start getting the lodger's supper ready for you,"
+said the girl good-naturedly.  "He's certain to come in when he gets
+hungry.  But he did look upset, didn't he, Ellen?  Right down bad - 
+that he did!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no answer; she simply stepped aside to allow Daisy
+to go down.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth won't never come back no more," she said sombrely, and
+then she felt both glad and angry at the extraordinary change which
+came over her husband's face.  Yet, perversely, that look of relief,
+of right-down joy, chiefly angered her, and tempted her to add,
+"That's to say, I don't suppose he will."
+
+And Bunting's face altered again; the old, anxious, depressed look,
+the look it had worn the last few days, returned.
+
+"What makes you think he mayn't come back?" he muttered.
+
+"Too long to tell you now," she said.  "Wait till the child's gone
+to bed."
+
+And Bunting had to restrain his curiosity.
+
+And then, when at last Daisy had gone off to the back room where
+she now slept with her stepmother, Mrs. Bunting beckoned to her
+husband to follow her upstairs.
+
+Before doing so he went down the passage and put the chain on the
+door.  And about this they had a few sharp whispered words.
+
+"You're never going to shut him out?" she expostulated angrily,
+beneath her breath.
+
+"I'm not going to leave Daisy down here with that man perhaps
+walking in any minute."
+
+"Mr. Sleuth won't hurt Daisy, bless you!  Much more likely to hurt
+me," and she gave a half sob.
+
+Bunting stared at her.  "What do you mean?" he said roughly.
+"Come upstairs and tell me what you mean."
+
+And then, in what had been the lodger's sitting-room, Mrs. Bunting
+told her husband exactly what it was that had happened.
+
+He listened in heavy silence.
+
+"So you see," she said at last, "you see, Bunting, that 'twas me
+that was right after all.  The lodger was never responsible for
+his actions.  I never thought he was, for my part."
+
+And Bunting stared at her ruminatingly.  "Depends on what you call
+responsible - " he began argumentatively.
+
+But she would have none of that.  "I heard the gentleman say myself
+that he was a lunatic," she said fiercely.  And then, dropping, her
+voice, "A religious maniac - that's what he called him."
+
+"Well, he never seemed so to me," said Bunting stoutly.  "He simply
+seemed to me 'centric - that's all he did.  Not a bit madder than
+many I could tell you of."  He was walking round the room restlessly,
+but he stopped short at last. "And what d'you think we ought to do
+now?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting shook her head impatiently.  "I don't think we ought
+to do nothing," she said.  "Why should we?"
+
+And then again he began walking round the room in an aimless fashion
+that irritated her.
+
+"If only I could put out a bit of supper for him somewhere where he
+would get it!  And his money, too?  I hate to feel it's in there."
+
+"Don't you make any mistake - he'll come back for that," said Bunting,
+with decision.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting shook her head.  She knew better.  "Now," she said,
+"you go off up to bed.  It's no use us sitting up any longer."
+
+And Bunting acquiesced.
+
+She ran down and got him a bedroom candle - there was no gas in the
+little back bedroom upstairs.  And then she watched him go slowly up.
+
+Suddenly he turned and came down again.  "Ellen," he said, in an
+urgent whisper, "if I was you I'd take the chain off the door, and
+I'd lock myself in - that's what I'm going to do.  Then he can sneak
+in and take his dirty money away.
+
+Mrs. Bunting neither nodded nor shook her head.  Slowly she went
+downstairs, and there she carried out half of Bunting's advice.
+She took, that is, the chain off the front door.  But she did not
+go to bed, neither did she lock herself in.  She sat up all night,
+waiting.  At half-past seven she made herself a cup of tea, and
+then she went into her bedroom.
+
+Daisy opened her eyes.
+
+"Why, Ellen," she said, "I suppose I was that tired, and slept so
+sound, that I never heard you come to bed or get up - funny,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Young people don't sleep as light as do old folk's Mrs. Bunting
+said sententiously.
+
+"Did the lodger come in after all?  I suppose he's upstairs now?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting shook her head.  "It looks as if 'twould be a fine
+day for you down at Richmond," she observed in a kindly tone.
+
+And Daisy smiled, a very happy, confident little smile.
+
+******
+
+That evening Mrs. Bunting forced herself to tell young Chandler
+that their lodger had, so to speak, disappeared.  She and Bunting
+had thought carefully over what they would say, and so well did
+they carry out their programme, or, what is more likely, so full
+was young Chandler of the long happy day he and Daisy had spent
+together, that he took their news very calmly.
+
+"Gone away, has he?" he observed casually.  "Well, I hope he paid
+up all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," said Mrs. Bunting hastily.  "No trouble of that sort."
+
+And Bunting said shamefacedly, "Aye, aye, the lodger was quite an
+honest gentleman, Joe.  But I feel worried, about him.  He was such
+a poor, gentle chap - not the sort o' man one likes to think of as
+wandering about by himself."
+
+"You always said he was 'centric," said Joe thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, he was that," said Bunting slowly.  "Regular right-down queer.
+Leetle touched, you know, under the thatch," and, as he tapped his
+head significantly, both young people burst out laughing.
+
+"Would you like a description of him circulated?" asked Joe
+good-naturedly.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bunting looked at one another.
+
+"No, I don't think so.  Not yet awhile at any rate. 'Twould upset
+him awfully, you see."
+
+And Joe acquiesced.  "You'd be surprised at the number o' people
+who disappears and are never heard of again" he said cheerfully.
+And then he got up, very reluctantly.
+
+Daisy, making no bones about it this time, followed him out into
+the passage, and shut the sitting-room door behind her.
+
+When she came back she walked over to where her father was sitting
+in his easy chair, and standing behind him she put her arms round
+his neck.
+
+Then she bent down her head.  "Father," she said, "I've a bit of
+news for you!"
+
+"Yes, my dear?"
+
+"Father, I'm engaged!  Aren't you surprised?"
+
+"Well, what do you think?" said Bunting fondly.  Then he turned
+round and, catching hold of her head, gave her a good, hearty kiss.
+
+"What'll Old Aunt say, I wonder?" he whispered.
+
+"Don't you worry about Old Aunt," exclaimed his wife suddenly.
+"I'll manage Old Aunt!  I'll go down and see her.  She and I have
+always got on pretty comfortable together, as you knows well, Daisy."
+
+"Yes," said Daisy a little wonderingly.  "I know you have, Ellen."
+
+******
+
+Mr. Sleuth never came back, and at last after many days and many
+nights had gone by, Mrs. Bunting left off listening for the click
+of the lock which she at once hoped and feared would herald her
+lodger's return.
+
+As suddenly and as mysteriously as they had begun the "Avenger"
+murders stopped, but there came a morning in the early spring when
+a gardener, working in the Regent's Park, found a newspaper in which
+was wrapped, together with a half-worn pair of rubber-soled shoes,
+a long, peculiarly shaped knife.  The fact, though of considerable
+interest to the police, was not chronicled in any newspaper, but
+about the same time a picturesque little paragraph went the round
+of the press concerning a small boxful of sovereigns which had been
+anonymously forwarded to the Governors of the Foundling Hospital.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Bunting had been as good as her word about "Old Aunt,"
+and that lady had received the wonderful news concerning Daisy in a
+more philosophical spirit than her great-niece had expected her to
+do.  She only observed that it was odd to reflect that if gentlefolks
+leave a house in charge of the police a burglary is pretty sure to
+follow - a remark which Daisy resented much more than did her Joe.
+
+
+Mr. Bunting and his Ellen are now in the service of an old
+lady, by whom they are feared as well as respected, and whom they 
+make very comfortable.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
diff --git a/old/tldgr10.zip b/old/tldgr10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d88ff5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/tldgr10.zip
diff --git a/old/tldgr11.txt b/old/tldgr11.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c9f72a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/tldgr11.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10138 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Lodger
+
+Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+Release Date: December, 1999 [EBook #2014]
+[This file was last updated on November 21, 2003]
+
+Edition: 11
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LODGER ***
+
+
+
+
+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Lodger
+
+by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+
+
+
+"Lover and friend hast thou put far from me,
+and mine acquaintance into darkness."
+    PSALM lxxxviii. 18
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning,
+carefully-banked-up fire.
+
+The room, especially when it be known that it was part of a house
+standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare,
+was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for. A casual stranger,
+more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly
+opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr.
+and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of
+comfortable married life. Bunting, who was leaning back in a deep
+leather arm-chair, was clean-shaven and dapper, still in appearance
+what he had been for many years of his life--a self-respecting
+man-servant.
+
+On his wife, now sitting up in an uncomfortable straight-backed
+chair, the marks of past servitude were less apparent; but they
+were there all the same--in her neat black stuff dress, and in
+her scrupulously clean, plain collar and cuffs. Mrs. Bunting, as
+a single woman, had been what is known as a useful maid.
+
+But peculiarly true of average English life is the time-worn
+English proverb as to appearances being deceitful. Mr. and Mrs.
+Bunting were sitting in a very nice room and in their time--how
+long ago it now seemed!--both husband and wife had been proud of
+their carefully chosen belongings. Everything in the room was
+strong and substantial, and each article of furniture had been
+bought at a well-conducted auction held in a private house.
+
+Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden,
+drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song,
+and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years.
+A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which
+covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat
+forward, staring into the dull, small fire. In fact, that arm-chair
+had been an extravagance of Mrs. Bunting. She had wanted her husband
+to be comfortable after the day's work was done, and she had paid
+thirty-seven shillings for the chair. Only yesterday Bunting had
+tried to find a purchaser for it, but the man who had come to look at
+it, guessing their cruel necessities, had only offered them twelve
+shillings and sixpence for it; so for the present they were keeping
+their arm-chair.
+
+But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort,
+much as that is valued by the Buntings of this world. So, on the
+walls of the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded
+photographs--photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's various former
+employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had
+separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not
+unhappy servitude.
+
+But appearances were not only deceitful, they were more than
+usually deceitful with regard to these un-fortunate people. In
+spite of their good furniture--that substantial outward sign of
+respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall
+into trouble try to dispose of--they were almost at the end of
+their tether. Already they had learnt to go hungry, and they were
+beginning to learn to go cold. Tobacco, the last thing the sober
+man foregoes among his comforts, had been given up some time ago
+by Bunting. And even Mrs. Bunting--prim, prudent, careful woman
+as she was in her way--had realised what this must mean to him.
+So well, indeed, had she understood that some days back she had
+crept out and bought him a packet of Virginia.
+
+Bunting had been touched--touched as he had not been for years by
+any woman's thought and love for him. Painful tears had forced
+themselves into his eyes, and husband and wife had both felt in
+their odd, unemotional way, moved to the heart.
+
+Fortunately he never guessed--how could he have guessed, with his
+slow, normal, rather dull mind?--that his poor Ellen had since
+more than once bitterly regretted that fourpence-ha'penny, for they
+were now very near the soundless depths which divide those who dwell
+on the safe tableland of security--those, that is, who are sure of
+making a respectable, if not a happy, living--and the submerged
+multitude who, through some lack in themselves, or owing to the
+conditions under which our strange civilisation has become organised,
+struggle rudderless till they die in workhouse, hospital, or prison.
+
+Had the Buntings been in a class lower than their own, had they
+belonged to the great company of human beings technically known to
+so many of us as the poor, there would have been friendly neighbours
+ready to help them, and the same would have been the case had they
+belonged to the class of smug, well-meaning, if unimaginative, folk
+whom they had spent so much of their lives in serving.
+
+There was only one person in the world who might possibly be brought
+to help them. That was an aunt of Bunting's first wife. With this
+woman, the widow of a man who had been well-to-do, lived Daisy,
+Bunting's only child by his first wife, and during the last long two
+days he had been trying to make up his mind to write to the old lady,
+and that though he suspected that she would almost certainly retort
+with a cruel, sharp rebuff.
+
+As to their few acquaintances, former fellow-servants, and so on,
+they had gradually fallen out of touch with them. There was but
+one friend who often came to see them in their deep trouble. This
+was a young fellow named Chandler, under whose grandfather Bunting
+had been footman years and years ago. Joe Chandler had never gone
+into service; he was attached to the police; in fact not to put too
+fine a point upon it, young Chandler was a detective.
+
+When they had first taken the house which had brought them, so they
+both thought, such bad luck, Bunting had encouraged the young chap
+to come often, for his tales were well worth listening to--quite
+exciting at times. But now poor Bunting didn't want to hear that
+sort of stories--stories of people being cleverly "nabbed," or
+stupidly allowed to escape the fate they always, from Chandler's
+point of view, richly deserved.
+
+But Joe still came very faithfully once or twice a week, so timing
+his calls that neither host nor hostess need press food upon him
+--nay, more, he had done that which showed him to have a good and
+feeling heart. He had offered his father's old acquaintance a loan,
+and Bunting, at last, had taken 30s. Very little of that money
+now remained: Bunting still could jingle a few coppers in his pocket;
+and Mrs. Bunting had 2s. 9d.; that and the rent they would have to
+pay in five weeks, was all they had left. Everything of the light,
+portable sort that would fetch money had been said. Mrs. Bunting
+had a fierce horror of the pawnshop. She had never put her feet in
+such a place, and she declared she never would--she would rather
+starve first.
+
+But she had said nothing when there had occurred the gradual
+disappearance of various little possessions she knew that Bunting
+valued, notably of the old-fashioned gold watch-chain which had been
+given to him after the death of his first master, a master he had
+nursed faithfully and kindly through a long and terrible illness.
+There had also vanished a twisted gold tie-pin, and a large mourning
+ring, both gifts of former employers.
+
+When people are living near that deep pit which divides the secure
+from the insecure--when they see themselves creeping closer and
+closer to its dread edge--they are apt, however loquacious by
+nature, to fall into long silences. Bunting had always been a
+talker, but now he talked no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but
+then she had always been a silent woman, and that was perhaps one
+reason why Bunting had felt drawn to her from the very first moment
+he had seen her.
+
+It had fallen out in this way. A lady had just engaged him as
+butler, and he had been shown, by the man whose place he was to
+take, into the dining-room. There, to use his own expression, he
+had discovered Ellen Green, carefully pouring out the glass of port
+wine which her then mistress always drank at 11.30 every morning.
+And as he, the new butler, had seen her engaged in this task, as he
+had watched her carefully stopper the decanter and put it back into
+the old wine-cooler, he had said to himself, "That is the woman for
+me!"
+
+But now her stillness, her--her dumbness, had got on the
+unfortunate man's nerves. He no longer felt like going into the
+various little shops, close by, patronised by him in more prosperous
+days, and Mrs. Bunting also went afield to make the slender purchases
+which still had to be made every day or two, if they were to be
+saved from actually starving to death.
+
+Suddenly, across the stillness of the dark November evening there
+came the muffled sounds of hurrying feet and of loud, shrill shouting
+outside--boys crying the late afternoon editions of the evening
+papers.
+
+Bunting turned uneasily in his chair. The giving up of a daily
+paper had been, after his tobacco, his bitterest deprivation. And
+the paper was an older habit than the tobacco, for servants are
+great readers of newspapers.
+
+As the shouts came through the closed windows and the thick damask
+curtains, Bunting felt a sudden sense of mind hunger fall upon him.
+
+It was a shame--a damned shame--that he shouldn't know what was
+happening in the world outside! Only criminals are kept from hearing
+news of what is going on beyond their prison walls. And those
+shouts, those hoarse, sharp cries must portend that something really
+exciting had happened, something warranted to make a man forget for
+the moment his own intimate, gnawing troubles.
+
+He got up, and going towards the nearest window strained his ears to
+listen. There fell on them, emerging now and again from the confused
+babel of hoarse shouts, the one clear word "Murder!"
+
+Slowly Bunting's brain pieced the loud, indistinct cries into some
+sort of connected order. Yes, that was it--"Horrible Murder!
+Murder at St. Pancras!" Bunting remembered vaguely another murder
+which had been committed near St. Pancras--that of an old lady by
+her servant-maid. It had happened a great many years ago, but was
+still vividly remembered, as of special and natural interest, among
+the class to which he had belonged.
+
+The newsboys--for there were more than one of them, a rather unusual
+thing in the Marylebone Road--were coming nearer and nearer; now
+they had adopted another cry, but he could not quite catch what they
+were crying. They were still shouting hoarsely, excitedly, but he
+could only hear a word or two now and then. Suddenly "The Avenger!
+The Avenger at his work again!" broke on his ear.
+
+During the last fortnight four very curious and brutal murders had
+been committed in London and within a comparatively small area.
+
+The first had aroused no special interest--even the second had only
+been awarded, in the paper Bunting was still then taking in, quite a
+small paragraph.
+
+Then had come the third--and with that a wave of keen excitement,
+for pinned to the dress of the victim--a drunken woman--had been
+found a three-cornered piece of paper, on which was written, in red
+ink, and in printed characters, the words,
+
+"THE AVENGER"
+
+It was then realised, not only by those whose business it is to
+investigate such terrible happenings, but also by the vast world
+of men and women who take an intelligent interest in such sinister
+mysteries, that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes;
+and before that extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into
+the public mind there took place yet another murder, and again the
+murderer had been to special pains to make it clear that some
+obscure and terrible lust for vengeance possessed him.
+
+Now everyone was talking of The Avenger and his crimes! Even the
+man who left their ha'porth of milk at the door each morning had
+spoken to Bunting about them that very day.
+
+******
+
+Bunting came back to the fire and looked down at his wife with mild
+excitement. Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of
+weary, mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him.
+He felt he could have shaken her!
+
+Ellen had hardly taken the trouble to listen when he, Bunting, had
+come back to bed that morning, and told her what the milkman had
+said. In fact, she had been quite nasty about it, intimating that
+she didn't like hearing about such horrid things.
+
+It was a curious fact that though Mrs. Bunting enjoyed tales of
+pathos and sentiment, and would listen with frigid amusement to
+the details of a breach of promise action, she shrank from stories
+of immorality or of physical violence. In the old, happy days,
+when they could afford to buy a paper, aye, and more than one paper
+daily, Bunting had often had to choke down his interest in some
+exciting "case" or "mystery" which was affording him pleasant mental
+relaxation, because any allusion to it sharply angered Ellen.
+
+But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she
+felt.
+
+Walking away from the window he took a slow, uncertain step towards
+the door; when there he turned half round, and there came over his
+close-shaven, round face the rather sly, pleading look with which
+a child about to do something naughty glances at its parent.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting remained quite still; her thin, narrow shoulders
+just showed above the back of the chair on which she was sitting,
+bolt upright, staring before her as if into vacancy.
+
+Bunting turned round, opened the door, and quickly he went out into
+the dark hall--they had given up lighting the gas there some time
+ago--and opened the front door.
+
+Walking down the small flagged path outside, he flung open the iron
+gate which gave on to the damp pavement. But there he hesitated.
+The coppers in his pocket seemed to have shrunk in number, and he
+remembered ruefully how far Ellen could make even four pennies go.
+
+Then a boy ran up to him with a sheaf of evening papers, and Bunting,
+being sorely tempted--fell. "Give me a Sun," he said roughly, "Sun
+or Echo!"
+
+But the boy, scarcely stopping to take breath, shook his head. "Only
+penny papers left," he gasped. "What'll yer 'ave, sir?"
+
+With an eagerness which was mingled with shame, Bunting drew a penny
+out of his pocket and took a paper--it was the Evening Standard--
+from the boy's hand.
+
+Then, very slowly, he shut the gate and walked back through the raw,
+cold air, up the flagged path, shivering yet full of eager, joyful
+anticipation.
+
+Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly he would pass
+a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent,
+miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments
+of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife,
+with careworn, troubled Ellen.
+
+A hot wave of unease almost of remorse, swept over Bunting. Ellen
+would never have spent that penny on herself--he knew that well
+enough--and if it hadn't been so cold, so foggy, so--so drizzly,
+he would have gone out again through the gate and stood under the
+street lamp to take his pleasure. He dreaded with a nervous dread
+the glance of Ellen's cold, reproving light-blue eye. That glance
+would tell him that he had had no business to waste a penny on a
+paper, and that well he knew it!
+
+Suddenly the door in front of him opened, and he beard a familiar
+voice saying crossly, yet anxiously, "What on earth are you doing
+out there, Bunting? Come in--do! You'll catch your death of cold!
+I don't want to have you ill on my hands as well as everything else!"
+Mrs. Bunting rarely uttered so many words at once nowadays.
+
+He walked in through the front door of his cheerless house. "I
+went out to get a paper," he said sullenly.
+
+After all, he was master. He had as much right to spend the money
+as she had; for the matter of that the money on which they were now
+both living had been lent, nay, pressed on him--not on Ellen--by
+that decent young chap, Joe Chandler. And he, Bunting, had done
+all he could; he had pawned everything he could pawn, while Ellen,
+so he resentfully noticed, still wore her wedding ring.
+
+He stepped past her heavily, and though she said nothing, he knew
+she grudged him his coming joy. Then, full of rage with her and
+contempt for himself, and giving himself the luxury of a mild, a
+very mild, oath--Ellen had very early made it clear she would
+have no swearing in her presence--he lit the hall gas full-flare.
+
+"How can we hope to get lodgers if they can't even see the card?"
+he shouted angrily.
+
+And there was truth in what he said, for now that he had lit the
+gas, the oblong card, though not the word "Apartments" printed on
+it, could be plainly seen out-lined against the old-fashioned
+fanlight above the front door.
+
+Bunting went into the sitting-room, silently followed by his wife,
+and then, sitting down in his nice arm-chair, he poked the little
+banked-up fire. It was the first time Bunting had poked the fire
+for many a long day, and this exertion of marital authority made
+him feel better. A man has to assert himself sometimes, and he,
+Bunting, had not asserted himself enough lately.
+
+A little colour came into Mrs. Bunting's pale face. She was not
+used to be flouted in this way. For Bunting, when not thoroughly
+upset, was the mildest of men.
+
+She began moving about the room, flicking off an imperceptible
+touch of dust here, straightening a piece of furniture there.
+
+But her hands trembled--they trembled with excitement, with
+self-pity, with anger. A penny? It was dreadful--dreadful to
+have to worry about a penny! But they had come to the point when
+one has to worry about pennies. Strange that her husband didn't
+realise that.
+
+Bunting looked round once or twice; he would have liked to ask Ellen
+to leave off fidgeting, but he was fond of peace, and perhaps, by
+now, a little bit ashamed of himself, so he refrained from remark,
+and she soon gave over what irritated him of her own accord.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting did not come and sit down as her husband would have
+liked her to do. The sight of him, absorbed in his paper as he was,
+irritated her, and made her long to get away from him. Opening the
+door which separated the sitting-room from the bedroom behind, and
+--shutting out the aggravating vision of Bunting sitting comfortably
+by the now brightly burning fire, with the Evening Standard spread
+out before him--she sat down in the cold darkness, and pressed her
+hands against her temples.
+
+Never, never had she felt so hopeless, so--so broken as now. Where
+was the good of having been an upright, conscientious, self-respecting
+woman all her life long, if it only led to this utter, degrading
+poverty and wretchedness? She and Bunting were just past the age
+which gentlefolk think proper in a married couple seeking to enter
+service together, unless, that is, the wife happens to be a professed
+cook. A cook and a butler can always get a nice situation. But Mrs.
+Bunting was no cook. She could do all right the simple things any
+lodger she might get would require, but that was all.
+
+Lodgers? How foolish she had been to think of taking lodgers! For
+it had been her doing. Bunting bad been like butter in her hands.
+
+Yet they had begun well, with a lodging-house in a seaside place.
+There they had prospered, not as they had hoped to do, but still
+pretty well; and then had come an epidemic of scarlet fever, and
+that had meant ruin for them, and for dozens, nay, hundreds, of
+other luckless people. Then had followed a business experiment
+which had proved even more disastrous, and which had left them in
+debt--in debt to an extent they could never hope to repay, to a
+good-natured former employer.
+
+After that, instead of going back to service, as they might have
+done, perhaps, either together or separately, they had made up
+their minds to make one last effort, and they had taken over, with
+the trifle of money that remained to them, the lease of this house
+in the Marylebone Road.
+
+In former days, when they had each been leading the sheltered,
+impersonal, and, above all, financially easy existence which is
+the compensation life offers to those men and women who deliberately
+take upon themselves the yoke of domestic service, they had both
+lived in houses overlooking Regent's Park. It had seemed a wise
+plan to settle in the same neighbourhood, the more so that Bunting,
+who had a good appearance, had retained the kind of connection
+which enables a man to get a job now and again as waiter at private
+parties.
+
+But life moves quickly, jaggedly, for people like the Buntings.
+Two of his former masters had moved to another part of London, and
+a caterer in Baker Street whom he had known went bankrupt.
+
+And now? Well, just now Bunting could not have taken a job had
+one been offered him, for he had pawned his dress clothes. He had
+not asked his wife's permission to do this, as so good a husband
+ought to have done. He had just gone out and done it. And she had
+not had the heart to say anything; nay, it was with part of the
+money that he had handed her silently the evening he did it that
+she had bought that last packet of tobacco.
+
+And then, as Mrs. Bunting sat there thinking these painful thoughts,
+there suddenly came to the front door the sound of a loud, tremulous,
+uncertain double knock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Mr. Bunting jumped nervously to her feet. She stood for a moment
+listening in the darkness, a darkness made the blacker by the line
+of light under the door behind which sat Bunting reading his paper.
+
+And then it came again, that loud, tremulous, uncertain double
+knock; not a knock, so the listener told herself, that boded any
+good. Would-be lodgers gave sharp, quick, bold, confident raps.
+No; this must be some kind of beggar. The queerest people came at
+all hours, and asked--whining or threatening--for money.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had had some sinister experiences with men and women
+--especially women--drawn from that nameless, mysterious class
+made up of the human flotsam and jetsam which drifts about every
+great city. But since she had taken to leaving the gas in the
+passage unlit at night she had been very little troubled with that
+kind of visitors, those human bats which are attracted by any kind
+of light but leave alone those who live in darkness.
+
+She opened the door of the sitting-room. It was Bunting's place
+to go to the front door, but she knew far better than he did how
+to deal with difficult or obtrusive callers. Still, somehow, she
+would have liked him to go to-night. But Bunting sat on, absorbed
+in his newspaper; all he did at the sound of the bedroom door
+opening was to look up and say, "Didn't you hear a knock?"
+
+Without answering his question she went out into the hall.
+
+Slowly she opened the front door.
+
+On the top of the thee steps which led up to the door, there stood
+the long, lanky figure of a man, clad in an Inverness cape and an
+old-fashioned top hat. He waited for a few seconds blinking at her,
+perhaps dazzled by the light of the gas in the passage. Mrs.
+Bunting's trained perception told her at once that this man, odd as
+he looked, was a gentleman, belonging by birth to the class with
+whom her former employment had brought her in contact.
+
+"Is it not a fact that you let lodgings?" he asked, and there was
+something shrill, unbalanced, hesitating, in his voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said uncertainly--it was a long, long time since
+anyone had come after their lodgings, anyone, that is, that they
+could think of taking into their respectable house.
+
+Instinctively she stepped a little to one side, and the stranger
+walked past her, and so into the hall.
+
+And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting noticed that he held a
+narrow bag in his left hand. It was quite a new bag, made of strong
+brown leather.
+
+"I am looking for some quiet rooms," he said; then he repeated the
+words, "quiet rooms," in a dreamy, absent way, and as he uttered
+them he looked nervously round him.
+
+Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully
+furnished, and was very clean.
+
+There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary
+feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which
+matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
+
+A very superior lodging-house this, and evidently a superior
+lodging-house keeper.
+
+"You'd find my rooms quite quiet, sir," she said gently. "And just
+now I have four to let. The house is empty, save for my husband
+and me, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting spoke in a civil, passionless voice. It seemed too
+good to be true, this sudden coming of a possible lodger, and of a
+lodger who spoke in the pleasant, courteous way and voice which
+recalled to the poor Woman her happy, far-off days of youth and
+of security.
+
+"That sounds very suitable," he said. "Four rooms? Well, perhaps
+I ought only to take two rooms, but, still, I should like to see
+all four before I make my choice."
+
+How fortunate, how very fortunate it was that Bunting had lit the
+gas! But for that circumstance this gentleman would have passed
+them by.
+
+She turned towards the staircase, quite forgetting in her agitation
+that the front door was still open; and it was the stranger whom
+she already in her mind described as "the lodger," who turned and
+rather quickly walked down the passage and shut it.
+
+"Oh, thank you, sir!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry you should have
+had the trouble."
+
+For a moment their eyes met. "It's not safe to leave a front door
+open in London," he said, rather sharply. "I hope you do not often
+do that. It would be so easy for anyone to slip in."
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt rather upset. The stranger had still spoken
+courteously, but he was evidently very much put out.
+
+"I assure you, sir, I never lave my front door open," she answered
+hastily. "You needn't be at all afraid of that!"
+
+And then, through the closed door of the sitting-room, came the
+sound of Bunting coughing--it was just a little, hard cough, but
+Mrs. Bunting's future lodger started violently.
+
+"Who's that?" he said, putting out a hand and clutching her arm.
+"Whatever was that?"
+
+"Only my husband, sir. He went out to buy a paper a few minutes
+ago, and the cold just caught him, I suppose."
+
+"Your husband--?" he looked at her intently, suspiciously. "What
+--what, may I ask, is your husband's occupation?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting drew herself up. The question as to Bunting's
+occupation was no one's business but theirs. Still, it wouldn't do
+for her to show offence. "He goes out waiting," she said stiffly.
+"He was a gentleman's servant, sir. He could, of course, valet you
+should you require him to do so."
+
+And then she turned and led the way up the steep, narrow staircase.
+
+At the top of the first flight of stairs was what Mrs. Bunting, to
+herself, called the drawing-room floor. It consisted of a
+sitting-room in front, and a bedroom behind. She opened the door
+of the sitting-room and quickly lit the chandelier.
+
+This, front room was pleasant enough, though perhaps a little
+over-encumbered with furniture. Covering the floor was a green
+carpet simulating moss; four chairs were placed round the table
+which occupied the exact middle of the apartment, and in the
+corner, opposite the door giving on to the landing, was a roomy,
+old-fashioned chiffonnier.
+
+On the dark-green walls hung a series of eight engravings, portraits
+of early Victorian belles, clad in lace and tarletan ball dresses,
+clipped from an old Book of Beauty. Mrs. Bunting was very fond of
+these pictures; she thought they gave the drawing-room a note of
+elegance and refinement.
+
+As she hurriedly turned up the gas she was glad, glad indeed, that
+she had summoned up sufficient energy, two days ago, to give the
+room a thorough turn-out.
+
+It had remained for a long time in the state in which it had been
+left by its last dishonest, dirty occupants when they had been
+scared into going away by Bunting's rough threats of the police.
+But now it was in apple-pie order, with one paramount exception,
+of which Mrs. Bunting was painfully aware. There were no white
+curtains to the windows, but that omission could soon be remedied
+if this gentleman really took the lodgings.
+
+But what was this--? The stranger was looking round him rather
+dubiously. "This is rather--rather too grand for me," he said at
+last "I should like to see your other rooms, Mrs. er--"
+
+"--Bunting," she said softly. "Bunting, sir."
+
+And as she spoke the dark, heavy load of care again came down and
+settled on her sad, burdened heart. Perhaps she had been mistaken,
+after all--or rather, she had not been mistaken in one sense, but
+perhaps this gentleman was a poor gentleman--too poor, that is, to
+afford the rent of more than one room, say eight or ten shillings
+a week; eight or ten shillings a week would be very little use to
+her and Bunting, though better than nothing at all.
+
+"Will you just look at the bedroom, sir?"
+
+"No," he said, "no. I think I should like to see what you have
+farther up the house, Mrs.--," and then, as if making a prodigious
+mental effort, he brought out her name, "Bunting," with a kind of
+gasp.
+
+The two top rooms were, of course, immediately above the
+drawing-room floor. But they looked poor and mean, owing to the fact
+that they were bare of any kind of ornament. Very little trouble had
+been taken over their arrangement; in fact, they bad been left in much
+the same condition as that in which the Buntings had found them.
+
+For the matter of that, it is difficult to make a nice, genteel
+sitting-room out of an apartment of which the principal features
+are a sink and a big gas stove. The gas stove, of an obsolete
+pattern, was fed by a tiresome, shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
+It had been the property of the people from whom the Buntings had
+taken over the lease of the house, who, knowing it to be of no
+monetary value, had thrown it in among the humble fittings they
+had left behind.
+
+What furniture there was in the room was substantial and clean, as
+everything belonging to Mrs. Bunting was bound to be, but it was a
+bare, uncomfortable-looking place, and the landlady now felt sorry
+that she had done nothing to make it appear more attractive.
+
+To her surprise, however, her companion's dark, sensitive,
+hatchet-shaped face became irradiated with satisfaction. "Capital!
+Capital!" he exclaimed, for the first time putting down the bag he
+held at his feet, and rubbing his long, thin hands together with a
+quick, nervous movement.
+
+"This is just what I have been looking for." He walked with long,
+eager strides towards the gas stove. "First-rate--quite first-rate!
+Exactly what I wanted to find! You must understand, Mrs.--er--
+Bunting, that I am a man of science. I make, that is, all sorts of
+experiments, and I often require the--ah, well, the presence of
+great heat."
+
+He shot out a hand, which she noticed shook a little, towards the
+stove. "This, too, will be useful--exceedingly useful, to me," and
+he touched the edge of the stone sink with a lingering, caressing
+touch.
+
+He threw his head back and passed his hand over his high, bare
+forehead; then, moving towards a chair, he sat down--wearily.
+"I'm tired," he muttered in a low voice, "tired--tired! I've been
+walking about all day, Mrs. Bunting, and I could find nothing to sit
+down upon. They do not put benches for tired men in the London
+streets. They do so on the Continent. In some ways they are far
+more humane on the Continent than they are in England, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Indeed, sir," she said civilly; and then, after a nervous glance,
+she asked the question of which the answer would mean so much to her,
+"Then you mean to take my rooms, sir?"
+
+"This room, certainly," he said, looking round. "This room is
+exactly what I have been looking for, and longing for, the last
+few days;" and then hastily he added, "I mean this kind of place
+is what I have always wanted to possess, Mrs. Bunting. You would
+be surprised if you knew how difficult it is to get anything of
+the sort. But now my weary search has ended, and that is a relief
+--a very, very great relief to me!"
+
+He stood up and looked round him with a dreamy, abstracted air. And
+then, "Where's my bag?" he asked suddenly, and there came a note of
+sharp, angry fear in his voice. He glared at the quiet woman
+standing before him, and for a moment Mrs. Bunting felt a tremor of
+fright shoot through her. It seemed a pity that Bunting was so far
+away, right down the house.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting was aware that eccentricity has always been a
+perquisite, as it were the special luxury, of the well-born and of
+the well-educated. Scholars, as she well knew, are never quite like
+other people, and her new lodger was undoubtedly a scholar. "Surely
+I had a bag when I came in?" he said in a scared, troubled voice.
+
+"Here it is, sir," she said soothingly, and, stooping, picked it
+up and handed it to him. And as she did so she noticed that the
+bag was not at all heavy; it was evidently by no means full.
+
+He took it eagerly from her. "I beg your pardon," he muttered.
+"But there is something in that bag which is very precious to me
+--something I procured with infinite difficulty, and which I could
+never get again without running into great danger, Mrs. Bunting.
+That must be the excuse for my late agitation."
+
+"About terms, sir?" she said a little timidly, returning to the
+subject which meant so much, so very much to her.
+
+"About terms?" he echoed. And then there came a pause. "My name
+is Sleuth," he said suddenly,--"S-l-e-u-t-h. Think of a hound,
+Mrs. Bunting, and you'll never forget my name. I could provide you
+with a reference--" (he gave her what she described to herself as
+a funny, sideways look), "but I should prefer you to dispense with
+that, if you don't mind. I am quite willing to pay you--well, shall
+we say a month in advance?"
+
+A spot of red shot into Mrs. Bunting's cheeks. She felt sick with
+relief--nay, with a joy which was almost pain. She had not known
+till that moment how hungry she was--how eager for--a good meal.
+"That would be all right, sir," she murmured.
+
+"And what are you going to charge me?" There had come a kindly,
+almost a friendly note into his voice. "With attendance, mind! I
+shall expect you to give me attendance, and I need hardly ask if
+you can cook, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," she said. "I am a plain cook. What would you say
+to twenty-five shillings a week, sir?" She looked at him
+deprecatingly, and as he did not answer she went on falteringly,
+"You see, sir, it may seem a good deal, but you would have the best
+of attendance and careful cooking--and my husband, sir--he would
+be pleased to valet you."
+
+"I shouldn't want anything of that sort done for me," said Mr.
+Sleuth hastily. "I prefer looking after my own clothes. I am used
+to waiting on myself. But, Mrs. Bunting, I have a great dislike to
+sharing lodgings--"
+
+She interrupted eagerly, "I could let you have the use of the two
+floors for the same price--that is, until we get another lodger.
+I shouldn't like you to sleep in the back room up here, sir. It's
+such a poor little room. You could do as you say, sir--do your work
+and your experiments up here, and then have your meals in the
+drawing-room."
+
+"Yes," he said hesitatingly, "that sounds a good plan. And if I
+offered you two pounds, or two guineas? Might I then rely on your
+not taking another lodger?"
+
+"Yes," she said quietly. "I'd be very glad only to have you to
+wait on, sir."
+
+"I suppose you have a key to the door of this room, Mrs. Bunting?
+I don't like to be disturbed while I'm working."
+
+He waited a moment, and then said again, rather urgently, "I suppose
+you have a key to this door, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, there's a key--a very nice little key. The people
+who lived here before had a new kind of lock put on to the door."
+She went over, and throwing the door open, showed him that a round
+disk had been fitted above the old keyhole.
+
+He nodded his head, and then, after standing silent a little, as if
+absorbed in thought, "Forty-two shillings a week? Yes, that will
+suit me perfectly. And I'll begin now by paying my first month's
+rent in advance. Now, four times forty-two shillings is"--he
+jerked his head back and stared at his new landlady; for the first
+time he smiled, a queer, wry smile--"why, just eight pounds eight
+shillings, Mrs. Bunting!"
+
+He thrust his hand through into an inner pocket of his long
+cape-like coat and took out a handful of sovereigns. Then he began
+putting these down in a row on the bare wooden table which stood in
+the centre of the room. "Here's five--six--seven--eight--nine
+--ten pounds. You'd better keep the odd change, Mrs. Bunting,
+for I shall want you to do some shopping for me to-morrow morning.
+I met with a misfortune to-day." But the new lodger did not speak
+as if his misfortune, whatever it was, weighed on his spirits.
+
+"Indeed, sir. I'm sorry to hear that." Mrs. Bunting's heart was
+going thump--thump--thump. She felt extraordinarily moved, dizzy
+with relief and joy.
+
+"Yes, a very great misfortune! I lost my luggage, the few things
+I managed to bring away with me." His voice dropped suddenly. "I
+shouldn't have said that," he muttered. "I was a fool to say that!"
+Then, more loudly, "Someone said to me, 'You can't go into a
+lodging-house without any luggage. They wouldn't take you in.' But
+you have taken me in, Mrs. Bunting, and I'm grateful for--for the
+kind way you have met me--" He looked at her feelingly, appealingly,
+and Mrs. Bunting was touched. She was beginning to feel very kindly
+towards her new lodger.
+
+"I hope I know a gentleman when I see one," she said, with a break
+in her staid voice,
+
+"I shall have to see about getting some clothes to-morrow, Mrs. Bunting."
+Again he looked at her appealingly.
+
+"I expect you'd like to wash your hands now, sir. And would you tell
+me what you'd like for supper? We haven't much in the house."
+
+"Oh, anything'll do," he said hastily. "I don't want you to go out
+for me. It's a cold, foggy, wet night, Mrs. Bunting. If you have a
+little bread-and-butter and a cup of milk I shall be quite satisfied."
+
+"I have a nice sausage," she said hesitatingly.
+
+It was a very nice sausage, and she had bought it that same morning
+for Bunting's supper; as to herself, she had been going to content
+herself with a little bread and cheese. But now--wonderful, almost,
+intoxicating thought--she could send Bunting out to get anything
+they both liked. The ten sovereigns lay in her hand full of comfort
+and good cheer.
+
+"A sausage? No, I fear that will hardly do. I never touch flesh
+meat," he said; "it is a long, long time since I tasted a sausage,
+Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Is it indeed, sir?" She hesitated a moment, then asked stiffly,
+"And will you be requiring any beer, or wine, sir?"
+
+A strange, wild look of lowering wrath suddenly filled Mr. Sleuth's
+pale face.
+
+"Certainly not. I thought I had made that quite clear, Mrs. Bunting.
+I had hoped to hear that you were an abstainer--"
+
+"So I am, sir, lifelong. And so's Bunting been since we married."
+She might have said, had she been a woman given to make such
+confidences, that she had made Buntlng abstain very early in their
+acquaintance. That he had given in about that had been the thing
+that first made her believe, that he was sincere in all the nonsense
+that he talked to her, in those far-away days of his courting. Glad
+she was now that he had taken the pledge as a younger man; but for
+that nothing would have kept him from the drink during the bad times
+they had gone through.
+
+And then, going downstairs, she showed Mr. Sleuth the nice bedroom
+which opened out of the drawing-room. It was a replica of Mrs.
+Bunting's own room just underneath, excepting that everything up
+here had cost just a little more, and was therefore rather better
+in quality.
+
+The new lodger looked round him with such a strange expression of
+content and peace stealing over his worn face. "A haven of rest,"
+he muttered; and then, "'He bringeth them to their desired haven.'
+Beautiful words, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt a little startled. It was the first time anyone
+had quoted the Bible to her for many a long day. But it seemed to
+set the seal, as it were, on Mr. Sleuth's respectability.
+
+What a comfort it was, too, that she had to deal with only one
+lodger, and that a gentleman, instead of with a married couple!
+Very peculiar married couples had drifted in and out of Mr. and
+Mrs. Bunting's lodgings, not only here, in London, but at the
+seaside.
+
+How unlucky they had been, to be sure! Since they had come to
+London not a single pair of lodgers had been even moderately
+respectable and kindly. The last lot had belonged to that horrible
+underworld of men and women who, having, as the phase goes, seen
+better days, now only keep their heads above water with the help of
+petty fraud.
+
+"I'll bring you up some hot water in a minute, sir, and some clean
+towels," she said, going to the door.
+
+And then Mr. Sleuth turned quickly round. "Mrs. Bunting "--and as
+he spoke he stammered a little--"I--I don't want you to interpret
+the word attendance too liberally. You need not run yourself off
+your feet for me. I'm accustomed to look after myself."
+
+And, queerly, uncomfortably, she felt herself dismissed--even a
+little snubbed. "All right, sir," she said. "I'll only just let
+you know when I've your supper ready."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+But what was a little snub compared with the intense relief and joy
+of going down and telling Bunting of the great piece of good fortune
+which had fallen their way?
+
+Staid Mrs. Bunting seemed to make but one leap down the steep stairs.
+In the hall, however, she pulled herself together, and tried to still
+her agitation. She had always disliked and despised any show of
+emotion; she called such betrayal of feeling "making a fuss."
+
+Opening the door of their sitting-room, she stood for a moment
+looking at her husband's bent back, and she realised, with a pang
+of pain, how the last few weeks had aged him.
+
+Bunting suddenly looked round, and, seeing his wife, stood up. He
+put the paper he had been holding down on to the table: "Well," he
+said, "well, who was it, then?"
+
+He felt rather ashamed of himself; it was he who ought to have
+answered the door and done all that parleying of which he had heard
+murmurs.
+
+And then in a moment his wife's hand shot out, and the ten sovereigns
+fell in a little clinking heap on the table.
+
+"Look there!" she whispered, with an excited, tearful quiver in her
+voice. "Look there, Bunting!"
+
+And Bunting did look there, but with a troubled, frowning gaze.
+
+He was not quick-witted, but at once he jumped to the conclusion
+that his wile had just had in a furniture dealer, and that this
+ten pounds represented all their nice furniture upstairs. If that
+were so, then it was the beginning of the end. That furniture in
+the first-floor front had cost--Ellen had reminded him of the fact
+bitterly only yesterday--seventeen pounds nine shillings, and
+every single item had been a bargain. It was too bad that she had
+only got ten pounds for it.
+
+Yet he hadn't the heart to reproach her.
+
+He did not speak as he looked across at her, and meeting that
+troubled, rebuking glance, she guessed what it was that he thought
+had happened.
+
+"We've a new lodger!" she cried. "And--and, Bunting? He's quite
+the gentleman! He actually offered to pay four weeks in advance, at
+two guineas a week."
+
+"No, never!"
+
+Bunting moved quickly round the table, and together they stood there,
+fascinated by the little heap of gold. "But there's ten sovereigns
+here," he said suddenly.
+
+"Yes, the gentleman said I'd have to buy some things for him
+to-morrow. And, oh, Bunting, he's so well spoken, I really felt
+that--I really felt that--" and then Mrs. Bunting, taking a step
+or two sideways, sat down, and throwing her little black apron over
+her face burst into gasping sobs.
+
+Bunting patted her back timidly. "Ellen?" he said, much moved by her
+agitation, "Ellen? Don't take on so, my dear--"
+
+"I won't," she sobbed, "I--I won't! I'm a fool--I know I am!
+But, oh, I didn't think we was ever going to have any luck again!"
+
+And then she told him--or rather tried to tell him--what the
+lodger was like. Mrs. Bunting was no hand at talking, but one thing
+she did impress on her husband's mind, namely, that Mr. Sleuth was
+eccentric, as so many clever people are eccentric--that is, in a
+harmless way--and that he must be humoured.
+
+"He says he doesn't want to be waited on much," she said at last
+wiping her eyes, "but I can see he will want a good bit of looking
+after, all the same, poor gentleman."
+
+And just as the words left her mouth there came the unfamiliar sound
+of a loud ring. It was that of the drawing-room bell being pulled
+again and again.
+
+Bunting looked at his wife eagerly. "I think I'd better go up, eh,
+Ellen?" he said. He felt quite anxious to see their new lodger.
+For the matter of that, it would be a relief to be doing something
+again.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "you go up! Don't keep him waiting! I wonder
+what it is he wants? I said I'd let him know when his supper was
+ready."
+
+A moment later Bunting came down again. There was an odd smile on
+his face. "Whatever d'you think he wanted?" he whispered
+mysteriously. And as she said nothing, he went on, "He's asked me
+for the loan of a Bible!"
+
+"Well, I don't see anything so out of the way in that," she said
+hastily, "'specially if he don't feel well. I'll take it up to him."
+
+And then going to a small table which stood between the two windows,
+Mrs. Bunting took off it a large Bible, which had been given to her
+as a wedding present by a married lady with whose mother she had
+lived for several years.
+
+"He said it would do quite well when you take up his supper," said
+Bunting; and, then, "Ellen? He's a queer-looking cove--not like
+any gentleman I ever had to do with."
+
+"He is a gentleman," said Mrs. Bunting rather fiercely.
+
+"Oh, yes, that's all right." But still he looked at her doubtfully.
+"I asked him if he'd like me to just put away his clothes. But,
+Ellen, he said he hadn't got any clothes!"
+
+"No more he hasn't;" she spoke quickly, defensively. "He had the
+misfortune to lose his luggage. He's one dishonest folk 'ud take
+advantage of."
+
+"Yes, one can see that with half an eye," Buntlng agreed.
+
+And then there was silence for a few moments, while Mrs. Bunting
+put down on a little bit of paper the things she wanted her husband
+to go out and buy for her. She handed him the list, together with
+a sovereign. "Be as quick as you can," she said, "for I feel a bit
+hungry. I'll be going down now to see about Mr. Sleuth's supper.
+He only wants a glass of milk and two eggs. I'm glad I've never
+fallen to bad eggs!"
+
+"Sleuth," echoed Bunting, staring at her. "What a queer name!
+How d'you spell it--S-l-u-t-h?"
+
+"No," she shot out, "S-l-e--u--t--h."
+
+"Oh," he said doubtfully.
+
+"He said, 'Think of a hound and you'll never forget my name,'"
+and Mrs. Bunting smiled.
+
+When he got to the door, Bunting turned round: "We'll now be able
+to pay young Chandler back some o' that thirty shillings. I am
+glad." She nodded; her heart, as the saying is, too full for words.
+
+And then each went about his and her business--Bunting out into
+the drenching fog, his wife down to her cold kitchen.
+
+The lodger's tray was soon ready; everything upon it nicely and
+daintily arranged. Mrs. Bunting knew how to wait upon a gentleman.
+
+Just as the landlady was going up the kitchen stair, she suddenly
+remembered Mr. Sleuth's request for a Bible. Putting the tray down
+in the hall, she went into her sitting-room and took up the Book;
+but when back in the hall she hesitated a moment as to whether it
+was worth while to make two journeys. But, no, she thought she
+could manage; clasping the large, heavy volume under her arm, and
+taking up the tray, she walked slowly up the staircase.
+
+But a great surprise awaited her; in fact, when Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady opened the door of the drawing-room she very nearly dropped
+the tray. She actually did drop the Bible, and it fell with a heavy
+thud to the ground.
+
+The new lodger had turned all those nice framed engravings of the
+early Victorian beauties, of which Mrs. Bunting had been so proud,
+with their faces to the wall!
+
+For a moment she was really too surprised to speak. Putting the
+tray down on the table, she stooped and picked up the Book. It
+troubled her that the Book should have fallen to the ground; but
+really she hadn't been able to help it--it was mercy that the
+tray hadn't fallen, too.
+
+Mr. Sleuth got up. "I--I have taken the liberty to arrange the
+room as I should wish it to be," he said awkwardly. "You see,
+Mrs.--er--Bunting, I felt as I sat here that these women's eyes
+followed me about. It was a most unpleasant sensation, and gave
+me quite an eerie feeling."
+
+The landlady was now laying a small tablecloth over half of the
+table. She made no answer to her lodger's remark, for the good
+reason that she did not know what to say.
+
+Her silence seemed to distress Mr. Sleuth. After what seemed a
+long pause, he spoke again.
+
+"I prefer bare walls, Mrs. Bunting," he spoke with some agitation.
+"As a matter of fact, I have been used to seeing bare walls about
+me for a long time." And then, at last his landlady answered him,
+in a composed, soothing voice, which somehow did him good to hear.
+"I quite understand, sir. And when Bunting comes in he shall take
+the pictures all down. We have plenty of space in our own rooms
+for them."
+
+"Thank you--thank you very much."
+
+Mr. Sleuth appeared greatly relieved.
+
+"And I have brought you up my Bible, sir. I understood you wanted
+the loan of it?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth stared at her as if dazed for a moment; and then, rousing
+himself, he said, "Yes, yes, I do. There is no reading like the Book.
+There is something there which suits every state of mind, aye, and of
+body too--"
+
+"Very true, sir." And then Mrs. Bunting, having laid out what really
+looked a very appetising little meal, turned round and quietly shut
+the door.
+
+She went down straight into her sitting-room and waited there for
+Bunting, instead of going to the kitchen to clear up. And as she
+did so there came to her a comfortable recollection, an incident of
+her long-past youth, in the days when she, then Ellen Green, had
+maided a dear old lady.
+
+The old lady had a favourite nephew--a bright, jolly young gentleman,
+who was learning to paint animals in Paris. And one morning Mr.
+Algernon--that was his rather peculiar Christian name--had had the
+impudence to turn to the wall six beautiful engravings of paintings
+done by the famous Mr. Landseer!
+
+Mrs. Bunting remembered all the circumstances as if they had only
+occurred yesterday, and yet she had not thought of them for years.
+
+It was quite early; she had come down--for in those days maids
+weren't thought so much of as they are now, and she slept with the
+upper housemaid, and it was the upper housemaid's duty to be down
+very early--and, there, in the dining-room, she had found Mr.
+Algernon engaged in turning each engraving to the wall! Now, his
+aunt thought all the world of those pictures, and Ellen had felt
+quite concerned, for it doesn't do for a young gentleman to put
+himself wrong with a kind aunt.
+
+"Oh, sir," she had exclaimed in dismay, "whatever are you doing?"
+And even now she could almost hear his merry voice, as he had
+answered, "I am doing my duty, fair Helen"--he had always called
+her "fair Helen" when no one was listening. "How can I draw ordinary
+animals when I see these half-human monsters staring at me all the
+time I am having my breakfast, my lunch, and my dinner?" That was
+what Mr. Algernon had said in his own saucy way, and that was what
+he repeated in a more serious, respectful manner to his aunt, when
+that dear old lady had come downstairs. In fact he had declared,
+quite soberly, that the beautiful animals painted by Mr. Landseer
+put his eye out!
+
+But his aunt had been very much annoyed--in fact, she had made him
+turn the pictures all back again; and as long as he stayed there he
+just had to put up with what he called "those half-human monsters."
+Mrs. Bunting, sitting there, thinking the matter of Mr. Sleuth's
+odd behaviour over, was glad to recall that funny incident of her
+long-gone youth. It seemed to prove that her new lodger was not so
+strange as he appeared to be. Still, when Bunting came in, she did
+not tell him the queer thing which had happened. She told herself
+that she would be quite able to manage the taking down of the
+pictures in the drawing-room herself.
+
+But before getting ready their own supper, Mr. Sleuth's landlady
+went upstairs to dear away, and when on the staircase she heard the
+sound of--was it talking, in the drawing-room? Startled, she
+waited a moment on the landing outside the drawing-room door, then
+she realised that it was only the lodger reading aloud to himself.
+There was something very awful in the words which rose and fell on
+her listening ears:
+
+"A strange woman is a narrow gate. She also lieth in wait as for
+a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men."
+
+She remained where she was, her hand on the handle of the door,
+and again there broke on her shrinking ears that curious, high,
+sing-song voice, "Her house is the way to hell, going down to
+the chambers of death."
+
+It made the listener feel quite queer. But at last she summoned up
+courage, knocked, and walked in.
+
+"I'd better clear away, sir, had I not?" she said. And Mr. Sleuth
+nodded.
+
+Then he got up and dosed the Book. "I think I'll go to bed now,"
+he said. "I am very, very tired. I've had a long and a very
+weary day, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+After he had disappeared into the back room, Mrs. Bunting climbed
+up on a chair and unhooked the pictures which had so offended Mr.
+Sleuth. Each left an unsightly mark on the wall--but that, after
+all, could not be helped.
+
+Treading softly, so that Bunting should not hear her, she carried
+them down, two by two, and stood them behind her bed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Mrs. Bunting woke up the next morning feeling happier than she had
+felt for a very, very long time.
+
+For just one moment she could not think why she felt so different
+--and then she suddenly remembered.
+
+How comfortable it was to know that upstairs, just over her head,
+lay, in the well-found bed she had bought with such satisfaction at
+an auction held in a Baker Street house, a lodger who was paying two
+guineas a week! Something seemed to tell her that Mr. Sleuth would
+be "a permanency." In any case, it wouldn't be her fault if he
+wasn't. As to his--his queerness, well, there's always something
+funny in everybody. But after she had got up, and as the morning
+wore itself away, Mrs. Bunting grew a little anxious, for there
+came no sound at all from the new lodger's rooms. At twelve,
+however, the drawing-room bell rang. Mrs. Bunting hurried upstairs.
+She was painfully anxious to please and satisfy Mr. Sleuth. His
+coming had only been in the nick of time to save them from terrible
+disaster.
+
+She found her lodger up, and fully dressed. He was sitting at the
+round table which occupied the middle of the sitting-room, and his
+landlady's large Bible lay open before him.
+
+As Mrs. Bunting came in, he looked up, and she was troubled to see
+how tired and worn he seemed.
+
+"You did not happen," he asked, "to have a Concordance, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She shook her head; she had no idea what a Concordance could be,
+but she was quite sure that she had nothing of the sort about.
+
+And then her new lodger proceeded to tell her what it was he
+desired her to buy for him. She had supposed the bag he had
+brought with him to contain certain little necessaries of
+civilised life--such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush,
+a set of razors, a toothbrush, to say nothing of a couple of
+nightshirts--but no, that was evidently not so, for Mr. Sleuth
+required all these things to be bought now.
+
+After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs. Bunting hurried
+out to purchase the things of which he was in urgent need.
+
+How pleasant it was to feel that there was money in her purse
+again--not only someone else's' money, but money she was now in
+the very act of earning so agreeably.
+
+Mrs. Bunting first made her way to a little barber's shop close by.
+It was there she purchased the brush and comb and the razors. It
+was a funny, rather smelly little place, and she hurried as much as
+she could, the more so that the foreigner who served her insisted
+on telling her some of the strange, peculiar details of this
+Avenger murder which had taken place forty-eight hours before, and
+in which Bunting took such a morbid interest.
+
+The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting. She didn't want to think of
+anything painful or disagreeable on such a day as this.
+
+Then she came back and showed the lodger her various purchases. Mr.
+Sleuth was pleased with everything, and thanked her most courteously.
+But when she suggested doing his bedroom he frowned, and looked
+quite put out.
+
+"Please wait till this evening," he said hastily. "It is my custom
+to stay at home all day. I only care to walk about the streets when
+the lights are lit. You must bear with me, Mrs. Bunting, if I seem
+a little, just a little, unlike the lodgers you have been accustomed
+to. And I must ask you to understand that I must not be disturbed
+when thinking out my problems--" He broke off short, sighed, then
+added solemnly, "for mine are the great problems of life and death."
+
+And Mrs. Bunting willingly fell in with his wishes. In spite of her
+prim manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's landlady was a true woman
+--she had, that is, an infinite patience with masculine vagaries
+and oddities.
+
+
+When she was downstairs again, Mr. Sleuth's landlady met with a
+surprise; but it was quite a pleasant surprise. While she had
+been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young friend, Joe
+Chandler, the detective, had come in, and as she walked into the
+sitting-room she saw that her husband was pushing half a sovereign
+across the table towards Joe.
+
+Joe Chandler's fair, good-natured face was full of satisfaction:
+not at seeing his money again, mark you, but at the news Bunting
+had evidently been telling him--that news of the sudden wonderful
+change in their fortunes, the coming of an ideal lodger.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth don't want me to do his bedroom till he's gone out!"
+she exclaimed. And then she sat down for a bit of a rest.
+
+It was a comfort to know that the lodger was eating his good
+breakfast? and there was no need to think of him for the present.
+In a few minutes she would be going down to make her own and
+Bunting's dinner, and she told Joe Chandler that he might as well
+stop and have a bite with them.
+
+Her heart warmed to the young man, for Mrs. Bunting was in a mood
+which seldom surprised her--a mood to be pleased with anything
+and everything. Nay, more. When Bunting began to ask Joe Chandler
+about the last of those awful Avenger murders, she even listened
+with a certain languid interest to all he had to say.
+
+In the morning paper which Bunting had begun taking again that
+very day three columns were devoted to the extraordinary mystery
+which was now beginning to be the one topic of talk all over London,
+West and East, North and South. Bunting had read out little bits
+about it while they ate their breakfast, and in spite of herself
+Mrs. Bunting had felt thrilled and excited.
+
+"They do say," observed Bunting cautiously, "They do say, Joe, that
+the police have a clue they won't say nothing about?" He looked
+expectantly at his visitor. To Bunting the fact that Chandler was
+attached to the detective section of the Metropolitan Police
+invested the young man with a kind of sinister glory--especially
+just now, when these awful and mysterious crimes were amazing and
+terrifying the town.
+
+"Them who says that says wrong," answered Chandler slowly, and a
+look of unease, of resentment came over his fair, stolid face.
+"'Twould make a good bit of difference to me if the Yard had a clue."
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting interposed. "Why that, Joe?" she said,
+smiling indulgently; the young man's keenness about his work pleased
+her. And in his slow, sure way Joe Chandler was very keen, and took
+his job very seriously. He put his whole heart and mind into it.
+
+"Well, 'tis this way," he explained. "From to-day I'm on this
+business myself. You see, Mrs. Bunting, the Yard's nettled--that's
+what it is, and we're all on our mettle--that we are. I was right
+down sorry for the poor chap who was on point duty in the street
+where the last one happened--"
+
+"No!" said Bunting incredulously. "You don't mean there was a
+policeman there, within a few yards?"
+
+That fact hadn't been recorded in his newspaper.
+
+Chandler nodded. "That's exactly what I do mean, Mr. Bunting! The
+man is near off his head, so I'm told. He did hear a yell, so he
+says, but he took no notice--there are a good few yells in that
+part o' London, as you can guess. People always quarrelling and
+rowing at one another in such low parts."
+
+"Have you seen the bits of grey paper on which the monster writes
+his name?" inquired Bunting eagerly.
+
+Public imagination had been much stirred by the account of those
+three-cornered pieces of grey paper, pinned to the victims' skirts,
+on which was roughly written in red ink and in printed characters
+the words "The Avenger."
+
+His round, fat face was full of questioning eagerness. He put his
+elbows on the table, and stared across expectantly at the young man.
+
+"Yes, I have," said Joe briefly.
+
+"A funny kind of visiting card, eh!" Bunting laughed; the notion
+struck him as downright comic.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting coloured. "It isn't a thing to make a joke about,"
+she said reprovingly.
+
+And Chandler backed her up. "No, indeed," he said feelingly. "I'll
+never forget what I've been made to see over this job. And as for
+that grey bit of paper, Mr. Bunting--or, rather, those grey bits of
+paper"--he corrected himself hastily--"you know they've three of
+them now at the Yard--well, they gives me the horrors!"
+
+And then he jumped up. "That reminds me that I oughtn't to be
+wasting my time in pleasant company--"
+
+"Won't you stay and have a bit of dinner?" said Mrs. Bunting
+solicitously.
+
+But the detective shook his head. "No," he said, "I had a bite
+before I came out. Our job's a queer kind of job, as you know. A
+lot's left to our discretion, so to speak, but it don't leave us
+much time for lazing about, I can tell you."
+
+When he reached the door he turned round, and with elaborate
+carelessness he inquired, "Any chance of Miss Daisy coming to London
+again soon?"
+
+Bunting shook his head, but his face brightened. He was very, very
+fond of his only child; the pity was he saw her so seldom. "No,"
+he said, "I'm afraid not Joe. Old Aunt, as we calls the old lady,
+keeps Daisy pretty tightly tied to her apron-string. She was quite
+put about that week the child was up with us last June."
+
+"Indeed? Well, so long!"
+
+After his wife had let their friend out, Bunting said cheerfully,
+"Joe seems to like our Daisy, eh, Ellen?"
+
+But Mrs. Bunting shook her head scornfully. She did not exactly
+dislike the girl, though she did not hold with the way Bunting's
+daughter was being managed by that old aunt of hers--an idle,
+good-for-nothing way, very different from the fashion in which
+she herself had been trained at the Foundling, for Mrs. Bunting
+as a little child bad known no other home, no other family than
+those provided by good Captain Coram.
+
+"Joe Chandler's too sensible a young chap to be thinking of girls
+yet awhile," she said tartly.
+
+"No doubt you're right," Bunting agreed. "Times be changed. In my
+young days chaps always had time for that. 'Twas just a notion that
+came into my head, hearing him asking, anxious-like, after her."
+
+******
+
+About five o'clock, after the street lamps were well alight, Mr.
+Sleuth went out, and that same evening there came two parcels
+addressed to his landlady. These parcels contained clothes. But
+it was quite clear to Mrs. Bunting's eyes that they were not new
+clothes. In fact, they had evidently been bought in some good
+second-hand clothes-shop. A funny thing for a real gentleman like
+Mr. Sleuth to do! It proved that he had given up all hope of
+getting back his lost luggage.
+
+When the lodger had gone out he had not taken his bag with him, of
+that Mrs. Bunting was positive. And yet, though she searched high
+and low for it, she could not find the place where Mr. Sleuth kept
+it. And at last, had it not been that she was a very clear-headed
+woman, with a good memory, she would have been disposed to think
+that the bag had never existed, save in her imagination.
+
+But no, she could not tell herself that! She remembered exactly
+how it had looked when Mr. Sleuth had first stood, a strange,
+queer-looking figure of a man, on her doorstep.
+
+She further remembered how he had put the bag down on the floor of
+the top front room, and then, forgetting what he had done, how he
+had asked her eagerly, in a tone of angry fear, where the bag was
+--only to find it safely lodged at his feet!
+
+As time went on Mrs. Bunting thought a great deal about that bag,
+for, strange and amazing fact, she never saw Mr. Sleuth's bag again.
+But, of course, she soon formed a theory as to its whereabouts.
+The brown leather bag which had formed Mr. Sleuth's only luggage
+the afternoon of his arrival was almost certainly locked up in the
+lower part of the drawing-room chiffonnier. Mr. Sleuth evidently
+always carried the key of the little corner cupboard about his
+person; Mrs. Bunting had also had a good hunt for that key, but,
+as was the case with the bag, the key disappeared, and she never
+saw either the one or the other again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+How quietly, how uneventfully, how pleasantly, sped the next few
+days. Already life was settling down into a groove. Waiting on
+Mr. Sleuth was just what Mrs. Bunting could manage to do easily,
+and without tiring herself.
+
+It had at once become clear that the lodger preferred to be waited
+on only by one person, and that person his landlady. He gave her
+very little trouble. Indeed, it did her good having to wait on the
+lodger; it even did her good that he was not like other gentlemen;
+for the fact occupied her mind, and in a way it amused her. The
+more so that whatever his oddities Mr. Sleuth had none of those
+tiresome, disagreeable ways with which landladies are only too
+familiar, and which seem peculiar only to those human beings who
+also happen to be lodgers. To take but one point: Mr. Sleuth did
+not ask to be called unduly early. Bunting and his Ellen had fallen
+into the way of lying rather late in the morning, and it was a great
+comfort not to have to turn out to make the lodger a cup of tea at
+seven, or even half-past seven. Mr. Sleuth seldom required anything
+before eleven.
+
+But odd he certainly was.
+
+The second evening he had been with them Mr. Sleuth had brought in
+a book of which the queer name was Cruden's Concordance. That and
+the Bible--Mrs. Bunting had soon discovered that there was a
+relation between the two books--seemed to be the lodger's only
+reading. He spent hours each day, generally after he had eaten
+the breakfast which also served for luncheon, poring over the Old
+Testament and over that, strange kind of index to the Book.
+
+As for the delicate and yet the all-important question of money,
+Mr. Sleuth was everything--everything that the most exacting
+landlady could have wished. Never had there been a more confiding
+or trusting gentleman. On the very first day he had been with them
+he had allowed his money--the considerable sum of one hundred and
+eighty-four sovereigns--to lie about wrapped up in little pieces
+of rather dirty newspaper on his dressing-table. That had quite
+upset Mrs. Bunting. She had allowed herself respectfully to point
+out to him that what he was doing was foolish, indeed wrong. But
+as only answer he had laughed, and she had been startled when the
+loud, unusual and discordant sound had issued from his thin lips.
+
+"I know those I can trust," he had answered, stuttering rather, as
+was his way when moved. "And--and I assure you, Mrs. Bunting, that
+I hardly have to speak to a human being--especially to a woman"
+(and he had drawn in his breath with a hissing sound) "before I
+know exactly what manner of person is before me."
+
+It hadn't taken the landlady very long to find out that her lodger
+had a queer kind of fear and dislike of women. When she was doing
+the staircase and landings she would often hear Mr. Sleuth reading
+aloud to himself passages in the Bible that were very uncomplimentary
+to her sex. But Mrs. Bunting had no very great opinion of her sister
+woman, so that didn't put her out. Besides, where one's lodger is
+concerned, a dislike of women is better than--well, than the other
+thing.
+
+In any case, where would have been the good of worrying about the
+lodger's funny ways? Of course, Mr. Sleuth was eccentric. If he
+hadn't been, as Bunting funnily styled it, "just a leetle touched
+upstairs," he wouldn't be here, living this strange, solitary life
+in lodgings. He would be living in quite a different sort of way
+with some of his relatives, or with a friend of his own class.
+
+There came a time when Mrs. Bunting, looking back--as even the
+least imaginative of us are apt to look back to any part of our
+own past lives which becomes for any reason poignantly memorable
+--wondered how soon it was that she had discovered that her
+lodger was given to creeping out of the house at a time when
+almost all living things prefer to sleep.
+
+She brought herself to believe--but I am inclined to doubt whether
+she was right in so believing--that the first time she became aware
+of this strange nocturnal habit of Mr. Sleuth's happened to be
+during the night which preceded the day on which she had observed a
+very curious circumstance. This very curious circumstance was the
+complete disappearance of one of Mr. Sleuth's three suits of clothes.
+
+It always passes my comprehension how people can remember, over any
+length of time, not every moment of certain happenings, for that is
+natural enough, but the day, the hour, the minute when these
+happenings took place! Much as she thought about it afterwards,
+even Mrs. Bunting never quite made up her mind whether it was during
+the fifth or the sixth night of Mr. Sleuth's stay under her roof
+that she became aware that he had gone out at two in the morning and
+had only come in at five.
+
+But that there did come such a night is certain--as certain as is
+the fact that her discovery coincided with various occurrences
+which were destined to remain retrospectively memorable.
+
+******
+
+It was intensely dark, intensely quiet--the darkest quietest hour
+of the night, when suddenly Mrs. Bunting was awakened from a deep,
+dreamless sleep by sounds at once unexpected and familiar. She
+knew at once what those sounds were. They were those made by Mr.
+Sleuth, first coming down the stairs, and walking on tiptoe--she
+was sure it was on tiptoe--past her door, and finally softly
+shutting the front door behind him.
+
+Try as she would, Mrs. Bunting found it quite impossible to go to
+sleep again. There she lay wide awake, afraid to move lest Bunting
+should waken up too, till she heard Mr. Sleuth, three hours later,
+creep back into the house and so up to bed.
+
+Then, and not till then, she slept again. But in the morning she
+felt very tired, so tired indeed, that she had been very glad when
+Bunting good-naturedly suggested that he should go out and do their
+little bit of marketing.
+
+The worthy couple had very soon discovered that in the matter of
+catering it was not altogether an easy matter to satisfy Mr. Sleuth,
+and that though he always tried to appear pleased. This perfect
+lodger had one serious fault from the point of view of those who
+keep lodgings. Strange to say, he was a vegetarian. He would not
+eat meat in any form. He sometimes, however, condescended to a
+chicken, and when he did so condescend he generously intimated that
+Mr. and Mrs. Bunting were welcome to a share in it.
+
+Now to-day--this day of which the happenings were to linger in Mrs.
+Bunting's mind so very long, and to remain so very vivid, it had
+been arranged that Mr. Sleuth was to have some fish for his lunch,
+while what he left was to be "done up" to serve for his simple supper.
+
+Knowing that Bunting would be out for at least an hour, for he was
+a gregarious soul, and liked to have a gossip in the shops he
+frequented, Mrs. Bunting rose and dressed in a leisurely manner;
+then she went and "did" her front sitting-room.
+
+She felt languid and dull, as one is apt to feel after a broken
+night, and it was a comfort to her to know that Mr. Sleuth was not
+likely to ring before twelve.
+
+But long before twelve a loud ring suddenly clanged through the
+quiet house. She knew it for the front door bell.
+
+Mrs. Bunting frowned. No doubt the ring betokened one of those
+tiresome people who come round for old, bottles and such-like
+fal-lals.
+
+She went slowly, reluctantly to the door. And then her face cleared,
+for it was that good young chap, Joe Chandler, who stood waiting
+outside.
+
+He was breathing a little hard, as if he had walked over-quickly
+through the moist, foggy air.
+
+"Why, Joe?" said Mrs. Bunting wonderingly. "Come in--do! Bunting's
+out, but he won't be very long now. You've been quite a stranger
+these last few days."
+
+"Well, you know why, Mrs. Bunting--"
+
+She stared at him for a moment, wondering what he could mean. Then,
+suddenly she remembered. Why, of course, Joe was on a big job just
+now--the job of trying to catch The Avenger! Her husband had
+alluded to the fact again and again when reading out to her little
+bits from the halfpenny evening paper he was taking again.
+
+She led the way to the sitting-room. It was a good thing Bunting
+had insisted on lighting the fire before he went out, for now the
+room was nice and warm--and it was just horrible outside. She had
+felt a chill go right through her as she had stood, even for that
+second, at the front door.
+
+And she hadn't been alone to feel it, for, "I say, it is jolly to
+be in here, out of that awful cold!" exclaimed Chandler, sitting
+down heavily in Bunting's easy chair.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting bethought herself that the young man was tired,
+as well as cold. He was pale, almost pallid under his usual healthy,
+tanned complexion--the complexion of the man who lives much out of
+doors.
+
+"Wouldn't you like me just to make you a cup of tea?" she said
+solicitously.
+
+"Well, to tell truth, I should be right down thankful for one, Mrs.
+Bunting!" Then he looked round, and again he said her name, "Mrs.
+Bunting--?"
+
+He spoke in so odd, so thick a tone that she turned quickly. "Yes,
+what is it, Joe?" she asked. And then, in sudden terror, "You've
+never come to tell me that anything's happened to Bunting? He's
+not had an accident?"
+
+"Goodness, no! Whatever made you think that? But--but, Mrs.
+Bunting, there's been another of them!"
+
+His voice dropped almost to a whisper. He was staring at her with
+unhappy, it seemed to her terror-filled, eyes.
+
+"Another of them?" She looked at him, bewildered--at a loss.
+And then what he meant flashed across her--"another of them"
+meant another of these strange, mysterious, awful murders.
+
+But her relief for the moment was so great--for she really had
+thought for a second that he had come to give her ill news of
+Bunting--that the feeling that she did experience on hearing
+this piece of news was actually pleasurable, though she would
+have been much shocked had that fact been brought to her notice.
+
+Almost in spite of herself, Mrs. Bunting had become keenly interested
+in the amazing series of crimes which was occupying the imagination
+of the whole of London's nether-world. Even her refined mind had
+busied itself for the last two or three days with the strange problem
+so frequently presented to it by Bunting--for Bunting, now that they
+were no longer worried, took an open, unashamed, intense interest in
+"The Avenger" and his doings.
+
+She took the kettle off the gas-ring. "It's a pity Bunting isn't
+here," she said, drawing in her breath. "He'd a-liked so much to
+hear you tell all about it, Joe."
+
+As she spoke she was pouring boiling water into a little teapot.
+
+But Chandler said nothing, and she turned and glanced at him. "Why,
+you do look bad!" she exclaimed.
+
+And, indeed, the young fellow did look bad--very bad indeed.
+
+"I can't help it," he said, with a kind of gasp. "It was your
+saying that about my telling you all about it that made me turn
+queer. You see, this time I was one of the first there, and it
+fairly turned me sick--that it did. Oh, it was too awful, Mrs.
+Bunting! Don't talk of it."
+
+He began gulping down the hot tea before it was well made.
+
+She looked at him with sympathetic interest. "Why, Joe," she said,
+"I never would have thought, with all the horrible sights you see,
+that anything could upset you like that."
+
+"This isn't like anything there's ever been before," he said. "And
+then--then--oh, Mrs. Bunting, 'twas I that discovered the piece of
+paper this time."
+
+"Then it is true," she cried eagerly. "It is The Avenger's bit of
+paper! Bunting always said it was. He never believed in that
+practical joker."
+
+"I did," said Chandler reluctantly. "You see, there are some queer
+fellows even--even--" (he lowered his voice, and looked round him
+as if the walls had ears)--"even in the Force, Mrs. Bunting, and
+these murders have fair got on our nerves."
+
+"No, never!" she said. "D'you think that a Bobby might do a thing
+like that?"
+
+He nodded impatiently, as if the question wasn't worth answering.
+Then, "It was all along of that bit of paper and my finding it while
+the poor soul was still warm,"--he shuddered--"that brought me out
+West this morning. One of our bosses lives close by, in Prince
+Albert Terrace, and I had to go and tell him all about it. They
+never offered me a bit or a sup--I think they might have done that,
+don't you, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Yes," she said absently. "Yes, I do think so."
+
+"But, there, I don't know that I ought to say that," went on Chandler.
+"He had me up in his dressing-room, and was very considerate-like to
+me while I was telling him."
+
+"Have a bit of something now?" she said suddenly.
+
+"Oh, no, I couldn't eat anything," he said hastily. "I don't feel
+as if I could ever eat anything any more."
+
+"That'll only make you ill." Mrs. Bunting spoke rather crossly,
+for she was a sensible woman. And to please her he took a bite
+out of the slice of bread-and-butter she had cut for him.
+
+"I expect you're right," he said. "And I've a goodish heavy day
+in front of me. Been up since four, too--"
+
+"Four?" she said. "Was it then they found--" she hesitated a
+moment, and then said, "it?"
+
+He nodded. "It was just a chance I was near by. If I'd been half
+a minute sooner either I or the officer who found her must have
+knocked up against that--that monster. But two or three people
+do think they saw him slinking away."
+
+"What was he like?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Well, that's hard to answer. You see, there was such an awful
+fog. But there's one thing they all agree about. He was carrying
+a bag--"
+
+"A bag?" repeated Mrs. Bunting, in a low voice. "Whatever sort of
+bag might it have been, Joe?"
+
+There had come across her--just right in her middle, like--such a
+strange sensation, a curious kind of tremor, or fluttering.
+
+She was at a loss to account for it,
+
+"Just a hand-bag," said Joe Chandler vaguely. "A woman I spoke to
+--cross-examining her, like--who was positive she had seen him,
+said, 'Just a tall, thin shadow--that's what he was, a tall, thin
+shadow of a man--with a bag."'
+
+"With a bag?" repeated Mrs. Bunting absently. "How very strange
+and peculiar--"
+
+"Why, no, not strange at all. He has to carry the thing he does
+the deed with in something, Mrs. Bunting. We've always wondered how
+he hid it. They generally throws the knife or fire-arms away, you
+know."
+
+"Do they, indeed?" Mrs. Bunting still spoke in that absent, wondering
+way. She was thinking that she really must try and see what the
+lodger had done with his bag. It was possible--in fact, when one
+came to think of it, it was very probable--that he had just lost
+it, being so forgetful a gentleman, on one of the days he had gone
+out, as she knew he was fond of doing, into the Regent's Park.
+
+"There'll be a description circulated in an hour or two," went on
+Chandler. "Perhaps that'll help catch him. There isn't a London
+man or woman, I don't suppose, who wouldn't give a good bit to lay
+that chap by the heels. Well, I suppose I must be going now."
+
+"Won't you wait a bit longer for Bunting?" she said hesitatingly.
+
+"No, I can't do that. But I'll come in, maybe, either this evening
+or to-morrow, and tell you any more that's happened. Thanks kindly
+for the tea. It's made a man of me, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Well, you've had enough to unman you, Joe."
+
+"Aye, that I have," he said heavily.
+
+A few minutes later Bunting did come in, and he and his wife had
+quite a little tiff--the first tiff they had had since Mr. Sleuth
+became their lodger.
+
+It fell out this way. When he heard who had been there, Bunting
+was angry that Mrs. Bunting hadn't got more details of the horrible
+occurrence which had taken place that morning, out of Chandler.
+
+"You don't mean to say, Ellen, that you can't even tell me where it
+happened?" he said indignantly. "I suppose you put Chandler off
+--that's what you did! Why, whatever did he come here for,
+excepting to tell us all about it?"
+
+"He came to have something to eat and drink," snapped out Mrs.
+Bunting. "That's what the poor lad came for, if you wants to know.
+He could hardly speak of it at all--he felt so bad. In fact, he
+didn't say a word about it until he'd come right into the room and
+sat down. He told me quite enough!"
+
+"Didn't he tell you if the piece of paper on which the murderer had
+written his name was square or three-cornered?" demanded Bunting.
+
+"No; he did not. And that isn't the sort of thing I should have
+cared to ask him."
+
+"The more fool you!" And then he stopped abruptly. The newsboys
+were coming down the Marylebone Road, shouting out the awful
+discovery which had been made that morning--that of The Avenger's
+fifth murder. Bunting went out to buy a paper, and his wife took
+the things he had brought in down to the kitchen.
+
+The noise the newspaper-sellers made outside had evidently wakened
+Mr. Sleuth, for his landlady hadn't been in the kitchen ten minutes
+before his bell rang.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Mr. Sleuth's bell rang again.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's breakfast was quite ready, but for the first time since
+he had been her lodger Mrs. Bunting did not answer the summons at
+once. But when there came the second imperative tinkle--for
+electric hells had not been fitted into that old-fashioned house--
+she made up her mind to go upstairs.
+
+As she emerged into the hall from the kitchen stairway, Bunting,
+sitting comfortably in their parlour, heard his wile stepping heavily
+under the load of the well-laden tray.
+
+"Wait a minute!" he called out. "I'll help you, Ellen," and he came
+out and took the tray from her.
+
+She said nothing, and together they proceeded up to the drawing-room
+floor landing.
+
+There she stopped him. "Here," she whispered quickly, "you give me
+that, Bunting. The lodger won't like your going in to him." And
+then, as he obeyed her, and was about to turn downstairs again, she
+added in a rather acid tone, "You might open the door for me, at
+any rate! How can I manage to do it with this here heavy tray on
+my hands?"
+
+She spoke in a queer, jerky way, and Bunting felt surprised--rather
+put out. Ellen wasn't exactly what you'd call a lively, jolly woman,
+but when things were going well--as now--she was generally equable
+enough. He supposed she was still resentful of the way he had
+spoken to her about young Chandler and the new Avenger murder.
+
+However, he was always for peace, so he opened the drawing-room door,
+and as soon as he had started going downstairs Mrs. Bunting walked
+into the room.
+
+And then at once there came over her the queerest feeling of relief,
+of lightness of heart.
+
+As usual, the lodger was sitting at his old place, reading the Bible.
+
+Somehow--she could not have told you why, she would not willingly
+have told herself--she had expected to see Mr. Sleuth looking
+different. But no, he appeared to be exactly the same--in fact,
+as he glanced up at her a pleasanter smile than usual lighted up
+his thin, pallid face.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bunting," he said genially, "I overslept myself this
+morning, but I feel all the better for the rest."
+
+"I'm glad of that, sir," she answered, in a low voice. "One of the
+ladies I once lived with used to say, 'Rest is an old-fashioned
+remedy, but it's the best remedy of all."
+
+Mr. Sleuth himself removed the Bible and Cruden's Concordance off
+the table out of her way, and then he stood watching his landlady
+laying the cloth.
+
+Suddenly he spoke again. He was not often so talkative in the
+morning. "I think, Mrs. Bunting, that there was someone with you
+outside the door just now?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Bunting helped me up with the tray."
+
+"I'm afraid I give you a good deal of trouble," he said hesitatingly.
+
+But she answered quickly, "Oh, no, sir! Not at all, sir! I was
+only saying yesterday that we've never had a lodger that gave us as
+little trouble as you do, sir."
+
+"I'm glad of that. I am aware that my habits are somewhat peculiar."
+
+He looked at her fixedly, as if expecting her to give some sort of
+denial to this observation. But Mrs. Bunting was an honest and
+truthful woman. It never occurred to her to question his statement.
+Mr. Sleuth's habits were somewhat peculiar. Take that going out at
+night, or rather in the early morning, for instance? So she remained
+silent.
+
+After she had laid the lodger's breakfast on the table she prepared
+to leave the room. "I suppose I'm not to do your room till you goes
+out, sir?"
+
+And Mr. Sleuth looked up sharply. "No, no!" he said. "I never
+want my room done when I am engaged in studying the Scriptures, Mrs.
+Bunting. But I am not going out to-day. I shall be carrying out a
+somewhat elaborate experiment--upstairs. If I go out at all" he
+waited a moment, and again he looked at her fixedly "--I shall wait
+till night-time to do so." And then, coming back to the matter in
+hand, he added hastily, "Perhaps you could do my room when I go
+upstairs, about five o'clock--if that time is convenient to you,
+that is?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir! That'll do nicely!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and as she did so she took herself
+wordlessly, ruthlessly to task, but she did not face--even in her
+inmost heart--the strange tenors and tremors which had so shaken
+her. She only repeated to herself again and again, "I've got upset
+--that's what I've done," and then she spoke aloud, "I must get
+myself a dose at the chemist's next time I'm out. That's what I
+must do."
+
+And just as she murmured the word "do," there came a loud double
+knock on the front door.
+
+It was only the postman's knock, but the postman was an unfamiliar
+visitor in that house, and Mrs. Bunting started violently. She was
+nervous, that's what was the matter with her,--so she told herself
+angrily. No doubt this was a letter for Mr. Sleuth; the lodger must
+have relations and acquaintances somewhere in the world. All
+gentlefolk have. But when she picked the small envelope off the
+hall floor, she saw it was a letter from Daisy, her husband's daughter.
+
+"Bunting!" she called out sharply. "Here's a letter for you."
+
+She opened the door of their sitting-room and looked in. Yes, there
+was her husband, sitting back comfortably in his easy chair, reading
+a paper. And as she saw his broad, rather rounded back, Mrs. Bunting
+felt a sudden thrill of sharp irritation. There he was, doing
+nothing--in fact, doing worse than nothing--wasting his time
+reading all about those horrid crimes.
+
+She sighed--a long, unconscious sigh. Bunting was getting into
+idle ways, bad ways for a man of his years. But how could she
+prevent it? He had been such an active, conscientious sort of man
+when they had first made acquaintance. . .
+
+She also could remember, even more clearly than Bunting did himself,
+that first meeting of theirs in the dining-room of No. 90 Cumberland
+Terrace. As she had stood there, pouring out her mistress's glass of
+port wine, she had not been too much absorbed in her task to have a
+good out-of-her-eye look at the spruce, nice, respectable-looking
+fellow who was standing over by the window. How superior he had
+appeared even then to the man she already hoped he would succeed as
+butler!
+
+To-day, perhaps because she was not feeling quite herself, the past
+rose before her very vividly, and a lump came into her throat.
+
+Putting the letter addressed to her husband on the table, she closed
+the door softly, and went down into the kitchen; there were various
+little things to put away and clean up, as well as their dinner to
+cook. And all the time she was down there she fixed her mind
+obstinately, determinedly on Bunting and on the problem of Bunting.
+She wondered what she'd better do to get him into good ways again.
+
+Thanks to Mr. Sleuth, their outlook was now moderately bright. A
+week ago everything had seemed utterly hopeless. It seemed as if
+nothing could save them from disaster. But everything was now
+changed!
+
+Perhaps it would be well for her to go and see the new proprietor
+of that registry office, in Baker Street, which had lately changed
+hands. It would be a good thing for Bunting to get even an
+occasional job--for the matter of that he could now take up a
+fairly regular thing in the way of waiting. Mrs. Bunting knew that
+it isn't easy to get a man out of idle ways once he has acquired
+those ways.
+
+When, at last, she went upstairs again she felt a little ashamed of
+what she had been thinking, for Bunting had laid the cloth, and laid
+it very nicely, too, and brought up the two chairs to the table.
+
+"Ellen?" he cried eagerly, "here's news! Daisy's coming to-morrow!
+There's scarlet fever in their house. Old Aunt thinks she'd better
+come away for a few days. So, you see, she'll be here for her
+birthday. Eighteen, that's what she be on the nineteenth! It do
+make me feel old--that it do!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting put down the tray. "I can't have the girl here just
+now," she said shortly. "I've just as much to do as I can manage.
+The lodger gives me more trouble than you seem to think for."
+
+"Rubbish!" he said sharply. "I'll help you with the lodger. It's
+your own fault you haven't had help with him before. Of course,
+Daisy must come here. Whatever other place could the girl go to?"
+
+Bunting felt pugnacious--so cheerful as to be almost light-hearted.
+But as he looked across at his wife his feeling of satisfaction
+vanished. Ellen's face was pinched and drawn to-day; she looked ill
+--ill and horribly tired. It was very aggravating of her to go and
+behave like this--just when they were beginning to get on nicely
+again.
+
+"For the matter of that," he said suddenly, "Daisy'll be able to help
+you with the work, Ellen, and she'll brisk us both up a bit."
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no answer. She sat down heavily at the table.
+And then she said languidly, "You might as well show me the girl's
+letter."
+
+He handed it across to her, and she read it slowly to herself.
+
+"DEAR FATHER (it ran)--I hope this finds you as well at it leaves
+me. Mrs. Puddle's youngest has got scarlet fever, and Aunt thinks
+I had better come away at once, just to stay with you for a few
+days. Please tell Ellen I won't give her no trouble. I'll start
+at ten if I don't hear nothing.--Your loving daughter,
+
+
+"Yes, I suppose Daisy will have to come here," Mrs. Bunting slowly.
+"It'll do her good to have a bit of work to do for once in her life."
+
+And with that ungraciously worded permission Bunting had to content
+himself.
+
+******
+
+Quietly the rest of that eventful day sped by. When dusk fell Mr.
+Sleuth's landlady heard him go upstairs to the top floor. She
+remembered that this was the signal for her to go and do his room.
+
+He was a tidy man, was the lodger; he did not throw his things
+about as so many gentlemen do, leaving them all over the place.
+No, he kept everything scrupulously tidy. His clothes, and the
+various articles Mrs. Bunting had bought for him during the first
+two days he had been there, were carefully arranged in the chest
+of drawers. He had lately purchased a pair of boots. Those he
+had arrived in were peculiar-looking footgear, buff leather shoes
+with rubber soles, and he had told his landlady on that very first
+day that he never wished them to go down to be cleaned.
+
+A funny idea--a funny habit that, of going out for a walk after
+midnight in weather so cold and foggy that all other folk were
+glad to be at home, snug in bed. But then Mr. Sleuth himself
+admitted that he was a funny sort of gentleman.
+
+After she had done his bedroom the landlady went into the
+sitting-room and gave it a good dusting. This room was not kept
+quite as nice as she would have liked it to be. Mrs. Bunting
+longed to give the drawing-room something of a good turn out; but
+Mr. Sleuth disliked her to be moving about in it when he himself
+was in his bedroom; and when up he sat there almost all the time.
+Delighted as he had seemed to be with the top room, he only used
+it when making his mysterious experiments, and never during the
+day-time.
+
+And now, this afternoon, she looked at the rosewood chiffonnier with
+longing eyes--she even gave that pretty little piece of furniture
+a slight shake. If only the doors would fly open, as the locked
+doors of old cupboards sometimes do, even after they have been
+securely fastened, how pleased she would be, how much more
+comfortable somehow she would feel!
+
+But the chiffonnier refused to give up its secret.
+
+******
+
+About eight o'clock on that same evening Joe Chandler came in, just
+for a few minutes' chat. He had recovered from his agitation of the
+morning, but he was full of eager excitement, and Mrs. Bunting
+listened in silence, intensely interested in spite of herself, while
+he and Bunting talked.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I'm as right as a trivet now! I've had a good rest
+--laid down all this afternoon. You see, the Yard thinks there's
+going to be something on to-night. He's always done them in pairs."
+
+"So he has," exclaimed Hunting wonderingly. "So he has! Now, I
+never thought o' that. Then you think, Joe, that the monster'll be
+on the job again to-night?"
+
+Chandler nodded. "Yes. And I think there's a very good chance of
+his being caught too--"
+
+"I suppose there'll be a lot on the watch to-night, eh?"
+
+"I should think there will be! How many of our men d'you think
+there'll be on night duty to-night, Mr. Bunting?"
+
+Bunting shook his head. "I don't know," he said helplessly.
+
+"I mean extra," suggested Chandler, in an encouraging voice.
+
+"A thousand?" ventured Bunting.
+
+"Five thousand, Mr. Bunting."
+
+"Never!" exclaimed Bunting, amazed.
+
+And even Mrs. Bunting echoed "Never!" incredulously.
+
+"Yes, that there will. You see, the Boss has got his monkey up!"
+Chandler drew a folded-up newspaper out of his coat pocket. "Just
+listen to this:
+
+"'The police have reluctantly to admit that they have no clue to
+the perpetrators of these horrible crimes, and we cannot feel any
+surprise at the information that a popular attack has been organised
+on the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. There is even
+talk of an indignation mass meeting.'
+
+"What d'you think of that? That's not a pleasant thing for a
+gentleman as is doing his best to read, eh?"
+
+"Well, it does seem queer that the police can't catch him, now
+doesn't it?" said Bunting argumentatively.
+
+"I don't think it's queer at all," said young Chandler crossly.
+"Now you just listen again! Here's a bit of the truth for once--
+in a newspaper." And slowly he read out:
+
+"'The detection of crime in London now resembles a game of blind
+man's buff, in which the detective has his hands tied and his eyes
+bandaged. Thus is he turned loose to hunt the murderer through
+the slums of a great city."'
+
+"Whatever does that mean?" said Bunting. "Your hands aren't tied,
+and your eyes aren't bandaged, Joe?"
+
+"It's metaphorical-like that it's intended, Mr. Bunting. We haven't
+got the same facilities--no, not a quarter of them--that the
+French 'tecs have."
+
+And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting spoke: "What was that
+word, Joe--'perpetrators'? I mean that first bit you read out."
+
+"Yes," he said, turning to her eagerly.
+
+"Then do they think there's more than one of them?" she said, and
+a look of relief came over her thin face.
+
+"There's some of our chaps thinks it's a gang," said Chandler.
+"They say it can't be the work of one man."
+
+"What do you think, Joe?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bunting, I don't know what to think. I'm fair puzzled."
+
+He got up. "Don't you come to the door. I'll shut it all right.
+So long! See you to-morrow, perhaps." As he had done the other
+evening, Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's visitor stopped at the door. "Any
+news of Miss Daisy?" he asked casually.
+
+"Yes; she's coming to-morrow," said her father. "They've got scarlet
+fever at her place. So Old Aunt thinks she'd better clear out."
+
+
+The husband and wife went to bed early that night, but Mrs. Bunting
+found she could not sleep. She lay wide awake, hearing the hours,
+the half-hours, the quarters chime out from the belfry of the old
+church close by.
+
+And then, just as she was dozing off--it must have been about one
+o'clock--she heard the sound she had half unconsciously been
+expecting to hear, that of the lodger's stealthy footsteps coming
+down the stairs just outside her room.
+
+He crept along the passage and let himself out very, very quietly.
+
+But though she tried to keep awake, Mrs. Bunting did not hear him
+come in again, for she soon fell into a heavy sleep.
+
+Oddly enough, she was the first to wake the next morning; odder
+still, it was she, not Bunting, who jumped out of bed, and going
+out into the passage, picked up the newspaper which had just been
+pushed through the letter-box.
+
+But having picked it up, Mrs. Bunting did not go back at once into
+her bedroom. Instead she lit the gas in the passage, and leaning
+up against the wall to steady herself, for she was trembling with
+cold and fatigue, she opened the paper.
+
+Yes, there was the heading she sought:
+
+"The AVENGER Murders"
+
+But, oh, how glad she was to see the words that followed:
+
+"Up to the time of going to press there is little new to report
+concerning the extraordinary series of crimes which are amazing,
+and, indeed, staggering not only London, but the whole civilised
+world, and which would seem to be the work of some woman-hating
+teetotal fanatic. Since yesterday morning, when the last of these
+dastardly murders was committed, no reliable clue to the perpetrator,
+or perpetrators, has been obtained, though several arrests were made
+in the course of the day. In every case, however, those arrested
+were able to prove a satisfactory alibi."
+
+And then, a little lower down
+
+"The excitement grows and grows. It is not too much to say that
+even a stranger to London would know that something very unusual
+was in the air. As for the place where the murder was committed
+last night--"
+
+"Last night!" thought Mrs. Bunting, startled; and then she realised
+that "last night," in this connection, meant the night before last.
+
+She began the sentence again:
+
+"As for the place where the murder was committed last night, all
+approaches to it were still blocked up to a late hour by hundreds
+of onlookers, though, of course, nothing now remains in the way of
+traces of the tragedy."
+
+Slowly and carefully Mrs. Bunting folded the paper up again in its
+original creases, and then she stooped and put it back down on the
+mat where she had found it. She then turned out the gas, and going
+back into bed she lay down by her still sleeping husband.
+
+"Anything the matter?" Bunting murmured, and stirred uneasily.
+"Anything the matter, Ellen?"
+
+She answered in a whisper, a whisper thrilling with a strange
+gladness, "No, nothing, Bunting--nothing the matter! Go to sleep
+again, my dear."
+
+They got up an hour later, both in a happy, cheerful mood. Bunting
+rejoiced at the thought of his daughter's coming, and even Daisy's
+stepmother told herself that it would be pleasant having the girl
+about the house to help her a bit.
+
+About ten o'clock Bunting went out to do some shopping. He brought
+back with him a nice little bit of pork for Daisy's dinner, and
+three mince-pies. He even remembered to get some apples for the
+sauce.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate.
+
+It brought Daisy--pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy--a
+sight to gladden any father's heart.
+
+"Old Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad," she
+cried out joyously.
+
+There was a bit of a wrangle over the fare. King's Cross, as all
+the world knows, is nothing like two miles from the Marylebone Road,
+but the man clamoured for one and sixpence, and hinted darkly that
+he had done the young lady a favour in bringing her at all.
+
+While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it,
+walked up the flagged path to the door where her stepmother was
+awaiting her.
+
+As they were exchanging a rather frigid kiss, indeed, 'twas a mere
+peck on Mrs. Bunting's part, there fell, with startling suddenness,
+loud cries on the still, cold air. Long-drawn and wailing, they
+sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar
+of traffic in the Edgware Road.
+
+"What's that?" exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. "Why, whatever's
+that?"
+
+The cabman lowered his voice. "Them's 'a-crying out that 'orrible
+affair at King's Cross. He's done for two of 'em this time! That's
+what I meant when I said I might 'a got a better fare. I wouldn't
+say nothink before little missy there, but folk 'ave been coming
+from all over London the last five or six hours; plenty of toffs,
+too--but there, there's nothing to see now!"
+
+"What? Another woman murdered last night?"
+
+Bunting felt tremendously thrilled. What had the five thousand
+constables been about to let such a dreadful thing happen?
+
+The cabman stared at him, surprised. "Two of 'em, I tell yer--
+within a few yards of one another. He 'ave--got a nerve--But,
+of course, they was drunk. He are got a down on the drink!"
+
+"Have they caught him?" asked Bunting perfunctorily.
+
+"Lord, no! They'll never catch 'im! It must 'ave happened hours
+and hours ago--they was both stone cold. One each end of a little
+passage what ain't used no more. That's why they didn't find 'em
+before."
+
+The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer--two news vendors
+trying to outshout each other.
+
+"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross!" they yelled exultingly.
+"The Avenger again!"
+
+And Bunting, with his daughter's large straw hold-all in his hand,
+ran forward into the roadway and recklessly gave a boy a penny for
+a halfpenny paper.
+
+He felt very much moved and excited. Somehow his acquaintance with
+young Joe Chandler made these murders seem a personal affair. He
+hoped that Chandler would come in soon and tell them all about it,
+as he had done yesterday morning when he, Bunting, had unluckily
+been out.
+
+As he walked back into the little hall, he heard Daisy's voice--
+high, voluble, excited--giving her stepmother a long account of
+the scarlet fever case, and how at first Old Aunt's neighbours had
+thought it was not scarlet fever at all, but just nettlerash.
+
+But as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room, there
+came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter's voice, and he heard
+her cry, "Why, Ellen, whatever is the matter? You do look bad!"
+and his wife's muffled answer, "Open the window--do."
+
+"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross--a clue at last!" yelled
+the newspaper-boys triumphantly.
+
+And then, helplessly, Mrs. Bunting began to laugh. She laughed,
+and laughed, and laughed, rocking herself to and fro as if in an
+ecstasy of mirth.
+
+"Why, father, whatever's the matter with her?"
+
+Daisy looked quite scared.
+
+"She's in 'sterics--that's what it is," he said shortly.
+"I'll just get the water-jug. Wait a minute!"
+
+Bunting felt very put out. Ellen was ridiculous--that's what she
+was, to be so easily upset.
+
+The lodger's bell suddenly pealed through the quiet house. Either
+that sound, or maybe the threat of the water-jug, had a magical
+effect on Mrs. Bunting. She rose to her feet, still shaking all
+over, but mentally composed.
+
+"I'll go up," she skid a little chokingly. "As for you, child,
+just run down into the kitchen. You'll find a piece of pork
+roasting in the oven. You might start paring the apples for the
+sauce."
+
+As Mrs. Bunting went upstairs her legs felt as if they were made
+of cotton wool. She put out a trembling hand, and clutched at the
+banister for support. But soon, making a great effort over herself,
+she began to feel more steady; and after waiting for a few moments
+on the landing, she knocked at the door of the drawing-room.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's voice answered her from the bedroom. "I'm not well,"
+he called out querulously; "I think I've caught a chill. I should
+be obliged if you would kindly bring me up a cup of tea, and put it
+outside my door, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+Mrs. Bunting turned and went downstairs. She still felt queer and
+giddy, so instead of going into the kitchen, she made the lodger his
+cup of tea over her sitting-room gas-ring.
+
+During their midday dinner the husband and wile had a little
+discussion as to where Daisy should sleep. It had been settled
+that a bed should be made up for her in the top back room, but
+Mrs. Bunting saw reason to change this plan. "I think 'twould be
+better if Daisy were to sleep with me, Bunting, and you was to
+sleep upstairs."
+
+Bunting felt and looked rather surprised, but he acquiesced. Ellen
+was probably right; the girl would be rather lonely up there, and,
+after all, they didn't know much about the lodger, though he seemed
+a respectable gentleman enough.
+
+Daisy was a good-natured girl; she liked London, and wanted to make
+herself useful to her stepmother. "I'll wash up; don't you bother to
+come downstairs," she said cheerfully.
+
+Bunting began to walk up and down the room. His wife gave him a
+furtive glance; she wondered what he was thinking about.
+
+"Didn't you get a paper?" she said at last.
+
+"Yes, of course I did," he answered hastily. "But I've put it away.
+I thought you'd rather not look at it, as you're that nervous."
+
+Again she glanced at him quickly, furtively, but he seemed just as
+usual--he evidently meant just what he said and no more.
+
+"I thought they was shouting something in the street--I mean just
+before I was took bad."
+
+It was now Bunting's turn to stare at his wife quickly and rather
+furtively. He had felt sure that her sudden attack of queerness,
+of hysterics--call it what you might--had been due to the shouting
+outside. She was not the only woman in London who had got the
+Avenger murders on her nerves. His morning paper said quite a lot
+of women were afraid to go out alone. Was it possible that the
+curious way she had been taken just now had had nothing to do with
+the shouts and excitement outside?
+
+"Don't you know what it was they were calling out?" he asked slowly.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked across at him. She would have given a very
+great deal to be able to lie, to pretend that she did not know what
+those dreadful cries had portended. But when it came to the point
+she found she could not do so.
+
+"Yes," she said dully. "I heard a word here and there. There's
+been another murder, hasn't there?"
+
+"Two other murders," he said soberly.
+
+"Two? That's worse news!" She turned so pale--a sallow
+greenish-white--that Bunting thought she was again going queer.
+
+"Ellen?" he said warningly, "Ellen, now do have a care! I can't
+think what's come over, you about these murders. Turn your mind
+away from them, do! We needn't talk about them--not so much,
+that is--"
+
+"But I wants to talk about them," cried Mrs. Bunting hysterically.
+
+The husband and wife were standing, one each side of the table,
+the man with his back to the fire, the woman with her back to the
+door.
+
+Bunting, staring across at his wife, felt sadly perplexed and
+disturbed. She really did seem ill; even her slight, spare figure
+looked shrunk. For the first time, so he told himself ruefully,
+Ellen was beginning to look her full age. Her slender hands--she
+had kept the pretty, soft white hands of the woman who has never
+done rough work--grasped the edge of the table with a convulsive
+movement.
+
+Bunting didn't at all like the look of her. "Oh, dear," he said
+to himself, "I do hope Ellen isn't going to be ill! That would be
+a to-do just now."
+
+"Tell me about it," she commanded, in a low voice. "Can't you see
+I'm waiting to hear? Be quick now, Bunting!"
+
+"There isn't very much to tell," he said reluctantly. "There's
+precious little in this paper, anyway. But the cabman what brought
+Daisy told me--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What I said just now. There's two of 'em this time, and they'd
+both been drinking heavily, poor creatures."
+
+"Was it where the others was done?" she asked looking at her husband
+fearfully.
+
+"No," he said awkwardly. "No, it wasn't, Ellen. It was a good bit
+farther West--in fact, not so very far from here. Near King's Cross
+--that's how the cabman knew about it, you see. They seems to have
+been done in a passage which isn't used no more." And then, as he
+thought his wife's eyes were beginning to look rather funny, he added
+hastily. "There, that's enough for the present! We shall soon be
+hearing a lot more about it from Joe Chandler. He's pretty sure to
+come in some time to-day."
+
+"Then the five thousand constables weren't no use?" said Mrs.
+Bunting slowly.
+
+She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was standing more
+upright.
+
+"No use at all," said Bunting briefly. "He is artful and no mistake
+about it. But wait a minute--" he turned and took up the paper
+which he had laid aside, on a chair. "Yes they says here that they
+has a clue."
+
+"A clue, Bunting?" Mrs. Bunting spoke in a soft, weak, die-away
+voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the edge of the
+table.
+
+But her husband was not noticing her now. He was holding the paper
+close up to his eyes, and he read from it, in a tone of considerable
+satisfaction:
+
+"'It is gratifying to be able to state that the police at last
+believe they are in possession of a clue which will lead to the
+arrest of the--'" and then Bunting dropped the paper and rushed
+round the table.
+
+His wife, with a curious sighing moan, had slipped down on to the
+floor, taking with her the tablecloth as she went. She lay there
+in what appeared to be a dead faint. And Bunting, scared out of
+his wits, opened the door and screamed out, "Daisy! Daisy! Come
+up, child. Ellen's took bad again."
+
+And Daisy, hurrying in, showed an amount of sense and resource
+which even at this anxious moment roused her fond father's
+admiration.
+
+"Get a wet sponge, Dad--quick!" she cried, "a sponge,--and, if
+you've got such a thing, a drop o' brandy. I'll see after her!"
+And then, after he had got the little medicine flask, "I can't think
+what's wrong with Ellen," said Daisy wonderingly. "She seemed quite
+all right when I first came in. She was listening, interested-like,
+to what I was telling her, and then, suddenly--well, you saw how
+she was took, father? 'Taint like Ellen this, is now?"
+
+"No," he whispered. "No, 'taint. But you see, child, we've been
+going through a pretty bad time--worse nor I should ever have let
+you know of, my dear. Ellen's just feeling it now--that's what it
+is. She didn't say nothing, for Ellen's a good plucked one, but
+it's told on her--it's told on her!"
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting, sitting up, slowly opened her eyes, and
+instinctively put her hand up to her head to see if her hair was
+all right.
+
+She hadn't really been quite "off." It would have been better for
+her if she had. She had simply had an awful feeling that she
+couldn't stand up--more, that she must fall down. Bunting's words
+touched a most unwonted chord in the poor woman's heart, and the
+eyes which she opened were full of tears. She had not thought her
+husband knew how she had suffered during those weeks of starving
+and waiting.
+
+But she had a morbid dislike of any betrayal of sentiment. To her
+such betrayal betokened "foolishness," and so all she said was,
+"There's no need to make a fuss! I only turned over a little queer.
+I never was right off, Daisy."
+
+Pettishly she pushed away the glass in which Bunting had hurriedly
+poured a little brandy. "I wouldn't touch such stuff--no, not if
+I was dying!" she exclaimed.
+
+Putting out a languid hand, she pulled herself up, with the help of
+the table, on to her feet. "Go down again to the kitchen, child";
+but there was a sob, a kind of tremor in her voice.
+
+"You haven't been eating properly, Ellen--that's what's the matter
+with you," said Bunting suddenly. "Now I come to think of it, you
+haven't eat half enough these last two days. I always did say--in
+old days many a time I telled you--that a woman couldn't live on
+air. But there, you never believed me!"
+
+Daisy stood looking from one to the other, a shadow over her bright,
+pretty face. "I'd no idea you'd had such a bad time, father," she
+said feelingly. "Why didn't you let me know about it? I might have
+got something out of Old Aunt."
+
+"We didn't want anything of that sort," said her stepmother hastily.
+"But of course--well, I expect I'm still feeling the worry now. I
+don't seem able to forget it. Those days of waiting, of--of--"
+she restrained herself; another moment and the word "starving" would
+have left her lips.
+
+"But everything's all right now," said Bunting eagerly, "all right,
+thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is."
+
+"Yes," repeated his wife, in a low, strange tone of voice. "Yes,
+we're all right now, and as you say, Bunting, it's all along of
+Mr. Sleuth."
+
+She walked across to a chair and sat down on it. "I'm just a little
+tottery still," she muttered.
+
+And Daisy, looking at her, turned to her father and said in a
+whisper, but not so low but that Mrs. Bunting heard her, "Don't you
+think Ellen ought to see a doctor, father? He might give her
+something that would pull her round."
+
+"I won't see no doctor!" said Mrs. Bunting with sudden emphasis. "I
+saw enough of doctors in my last place. Thirty-eight doctors in ten
+months did my poor missis have. Just determined on having 'em she
+was! Did they save her? No! She died just the same! Maybe a bit
+sooner."
+
+"She was a freak, was your last mistress, Ellen," began Bunting
+aggressively.
+
+Ellen had insisted on staying on in that place till her poor mistress
+died. They might have been married some months before they were
+married but for that fact. Bunting had always resented it.
+
+His wife smile wanly. "We won't have no words about that," she said,
+and again she spoke in a softer, kindlier tone than usual. "Daisy?
+If you won't go down to the kitchen again, then I must"--she turned
+to her stepdaughter, and the girl flew out of the room.
+
+"I think the child grows prettier every minute," said Bunting fondly.
+
+"Folks are too apt to forget that beauty is but skin deep," said his
+wife. She was beginning to feel better. "But still, I do agree,
+Bunting, that Daisy's well enough. And she seems more willing, too."
+
+"I say, we mustn't forget the lodger's dinner," Bunting spoke
+uneasily. "It's a bit of fish to-day, isn't it? Hadn't I better
+just tell Daisy to see to it, and then I can take it up to him, as
+you're not feeling quite the thing, Ellen?"
+
+"I'm quite well enough to take up Mr. Sleuth's luncheon," she said
+quickly. It irritated her to hear her husband speak of the lodger's
+dinner. They had dinner in the middle of the day, but Mr. Sleuth
+had luncheon. However odd he might be, Mrs. Bunting never forgot
+her lodger was a gentleman.
+
+"After all, he likes me to wait on him, doesn't he? I can manage
+all right. Don't you worry," she added after a long pause.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later
+than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs
+with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice
+slice of roast pork downstairs.
+
+"I hope you're feeling a little better, sir," Mrs. Bunting had forced
+herself to say when she first took in his tray.
+
+And he had answered plaintively, querulously, "No, I can't say I
+feel well to-day, Mrs. Bunting. I am tired--very tired. And as I
+lay in bed I seemed to hear so many sounds--so much crying and
+shouting. I trust the Marylebone Road is not going to become a noisy
+thoroughfare, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I don't think that. We're generally reckoned very
+quiet indeed, sir."
+
+She waited a moment--try as she would, she could not allude to what
+those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened. "I expect you've
+got a chill, sir," she said suddenly. "If I was you, I shouldn't
+go out this afternoon; I'd just stay quietly indoors. There's a lot
+of rough people about--" Perhaps there was an undercurrent of
+warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated
+in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and
+an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous grey eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bunting. But I think I'll take your
+advice. That is, I will stay quietly at home, I am never at a loss
+to know what to do with myself so long as I can study the Book of
+Books."
+
+"Then you're not afraid about your eyes, sir?" said Mrs. Bunting
+curiously. Somehow she was beginning to feel better. It comforted
+her to be up here, talking to Mr. Sleuth, instead of thinking about
+him downstairs. It seemed to banish the terror which filled her
+soul--aye, and her body, too--at other times. When she was with
+him Mr. Sleuth was so gentle, so reasonable, so--so grateful.
+
+Poor kindly, solitary Mr. Sleuth! This kind of gentleman surely
+wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone a human being. Eccentric--so much
+must be admitted. But Mrs. Bunting had seen a good deal of eccentric
+folk, eccentric women rather than eccentric men, in her long career
+as useful maid.
+
+Being at ordinary times an exceptionally sensible, well-balanced
+woman, she had never, in old days, allowed her mind to dwell on
+certain things she had learnt as to the aberrations of which human
+nature is capable--even well-born, well-nurtured, gentle human
+nature--as exemplified in some of the households where she had
+served. It would, indeed, be unfortunate if she now became morbid
+or--or hysterical.
+
+So it was in a sharp, cheerful voice, almost the voice in which she
+had talked during the first few days of Mr. Sleuth's stay in her
+house, that she exclaimed, "Well, sir, I'll be up again to clear
+away in about half an hour. And if you'll forgive me for saying so,
+I hope you will stay in and have a rest to-day. Nasty, muggy weather
+--that's what it is! If there's any little thing you want, me or
+Bunting can go out and get it."
+
+******
+
+It must have been about four o'clock when there came a ring at the
+front door.
+
+The three were sitting chatting together, for Daisy had washed up
+--she really was saving her stepmother a good bit of trouble--and
+the girl was now amusing her elders by a funny account of Old Aunt's
+pernickety ways.
+
+"Whoever can that be?" said Bunting, looking up. "It's too early
+for Joe Chandler, surely."
+
+"I'll go," said his wife, hurriedly jumping up from her chair.
+"I'll go! We don't want no strangers in here."
+
+And as she stepped down the short bit of passage she said to herself,
+"A clue? What clue?"
+
+But when she opened the front door a glad sigh of relief broke from
+her. "Why, Joe? We never thought 'twas you! But you're very
+welcome, I'm sure. Come in."
+
+And Chandler came in, a rather sheepish look on his good-looking,
+fair young face.
+
+"I thought maybe that Mr. Bunting would like to know--" he began,
+in a loud, cheerful voice, and Mrs. Bunting hurriedly checked him.
+She didn't want the lodger upstairs to hear what young Chandler
+might be going to say.
+
+"Don't talk so loud," she said a little sharply. "The lodger is
+not very well to-day. He's had a cold," she added hastily, "and
+during the last two or three days he hasn't been able to go out."
+
+She wondered at her temerity, her--her hypocrisy, and that moment,
+those few words, marked an epoch in Ellen Bunting's life. It was
+the first time she had told a bold and deliberate lie. She was
+one of those women--there are many, many such--to whom there is
+a whole world of difference between the suppression of the truth
+and the utterance of an untruth.
+
+But Chandler paid no heed to her remarks. "Has Miss Daisy arrived?"
+he asked, in a lower voice.
+
+She nodded. And then he went through into the room where the father
+and daughter were sitting.
+
+"Well?" said Bunting, starting up. "Well, Joe? Now you can tell
+us all about that mysterious clue I suppose it'd be too good news
+to expect you to tell us they've caught him?"
+
+"No fear of such good news as that yet awhile. If they'd caught
+him," said Joe ruefully, "well, I don't suppose I should be here,
+Mr. Bunting. But the Yard are circulating a description at last.
+And--well, they've found his weapon!"
+
+"No?" cried Bunting excitedly. "You don't say so! Whatever sort
+of a thing is it? And are they sure 'tis his?"
+
+"Well, 'tain't sure, but it seems to be likely."
+
+Mrs. Bunting had slipped into the room and shut the door behind her.
+But she was still standing with her back against the door, looking
+at the group in front of her. None of them were thinking of her
+--she thanked God for that! She could hear everything that was
+said without joining in the talk and excitement.
+
+"Listen to this!" cried Joe Chandler exultantly. "'Tain't given
+out yet--not for the public, that is--but we was all given it by
+eight o'clock this morning. Quick work that eh?" He read out:
+
+
+  "WANTED
+
+  A man, of age approximately 28, slight in figure, height
+  approximately 5 ft. '8 in. Complexion dark. No beard or
+  whiskers. Wearing a black diagonal coat hard felt hat, high
+  white collar, and tie. Carried a newspaper parcel. Very
+  respectable appearance."
+
+
+Mrs. Bunting walked forward. She gave a long, fluttering sigh of
+unutterable relief.
+
+"There's the chap!" said Joe Chandler triumphantly. "And now, Miss
+Daisy"--he turned to her jokingly, but there was a funny little
+tremor in his frank, cheerful-sounding voice--"if you knows of any
+nice, likely young fellow that answers to that description--well,
+you've only got to walk in and earn your reward of five hundred
+pounds."
+
+"Five hundred pounds!" cried Daisy and her father simultaneously.
+
+"Yes. That's what the Lord Mayor offered yesterday. Some private
+bloke--nothing official about it. But we of the Yard is barred
+from taking that reward, worse luck. And it's too bad, for we has
+all the trouble, after all"
+
+"Just hand that bit of paper over, will you?" said Bunting. "I'd
+like to con it over to myself."
+
+Chandler threw over the bit of flimsy.
+
+A moment later Bunting looked up and handed it back. "Well, it's
+clear enough, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. And there's hundreds--nay, thousands--of young fellows
+that might be a description of," said Chandler sarcastically. "As
+a pal of mine said this morning, 'There isn't a chap will like to
+carry a newspaper parcel after this.' And it won't do to have a
+respectable appearance--eh?"
+
+Daisy's voice rang out in merry, pealing laughter. She greatly
+appreciated Mr. Chandler's witticism.
+
+"Why on earth didn't the people who saw him try and catch him?"
+asked Bunting suddenly.
+
+And Mrs. Bunting broke in, in a lower voice, "Yes, Joe--that seems
+odd, don't it?"
+
+Joe Chandler coughed. "Well, it's this way," he said. "No one
+person did see all that. The man who's described here is just made
+up from the description of two different folk who think they saw
+him. You see, the murders must have taken place--well, now, let
+me see--perhaps at two o'clock this last time. Two o'clock--
+that's the idea. Well, at such a time as that not many people are
+about, especially on a foggy night. Yes, one woman declares she
+saw a young chap walking away from the spot where 'twas done; and
+another one--but that was a good bit later--says The Avenger
+passed by her. It's mostly her they're following in this 'ere
+description. And then the boss who has charge of that sort of
+thing looked up what other people had said--I mean when the other
+crimes was committed. That's how he made up this 'Wanted."'
+
+"Then The Avenger may be quite a different sort of man?" said
+Bunting slowly, disappointedly.
+
+"Well, of course he may be. But, no; I think that description
+fits him all right," said Chandler; but he also spoke in a
+hesitating voice.
+
+"You was saying, Joe, that they found a weapon?" observed Bunting
+insinuatingly.
+
+He was glad that Ellen allowed the discussion to go on--in fact,
+that she even seemed to take an intelligent interest in it. She
+had come up close to them, and now looked quite her old self again.
+
+"Yes. They believe they've found the weapon what he does his awful
+deeds with," said Chandler. "At any rate, within a hundred yards
+of that little dark passage where they found the bodies--one at
+each end, that was--there was discovered this morning a very
+peculiar kind o' knife--'keen as a razor, pointed as a dagger'--
+that's the exact words the boss used when he was describing it to
+a lot of us. He seemed to think a lot more of that clue than of
+the other--I mean than of the description people gave of the chap
+who walked quickly by with a newspaper parcel. But now there's a
+pretty job in front of us. Every shop where they sell or might a'
+sold, such a thing as that knife, including every eating-house in
+the East End, has got to be called at!"
+
+"Whatever for?" asked Daisy.
+
+"Why, with an idea of finding out if anyone saw such a knife fooling
+about there any time, and, if so, in whose possession it was at the
+time. But, Mr. Bunting"--Chandler's voice changed; it became
+businesslike, official--"they're not going to say anything about
+that--not in newspapers--till to-morrow, so don't you go and
+tell anybody. You see, we don't want to frighten the fellow off.
+If he knew they'd got his knife--well, he might just make himself
+scarce, and they don't want that! If it's discovered that any knife
+of that kind was sold, say a month ago, to some customer whose ways
+are known, then--then--"
+
+"What'll happen then?" said Mrs. Bunting, coming nearer.
+
+"Well, then, nothing'll be put about it in the papers at all," said
+Chandler deliberately. "The only objec' of letting the public know
+about it would be if nothink was found--I mean if the search of
+the shops, and so on, was no good. Then, of course, we must try
+and find out someone--some private person-like, who's watched that
+knife in the criminal's possession. It's there the reward--the
+five hundred pounds will come in."
+
+"Oh, I'd give anything to see that knife!" exclaimed Daisy, clasping
+her hands together.
+
+"You cruel, bloodthirsty, girl!" cried her stepmother passionately.
+
+They all looked round at her, surprised.
+
+"Come, come, Ellen!" said Bunting reprovingly.
+
+"Well, it is a horrible idea!" said his wife sullenly. "To go and
+sell a fellow-being for five hundred pounds."
+
+But Daisy was offended. "Of course I'd like to see it!" she cried
+defiantly. "I never said nothing about the reward. That was Mr.
+Chandler said that! I only said I'd like to see the knife."
+
+Chandler looked at her soothingly. "Well, the day may come when
+you will see it," he said slowly.
+
+A great idea had come into his mind.
+
+"No! What makes you think that?"
+
+"If they catches him, and if you comes along with me to see our
+Black Museum at the Yard, you'll certainly see the knife, Miss Daisy.
+They keeps all them kind of things there. So if, as I say, this
+weapon should lead to the conviction of The Avenger--well, then,
+that knife 'ull be there, and you'll see' it!"
+
+"The Black Museum? Why, whatever do they have a museum in your
+place for?" asked Daisy wonderingly. "I thought there was only the
+British Museum--"
+
+And then even Mrs. Bunting, as well as Bunting and Chandler,
+laughed aloud.
+
+"You are a goosey girl!" said her father fondly. "Why, there's a
+lot of museums in London; the town's thick with 'em. Ask Ellen
+there. She and me used to go to them kind of places when we was
+courting--if the weather was bad."
+
+"But our museum's the one that would interest Miss Daisy," broke in
+Chandler eagerly. "It's a regular Chamber of 'Orrors!"
+
+"Why, Joe, you never told us about that place before," said Bunting
+excitedly. "D'you really mean that there's a museum where they
+keeps all sorts of things connected with crimes? Things like knives
+murders have been committed with?"
+
+"Knives?" cried Joe, pleased at having become the centre of
+attention, for Daisy had also fixed her blue eyes on him, and even
+Mrs. Bunting looked at him expectantly. "Much more than knives, Mr.
+Bunting! Why, they've got there, in little bottles, the real poison
+what people have been done away with."
+
+"And can you go there whenever you like?" asked Daisy wonderingly.
+She had not realised before what extraordinary and agreeable
+privileges are attached to the position of a detective member of
+the London Police Force.
+
+"Well, I suppose I could--" Joe smiled. "Anyway I can certainly
+get leave to take a friend there." He looked meaningly at Daisy,
+and Daisy looked eagerly at him.
+
+But would Ellen ever let her go out by herself with Mr. Chandler?
+Ellen was so prim, so--so irritatingly proper. But what was this
+father was saying? "D'you really mean that, Joe?"
+
+"Yes, of course I do!"
+
+"Well, then, look here! If it isn't asking too much of a favour, I
+should like to go along there with you very much one day. I don't
+want to wait till The Avenger's caught "--Bunting smiled broadly.
+"I'd be quite content as it is with what there is in that museum
+o' yours. Ellen, there,"--he looked across at his wife--"don't
+agree with me about such things. Yet I don't think I'm a
+bloodthirsty man! But I'm just terribly interested in all that sort
+of thing--always have been. I used to positively envy the butler
+in that Balham Mystery!"
+
+Again a look passed between Daisy and the young man--it was a look
+which contained and carried a great many things backwards and
+forwards, such as--"Now, isn't it funny that your father should
+want to go to such a place? But still, I can't help it if he does
+want to go, so we must put up with his company, though it would
+have been much nicer for us to go just by our two selves." And
+then Daisy's look answered quite as plainly, though perhaps Joe
+didn't read her glance quite as clearly as she had read his: "Yes,
+it is tiresome. But father means well; and 'twill be very pleasant
+going there, even if he does come too."
+
+"Well, what d'you say to the day after to-morrow, Mr. Bunting? I'd
+call for you here about--shall we say half-past two?--and just
+take you and Miss Daisy down to the Yard. 'Twouldn't take very
+long; we could go all the way by bus, right down to Westminster
+Bridge." He looked round at his hostess: "Wouldn't you join us,
+Mrs. Bunting? 'Tis truly a wonderful interesting place."
+
+But his hostess shook her head decidedly. "'Twould turn me sick,"
+she exclaimed, "to see the bottle of poison what had done away with
+the life of some poor creature!
+
+"And as for knives--!" a look of real horror, of startled fear,
+crept over her pale face.
+
+"There, there!" said Bunting hastily. "Live and let live--that's
+what I always say. Ellen ain't on in this turn. She can just
+stay at home and mind the cat--I beg his pardon, I mean the lodger!"
+
+"I won't have Mr. Sleuth laughed at," said Mrs. Bunting darkly.
+"But there! I'm sure it's very kind of you, Joe, to think of giving
+Bunting and Daisy such a rare treat "--she spoke sarcastically, but
+none of the three who heard her understood that.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The moment she passed though the great arched door which admits the
+stranger to that portion of New Scotland Yard where throbs the heart
+of that great organism which fights the forces of civilised crime,
+Daisy Bunting felt that she had indeed become free of the Kingdom of
+Romance. Even the lift in which the three of them were whirled up
+to one of the upper floors of the huge building was to the girl a
+new and delightful experience. Daisy had always lived a simple,
+quiet life in the little country town where dwelt Old Aunt and this
+was the first time a lift had come her way.
+
+With a touch of personal pride in the vast building, Joe Chandler
+marched his friends down a wide, airy corridor.
+
+Daisy clung to her father's arm, a little bewildered, a little
+oppressed by her good fortune. Her happy young voice was
+stilled by the awe she felt at the wonderful place where she
+found herself, and by the glimpses she caught of great rooms full
+of busy, silent men engaged in unravelling--or so she supposed
+--the mysteries of crime.
+
+They were passing a half-open door when Chandler suddenly stopped
+short. "Look in there," he said, in a low voice, addressing the
+father rather than the daughter, "that's the Finger-Print Room.
+We've records here of over two hundred thousand men's and women's
+finger-tips! I expect you know, Mr. Bunting, as how, once we've got
+the print of a man's five finger-tips, well, he's done for--if he
+ever does anything else, that is. Once we've got that bit of him
+registered he can't never escape us--no, not if he tries ever so.
+But though there's nigh on a quarter of a million records in there,
+yet it don't take--well, not half an hour, for them to tell
+whether any particular man has ever been convicted before! Wonderful
+thought, ain't it?"
+
+"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing a deep breath. And then a
+troubled look came over his stolid face. "Wonderful, but also a
+very fearful thought for the poor wretches as has got their
+finger-prints in, Joe."
+
+Joe laughed. "Agreed!" he said. "And the cleverer ones knows that
+only too well. Why, not long ago, one man who knew his record was
+here safe, managed to slash about his fingers something awful, just
+so as to make a blurred impression--you takes my meaning? But
+there, at the end of six weeks the skin grew all right again, and
+in exactly the same little creases as before!"
+
+"Poor devil!" said Bunting under his breath, and a cloud even came
+over Daisy's bright eager face.
+
+They were now going along a narrower passage, and then again they
+came to a half-open door, leading into a room far smaller than
+that of the Finger-Print Identification Room.
+
+"If you'll glance in there," said Joe briefly, "you'll see how we
+finds out all about any man whose finger-tips has given him away, so
+to speak. It's here we keeps an account of what he's done, his
+previous convictions, and so on. His finger-tips are where I told
+you, and his record in there--just connected by a number."
+
+"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing in his breath. But Daisy was
+longing to get on--to get to the Black Museum. All this that Joe
+and her father were saying was quite unreal to her, and, for the
+matter of that not worth taking the trouble to understand. However,
+she had not long to wait.
+
+A broad-shouldered, pleasant-looking young fellow, who seemed on
+very friendly terms with Joe Chandler, came forward suddenly, and,
+unlocking a common-place-looking door, ushered the little party of
+three through into the Black Museum.
+
+For a moment there came across Daisy a feeling of keen disappointment
+and surprise. This big, light room simply reminded her of what they
+called the Science Room in the public library of the town where she
+lived with Old Aunt. Here, as there, the centre was taken up with
+plain glass cases fixed at a height from the floor which enabled
+their contents to be looked at closely.
+
+She walked forward and peered into the case nearest the door. The
+exhibits shown there were mostly small, shabby-looking little things,
+the sort of things one might turn out of an old rubbish cupboard in
+an untidy house--old medicine bottles, a soiled neckerchief, what
+looked like a child's broken lantern, even a box of pills. . .
+
+As for the walls, they were covered with the queerest-looking
+objects; bits of old iron, odd-looking things made of wood and
+leather, and so on.
+
+It was really rather disappointing.
+
+Then Daisy Bunting gradually became aware that standing on a shelf
+just below the first of the broad, spacious windows which made the
+great room look so light and shadowless, was a row of life-size
+white plaster heads, each head slightly inclined to the right.
+There were about a dozen of these, not more--and they had such odd,
+staring, helpless, real-looking faces.
+
+"Whatever's those?" asked Bunting in a low voice.
+
+Daisy clung a thought closer to her father's arm. Even she guessed
+that these strange, pathetic, staring faces were the death-masks of
+those men and women who had fulfilled the awful law which ordains
+that the murderer shall be, in his turn, done to death.
+
+"All hanged!" said the guardian of the Black Museum briefly. "Casts
+taken after death."
+
+Bunting smiled nervously. "They don't look dead somehow.. They
+looks more as if they were listening," he said.
+
+"That's the fault of Jack Ketch," said the man facetiously. "It's
+his idea--that of knotting his' patient's necktie under the left
+ear! That's what he does to each of the gentlemen to whom he has
+to act valet on just one occasion only. It makes them lean just a
+bit to one side. You look here--?"
+
+Daisy and her father came a little closer, and the speaker pointed
+with his' finger to a little dent imprinted on the left side of each
+neck; running from this indentation was a curious little furrow,
+well ridged above, showing how tightly Jack Ketch's necktie had been
+drawn when its wearer was hurried through the gates of eternity.
+
+"They looks foolish-like, rather than terrified, or--or hurt," said
+Bunting wonderingly.
+
+He was extraordinarily moved and fascinated by those dumb, staring
+faces.
+
+But young Chandler exclaimed in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice,
+"Well, a man would look foolish at such a time as that, with all his
+plans brought to naught--and knowing he's only got a second to live
+--now wouldn't he?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose he would," said Bunting slowly.
+
+Daisy had gone a little pale. The sinister, breathless atmosphere
+of the place was beginning to tell on her. She now began to
+understand that the shabby little objects lying there in the glass
+case close to her were each and all links in the chain of evidence
+which, in almost every case, had brought some guilty man or woman
+to the gallows.
+
+"We had a yellow gentleman here the other day," observed the guardian
+suddenly; "one of those Brahmins--so they calls themselves. Well,
+you'd a been quite surprised to see how that heathen took on! He
+declared--what was the word he used?"--he turned to Chandler.
+
+"He said that each of these things, with the exception of the casts,
+mind you--queer to say, he left them out--exuded evil, that was
+the word he used! Exuded--squeezed out it means. He said that
+being here made him feel very bad. And twasn't all nonsense either.
+He turned quite green under his yellow skin, and we had to shove him
+out quick. He didn't feel better till he'd got right to the other
+end of the passage!"
+
+"There now! Who'd ever think of that?" said Bunting. "I should say
+that man 'ud got something on his conscience, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Well, I needn't stay now," said Joe's good-natured friend. "You
+show your friends round, Chandler. You knows the place nearly as
+well as I do, don't you?"
+
+He smiled at Joe's visitors, as if to say good-bye, but it seemed
+that he could not tear himself away after all.
+
+"Look here," he said to Bunting. "In this here little case are the
+tools of Charles Peace. I expect you've heard of him."
+
+"I should think I have!" cried Bunting eagerly.
+
+"Many gents as comes here thinks this case the most interesting of
+all. Peace was such a wonderful man! A great inventor they say he
+would have been, had he been put in the way of it. Here's his
+ladder; you see it folds up quite compactly, and makes a nice little
+bundle--just like a bundle of old sticks any man might have been
+seen carrying about London in those days without attracting any
+attention. Why, it probably helped him to look like an honest
+working man time and time again, for on being arrested he declared
+most solemnly he'd always carried that ladder openly under his arm."
+
+"The daring of that!" cried Bunting.
+
+"Yes, and when the ladder was opened out it could reach from the
+ground to the second storey of any old house. And, oh! how clever
+he was! Just open one section, and you see the other sections open
+automatically; so Peace could stand on the ground and force the
+thing quietly up to any window he wished to reach. Then he'd go
+away again, having done his job, with a mere bundle of old wood
+under his arm! My word, he was artful! I wonder if you've heard
+the tale of how Peace once lost a finger. Well, he guessed the
+constables were instructed to look out for a man missing a finger;
+so what did he do?"
+
+"Put on a false finger," suggested Bunting.
+
+"No, indeed! Peace made up his mind just to do without a hand
+altogether. Here's his false stump: you see, it's made of wood
+--wood and black felt? Well, that just held his hand nicely.
+Why, we considers that one of the most ingenious contrivances in
+the whole museum."
+
+Meanwhile, Daisy had let go her hold of her father. With Chandler
+in delighted attendance, she bad moved away to the farther end of
+the great room, and now she was bending over yet another glass case.
+"Whatever are those little bottles for?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+There were five small phials, filled with varying quantities of
+cloudy liquids.
+
+"They're full of poison, Miss Daisy, that's what they are. There's
+enough arsenic in that little whack o' brandy to do for you and me
+--aye, and for your father as well, I should say."
+
+"Then chemists shouldn't sell such stuff," said Daisy, smiling.
+Poison was so remote from herself, that the sight of these little
+bottles only brought a pleasant thrill.
+
+"No more they don't. That was sneaked out of a flypaper, that was.
+Lady said she wanted a cosmetic for her complexion, but what she was
+really going for was flypapers for to do away with her husband.
+She'd got a bit tired of him, I suspect."
+
+"Perhaps he was a horrid man, and deserved to be done away with,"
+said Daisy. The idea struck them both as so very comic that they
+began to laugh aloud in unison.
+
+"Did you ever hear what a certain Mrs. Pearce did?" asked Chandler,
+becoming suddenly serious.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Daisy, and she shuddered a little. "That was the
+wicked, wicked woman what killed a pretty little baby and its mother.
+They've got her in Madame Tussaud's. But Ellen, she won't let me go
+to the Chamber of Horrors. She wouldn't let father take me there
+last time I was in London. Cruel of her, I called it. But somehow
+I don't feel as if I wanted to go there now, after having been here!"
+
+"Well," said Chandler slowly, "we've a case full of relics of Mrs.
+Pearce. But the pram the bodies were found in, that's at Madame
+Tussaud's--at least so they claim, I can't say. Now here's something
+just as curious, and not near so dreadful. See that man's jacket
+there?!"
+
+"Yes," said Daisy falteringly. She was beginning to feel oppressed,
+frightened. She no longer wondered that the Indian gentleman had
+been taken queer.
+
+"A burglar shot a man dead who'd disturbed him, and by mistake he
+went and left that jacket behind him. Our people noticed that one
+of the buttons was broken in two. Well, that don't seem much of a
+clue, does it, Miss Daisy? Will you believe me when I tells you
+that that other bit of button was discovered, and that it hanged
+the fellow? And 'twas the more wonderful because all three buttons
+was different!"
+
+Daisy stared wonderingly, down at the little broken button which
+had hung a man. "And whatever's that!" she asked, pointing to a
+piece of dirty-looking stuff.
+
+"Well," said Chandler reluctantly, "that's rather a horrible thing
+--that is. That's a bit o' shirt that was buried with a woman--
+buried in the ground, I mean--after her husband had cut her up and
+tried, to burn her. Twas that bit o' shirt that brought him to the
+gallows."
+
+"I considers your museum's a very horrid place!" said Daisy
+pettishly, turning away.
+
+She longed to be out in the passage again, away from this brightly
+lighted, cheerful-looking, sinister room.
+
+But her father was now absorbed in the case containing various types
+of infernal machines. "Beautiful little works of art some of them
+are," said his guide eagerly, and Bunting could not but agree.
+
+"Come along--do, father!" said Daisy quickly. "I've seen about
+enough now. If I was to stay in here much longer it 'ud give me
+the horrors. I don't want to have no nightmares to-night. It's
+dreadful to think there are so many wicked people in the world.
+Why, we might knock up against some murderer any minute without
+knowing it, mightn't we?"
+
+"Not you, Miss Daisy," said Chandler smilingly. "I don't suppose
+you'll ever come across even a common swindler, let alone anyone
+who's committed a murder--not one in a million does that. Why,
+even I have never had anything to do with a proper murder case!"
+
+But Bunting was in no hurry. He was thoroughly enjoying every
+moment of the time. Just now he was studying intently the various
+photographs which hung on the walls of the Black Museum; especially
+was he pleased to see those connected with a famous and still
+mysterious case which had taken place not long before in Scotland,
+and in which the servant of the man who died had played a
+considerable part--not in elucidating, but in obscuring, the mystery.
+
+"I suppose a good many murderers get off?" he said musingly.
+
+And Joe Chandler's friend nodded. "I should think they did!" he
+exclaimed. "There's no such thing as justice here in England.
+'Tis odds on the murderer every time. 'Tisn't one in ten that
+come to the end he should do--to the gallows, that is."
+
+"And what d'you think about what's going on now--I mean about
+those Avenger murders?"
+
+Bunting lowered his voice, but Daisy and Chandler were already
+moving towards the door.
+
+"I don't believe he'll ever be caught," said the other
+confidentially. "In some ways 'tis a lot more of a job to catch a
+madman than 'tis to run down just an ordinary criminal. And, of
+course--leastways to my thinking--The Avenger is a madman--one
+of the cunning, quiet sort. Have you heard about the letter?" his
+voice dropped lower.
+
+ "No," said Bunting, staring eagerly at him. "What letter d'you
+mean?"
+
+"Well, there's a letter--it'll be in this museum some day--which
+came just before that last double event. 'Twas signed 'The Avenger,'
+in just the same printed characters as on that bit of paper he always
+leaves behind him. Mind you, it don't follow that it actually was The
+Avenger what sent that letter here, but it looks uncommonly like it,
+and I know that the Boss attaches quite a lot of importance to it."
+
+"And where was it posted?" asked Bunting. "That might be a bit of a
+clue, you know."
+
+"Oh, no," said the other. "They always goes a very long way to
+post anything--criminals do. It stands to reason they would. But
+this particular one was put in the Edgware Road Post Office."
+
+"What? Close to us?" said Bunting. "Goodness! dreadful!"
+
+"Any of us might knock up against him any minute. I don't suppose
+The Avenger's in any way peculiar-looking--in fact we know he ain't."
+
+"Then you think that woman as says she saw him did see him?" asked
+Bunting hesitatingly.
+
+"Our description was made up from what she said," answered the other
+cautiously. "But, there, you can't tell! In a case like that it's
+groping--groping in the dark all the time--and it's just a lucky
+accident if it comes out right in the end. Of course, it's upsetting
+us all very much here. You can't wonder at that!"
+
+"No, indeed," said Bunting quickly. "I give you my word, I've hardly
+thought of anything else for the last month."
+
+Daisy had disappeared, and when her father joined her in the passage
+she was listening, with downcast eyes, to what Joe Chandler was
+saying.
+
+He was telling her about his real home, of the place where his mother
+lived, at Richmond--that it was a nice little house, close to the
+park. He was asking her whether she could manage to come out there
+one afternoon, explaining that his mother would give them tea, and
+how nice it would be.
+
+"I don't see why Ellen shouldn't let me," the girl said rebelliously.
+"But she's that old-fashioned and pernickety is Ellen--a regular
+old maid! And, you see, Mr. Chandler, when I'm staying with them,
+father don't like for me to do anything that Ellen don't approve of.
+But she's got quite fond of you, so perhaps if you ask her--?"
+She looked at him, and he nodded sagely.
+
+"Don't you be afraid," he said confidently. "I'll get round Mrs.
+Bunting. But, Miss Daisy"--he grew very red--"I'd just like to
+ask you a question--no offence meant--"
+
+"Yes?" said Daisy a little breathlessly. "There's father close to
+us, Mr. Chandler. Tell me quick; what is it?"
+
+"Well, I take it, by what you said just now, that you've never
+walked out with any young fellow?"
+
+Daisy hesitated a moment; then a very pretty dimple came into her
+cheek. "No," she said sadly. "No, Mr. Chandler, that I have not."
+In a burst of candour she added, "You see, I never had the chance!"
+
+And Joe Chandler smiled, well pleased.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+By what she regarded as a fortunate chance, Mrs. Bunting found
+herself for close on an hour quite alone in the house during her
+husband's and Daisy's jaunt with young Chandler.
+
+Mr. Sleuth did not often go out in the daytime, but on this
+particular afternoon, after he had finished his tea, when dusk was
+falling, he suddenly observed that he wanted a new suit of clothes,
+and his landlady eagerly acquiesced in his going out to purchase it.
+
+As soon as he had left the house, she went quickly up to the
+drawing-room floor. Now had come her opportunity of giving the two
+rooms a good dusting; but Mrs. Bunting knew well, deep in her heart,
+that it was not so much the dusting of Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room she
+wanted to do--as to engage in a vague search for--she hardly knew
+for what.
+
+During the years she had been in service Mrs. Bunting had always
+had a deep, wordless contempt for those of her fellow-servants who
+read their employers' private letters, and who furtively peeped
+into desks and cupboards in the hope, more vague than positive, of
+discovering family skeletons.
+
+But now, with regard to Mr. Sleuth, she was ready, aye, eager, to
+do herself what she had once so scorned others for doing.
+
+Beginning with the bedroom, she started on a methodical search. He
+was a very tidy gentleman was the lodger, and his few things,
+under-garments, and so on, were in apple-pie order. She had early
+undertaken, much to his satisfaction, to do the very little bit of
+washing he required done, with her own and Bunting's. Luckily he
+wore soft shirts.
+
+At one time Mrs. Bunting had always had a woman in to help her with
+this tiresome weekly job, but lately she had grown quite clever at
+it herself. The only things she had to send out were Bunting's
+shirts. Everything else she managed to do herself.
+
+From the chest of drawers she now turned her attention to the
+dressing-table.
+
+Mr. Sleuth did not take his money with him when he went out, he
+generally left it in one of the drawers below the old-fashioned
+looking-glass. And now, in a perfunctory way, his landlady pulled
+out the little drawer, but she did not touch what was lying there;
+she only glanced at the heap of sovereigns and a few bits of silver.
+The lodger had taken just enough money with him to buy the clothes
+he required. He had consulted her as to how much they would cost,
+making no secret of why he was going out, and the fact had vaguely
+comforted Mrs. Bunting.
+
+Now she lifted the toilet-cover, and even rolled up the carpet a
+little way, but no, there was nothing there, not so much as a scrap
+of paper. And at last, when more or less giving up the search, as
+she came and went between the two rooms, leaving the connecting door
+wide open, her mind became full of uneasy speculation and wonder as
+to the lodger's past life.
+
+Odd Mr. Sleuth must surely always have been, but odd in a sensible
+sort of way, having on the whole the same moral ideals of conduct
+as have other people of his class. He was queer about the drink--one
+might say almost crazy on the subject--but there, as to that, he
+wasn't the only one! She. Ellen Bunting, had once lived with a
+lady who was just like that, who was quite crazed, that is, on the
+question of drink and drunkards--She looked round the neat
+drawing-room with vague dissatisfaction. There was only one place
+where anything could be kept concealed--that place was the
+substantial if small mahogany chiffonnier. And then an idea
+suddenly came to Mrs. Bunting, one she had never thought of before.
+
+After listening intently for a moment, lest something should suddenly
+bring Mr. Sleuth home earlier than she expected, she went to the
+corner where the chiffonnier stood, and, exerting the whole of her
+not very great physical strength, she tipped forward the heavy piece
+of furniture.
+
+As she did so, she heard a queer rumbling sound,--something rolling
+about on the second shelf, something which had not been there before
+Mr. Sleuth's arrival. Slowly, laboriously, she tipped the chiffonnier
+backwards and forwards--once, twice, thrice--satisfied, yet strangely
+troubled in her mind, for she now felt sure that the bag of which the
+disappearance had so surprised her was there, safely locked away by
+its owner.
+
+Suddenly a very uncomfortable thought came to Mrs. Buntlng's mind.
+She hoped Mr. Sleuth would not notice that his bag had shifted inside
+the cupboard. A moment later, with sharp dismay, Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady realised that the fact that she had moved the chiffonnier
+must become known to her lodger, for a thin trickle of some
+dark-coloured liquid was oozing out though the bottom of the little
+cupboard door.
+
+She stooped down and touched the stuff. It showed red, bright red,
+on her finger.
+
+Mrs. Bunting grew chalky white, then recovered herself quickly. In
+fact the colour rushed into her face, and she grew hot all over.
+
+It was only a bottle of red ink she had upset--that was all! How
+could she have thought it was anything else?
+
+It was the more silly of her--so she told herself in scornful
+condemnation--because she knew that the lodger used red ink.
+Certain pages of Cruden's Concordance were covered with notes written
+in Mr. Sleuth's peculiar upright handwriting. In fact in some places
+you couldn't see the margin, so closely covered was it with remarks
+and notes of interrogation.
+
+Mr Sleuth had foolishly placed his bottle of red ink in the
+chiffonnier--that was what her poor, foolish gentleman had done;
+and it was owing to her inquisitiveness, her restless wish to know
+things she would be none the better, none the happier, for knowing,
+that this accident had taken place.
+
+She mopped up with her duster the few drops of ink which had fallen
+on the green carpet and then, still feeling, as she angrily told
+herself, foolishly upset she went once more into the back room.
+
+It was curious that Mr. Sleuth possessed no notepaper. She would
+have expected him to have made that one of his first purchases--the
+more so that paper is so very cheap, especially that rather
+dirty-looking grey Silurian paper. Mrs. Buntlng had once lived with
+a lady who always used two kinds of notepaper, white for her friends
+and equals, grey for those whom she called "common people." She,
+Ellen Green, as she then was, had always resented the fact. Strange
+she should remember it now, stranger in a way because that employer
+of her's had not been a real lady, and Mr. Sleuth, whatever his
+peculiarities, was, in every sense of the word, a real gentleman.
+Somehow Mrs. Bunting felt sure that if he had bought any notepaper
+it would have been white--white and probably cream-laid--not
+grey and cheap.
+
+Again she opened the drawer of the old-fashioned wardrobe and lifted
+up the few pieces of underclothing Mr. Sleuth now possessed.
+
+But there was nothing there--nothing, that is, hidden away. When
+one came to think of it there seemed something strange in the notion
+of leaving all one's money where anyone could take it, and in locking
+up such a valueless thing as a cheap sham leather bag, to say nothing
+of a bottle of ink.
+
+Mrs. Bunting once more opened out each of the tiny drawers below the
+looking-glass, each delicately fashioned of fine old mahogany. Mr.
+Sleuth kept his money in the centre drawer.
+
+The glass had only cost seven-and-sixpence, and, after the auction
+a dealer had come and offered her first fifteen shillings, and then
+a guinea for it. Not long ago, in Baker Street, she had seen a
+looking-glass which was the very spit of this one, labeled
+"Chippendale, Antique. £21 5s 0d."
+
+There lay Mr. Sleuth's money--the sovereigns, as the landlady well
+knew, would each and all gradually pass into her's and Bunting's
+possession, honestly earned by them no doubt but unattainable--in
+act unearnable--excepting in connection with the present owner of
+those dully shining gold sovereigns.
+
+At last she went downstairs to await Mr. Sleuth's return.
+
+When she heard the key turn in the door, she came out into the
+passage.
+
+"I'm sorry to say I've had an accident, sir," she said a little
+breathlessly. "Taking advantage of your being out I went up to
+dust the drawing-room, and while I was trying to get behind the
+chiffonnier it tilted. I'm afraid, sir, that a bottle of ink that
+was inside may have got broken, for just a few drops oozed out,
+sir. But I hope there's no harm done. I wiped it up as well as
+I could, seeing that the doors of the chiffonnier are locked."
+
+Mr. Sleuth stared at her with a wild, almost a terrified glance.
+But Mrs. Bunting stood her ground. She felt far less afraid now
+than she had felt before he came in. Then she had been so
+frightened that she had nearly gone out of the house, on to the
+pavement, for company.
+
+"Of course I had no idea, sir, that you kept any ink in there."
+
+She spoke as if she were on the defensive, and the lodger's brow
+cleared.
+
+"I was aware you used ink, sir," Mrs. Bunting went on, "for I have
+seen you marking that book of yours--I mean the book you read
+together with the Bible. Would you like me to go out and get you
+another bottle, sir?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Sleuth. "No, I thank you. I will at once proceed
+upstairs and see what damage has been done. When I require you I
+shall ring."
+
+He shuffled past her, and five minutes later the drawing-room bell
+did ring.
+
+At once, from the door, Mrs. Bunting saw that the chiffonnier was
+wide open, and that the shelves were empty save for the bottle of
+red ink which had turned over and now lay in a red pool of its own
+making on the lower shelf.
+
+"I'm afraid it will have stained the wood, Mrs. Bunting. Perhaps I
+was ill-advised to keep my ink in there."
+
+"Oh, no, sir! That doesn't matter at all. Only a drop or two fell
+out on to the carpet, and they don't show, as you see, sir, for it's
+a dark corner. Shall I take the bottle away? I may as well."
+
+Mr. Sleuth hesitated. "No," he said, after a long pause, "I think
+not, Mrs. Bunting. For the very little I require it the ink
+remaining in the bottle will do quite well, especially if I add a
+little water, or better still, a little tea, to what already
+remains in the bottle. I only require it to mark up passages which
+happen to be of peculiar interest in my Concordance--a work, Mrs.
+Bunting, which I should have taken great pleasure in compiling
+myself had not this--ah--this gentleman called Cruden, been before."
+
+******
+
+Not only Bunting, but Daisy also, thought Ellen far pleasanter in
+her manner than usual that evening. She listened to all they had
+to say about their interesting visit to the Black Museum, and did
+not snub either of them--no, not even when Bunting told of the
+dreadful, haunting, silly-looking death-masks taken from the hanged.
+
+But a few minutes after that, when her husband suddenly asked her
+a question, Mrs. Bunting answered at random. It was clear she had
+not heard the last few words he had been saying.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts!" he said jocularly. But she shook her
+head.
+
+Daisy slipped out of the room, and, five minutes later, came back
+dressed up in a blue-and-white check silk gown.
+
+"My!" said her father. "You do look fine, Daisy. I've never seen
+you wearing that before."
+
+"And a rare figure of fun she looks in it!" observed Mrs. Bunting
+sarcastically. And then, "I suppose this dressing up means that
+you're expecting someone. I should have thought both of you must
+have seen enough of young Chandler for one day. I wonder when that
+young chap does his work--that I do! He never seems too busy to
+come and waste an hour or two here."
+
+But that was the only nasty thing Ellen said all that evening. And
+even Daisy noticed that her stepmother seemed dazed and unlike
+herself. She went about her cooking and the various little things
+she had to do even more silently than was her wont.
+
+Yet under that still, almost sullen, manner, how fierce was the
+storm of dread, of sombre, anguish, and, yes, of sick suspense,
+which shook her soul, and which so far affected her poor, ailing
+body that often she felt as if she could not force herself to
+accomplish her simple round of daily work.
+
+After they had finished supper Bunting went out and bought a penny
+evening paper, but as he came in he announced, with a rather' rueful
+smile, that he had read so much of that nasty little print this
+last week or two that his eyes hurt him.
+
+"Let me read aloud a bit to you, father," said Daisy eagerly, and he
+handed her the paper.
+
+Scarcely had Daisy opened her lips when a loud ring and a knock
+echoed through the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+It was only Joe. Somehow, even Bunting called him "Joe" now, and no
+longer "Chandler," as he had mostly used to do.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way.
+She wasn't going to have any strangers pushing in past her.
+
+To her sharpened, suffering senses her house had become a citadel
+which must be defended; aye, even if the besiegers were a mighty
+horde with right on their side. And she was always expecting that
+first single spy who would herald the battalion against whom her
+only weapon would be her woman's wit and cunning.
+
+But when she saw who stood there smiling at her, the muscles of her
+face relaxed, and it lost the tense, anxious, almost agonised look
+it assumed the moment she turned her back on her husband and
+stepdaughter.
+
+"Why, Joe," she whispered, for she had left the door open behind
+her, and Daisy had already begun to read aloud, as her father had
+bidden her. "Come in, do! It's fairly cold to-night."
+
+A glance at his face had shown her that there was no fresh news.
+
+Joe Chandler walked in, past her, into the little hall. Cold?
+Well, he didn't feel cold, for he had walked quickly to be the
+sooner where he was now.
+
+Nine days had gone by since that last terrible occurrence, the
+double murder which had been committed early in the morning of
+the day Daisy had arrived in London. And though the thousands of
+men belonging to the Metropolitan Police--to say nothing of the
+smaller, more alert body of detectives attached to the Force--
+were keenly on the alert, not one but had begun to feel that
+there was nothing to be alert about. Familiarity, even with
+horror, breeds contempt.
+
+But with the public it was far otherwise. Each day something
+happened to revive and keep alive the mingled horror and interest
+this strange, enigmatic series of crimes had evoked. Even the
+more sober organs of the Press went on attacking, with gathering
+severity and indignation, the Commissioner of Police; and at the
+huge demonstration held in Victoria Park two days before violent
+speeches had also been made against the Home Secretary.
+
+But just now Joe Chandler wanted to forget all that. The little
+house in the Marylebone Road had become to him an enchanted isle
+of dreams, to which his thoughts were ever turning when he had a
+moment to spare from what had grown to be a wearisome, because an
+unsatisfactory, job. He secretly agreed with one of his pals who
+had exclaimed, and that within twenty-four hours of the last double
+crime, "Why, 'twould be easier to find a needle in a rick o' hay
+than this--bloke!"
+
+And if that had been true then, how much truer it was now--after
+nine long, empty days had gone by?
+
+Quickly he divested himself of his great-coat, muffler, and low hat.
+Then he put his finger on his lip, and motioned smilingly to Mrs.
+Bunting to wait a moment. From where he stood in the hall the
+father and daughter made a pleasant little picture of contented
+domesticity. Joe Chandler's honest heart swelled at the sight.
+
+Daisy, wearing the blue-and-white check silk dress about which her
+stepmother and she had had words, sat on a low stool on the left
+side of the fire, while Bunting, leaning back in his own comfortable
+arm-chair, was listening, his hand to his ear, in an attitude--as
+it was the first time she had caught him doing it, the fact brought
+a pang to Mrs. Bunting--which showed that age was beginning to
+creep over the listener.
+
+One of Daisy's duties as companion to her great-aunt was that of
+reading the newspaper aloud, and she prided herself on her
+accomplishment.
+
+Just as Joe had put his finger on his lip Daisy bad been asking,
+"Shall I read this, father?" And Bunting had answered quickly,
+"Aye, do, my dear."
+
+He was absorbed in what he was hearing, and, on seeing Joe at the
+door, he had only just nodded his head. The young man was becoming
+so frequent a visitor as to be almost one of themselves.
+
+Daisy read out:'
+
+"The Avenger: A--"
+
+And then she stopped short, for the next word puzzled her greatly.
+Bravely, however, she went on. "A the-o-ry."
+
+"Go in--do!" whispered Mrs. Bunting to her visitor. "Why should
+we stay out here in the cold? It's ridiculous."
+
+"I don't want to interrupt Miss Daisy," whispered Chandler back,
+rather hoarsely.
+
+"Well, you'll hear it all the better in the room. Don't think
+she'll stop because of you, bless you! There's nothing shy about
+our Daisy!"
+
+The young man resented the tart, short tone. "Poor little girl!"
+he said to himself tenderly. "That's what it is having a stepmother,
+instead of a proper mother." But he obeyed Mrs. Bunting, and then
+he was pleased he had done so, for Daisy looked up, and a bright
+blush came over her pretty face.
+
+"Joe begs you won't stop yet awhile. Go on with your reading,"
+commanded Mrs. Bunting quickly. "Now, Joe, you can go and sit over
+there, close to Daisy, and then you won't miss a word."
+
+There was a sarcastic inflection in her voice, even Chandler noticed
+that, but he obeyed her with alacrity, and crossing the room he went
+and sat on a chair just behind Daisy. From there he could note with
+reverent delight the charming way her fair hair grew upwards from
+the nape of her slender neck.
+
+"The AVENGER: A THE-O-RY"
+
+began Daisy again, clearing her throat.
+
+"DEAR Sir--I have a suggestion to put forward for which I think
+there is a great deal to be said. It seems to me very probable
+that The Avenger--to give him the name by which he apparently
+wishes to be known--comprises in his own person the peculiarities
+of Jekyll and Hyde, Mr. Louis Stevenson's now famous hero.
+
+"The culprit, according to my point of view, is a quiet,
+pleasant-looking gentleman who lives somewhere in the West End of
+London. He has, however, a tragedy in his past life. He is the
+husband of a dipsomaniac wife. She is, of course, under care, and
+is never mentioned in the house where he lives, maybe with his
+widowed mother and perhaps a maiden sister. They notice that he
+has become gloomy and brooding of late, but he lives his usual life,
+occupying himself each day with some harmless hobby. On foggy
+nights, once the quiet household is plunged in sleep, he creeps out
+of the house, maybe between one and two o'clock, and swiftly makes
+his way straight to what has become The Avenger's murder area.
+Picking out a likely victim, he approaches her with Judas-like
+gentleness, and having committed his awful crime, goes quietly home
+again. After a good bath and breakfast, he turns up happy, once
+more the quiet individual who is an excellent son, a kind brother,
+esteemed and even beloved by a large circle of friends and
+acquaintances. Meantime, the police are searching about the scene
+of the tragedy for what they regard as the usual type of criminal
+lunatic.
+
+"I give this theory, Sir, for what it is worth, but I confess that
+I am amazed the police have so wholly confined their inquiries to
+the part of London where these murders have been actually committed.
+I am quite sure from all that has come out--and we must remember
+that full information is never given to the newspapers--The Avenger
+should be sought for in the West and not in the East End of London
+--Believe me to remain, Sir, yours very truly--"
+
+Again Daisy hesitated, and then with an effort she brought out the
+word "Gab-o-ri-you," said she.
+
+"What a funny name!" said Bunting wonderingly.
+
+And then Joe broke in: "That's the name of a French chap what wrote
+detective stories," he said. "Pretty good, some of them are, too!"
+
+"Then this Gaboriyou has come over to study these Avenger murders,
+I take it?" said Bunting.
+
+"Oh, no," Joe spoke with confidence. "Whoever's written that silly
+letter just signed that name for fun."
+
+"It is a silly letter," Mrs. Bunting had broken in resentfully. "I
+wonder a respectable paper prints such rubbish."
+
+"Fancy if The Avenger did turn out to be a gentleman!" cried Daisy, in
+an awe-struck voice. "There'd be a how-to-do!"
+
+"There may be something in the notion," said her father thoughtfully.
+"After all, the monster must be somewhere. This very minute he must
+be somewhere a-hiding of himself."
+
+"Of course he's somewhere," said Mrs. Bunting scornfully.
+
+She had just heard Mr. Sleuth moving overhead. 'Twould soon be time
+for the lodger's supper.
+
+She hurried on: "But what I do say is that--that--he has nothing
+to do with the West End. Why, they say it's a sailor from the Docks
+--that's a good bit more likely, I take it. But there, I'm fair
+sick of the whole subject! We talk of nothing else in this house.
+The Avenger this--The Avenger that--"
+
+"I expect Joe has something to tell us new to-night," said Bunting
+cheerfully. "Well, Joe, is there anything new?"
+
+"I say, father, just listen to this!" Daisy broke in excitedly.
+She read out:
+
+
+"BLOODHOUNDS TO BE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED"
+
+
+"Bloodhounds?" repeated Mrs. Bunting, and there was terror in her
+tone. "Why bloodhounds? That do seem to me a most horrible idea!"
+
+Bunting looked across at her, mildly astonished. "Why, 'twould be
+a very good idea, if 'twas possible to have bloodhounds in a town.
+But, there, how can that be done in London, full of butchers' shops,
+to say nothing of slaughter-yards and other places o' that sort?"
+
+But Daisy went on, and to her stepmother's shrinking ear there
+seemed a horrible thrill of delight; of gloating pleasure, in her
+fresh young voice.
+
+"Hark to this," she said:
+
+"A man who had committed a murder in a lonely wood near Blackburn
+was traced by the help of a bloodhound, and thanks to the sagacious
+instincts of the animal, the miscreant was finally convicted and
+hanged."
+
+"La, now! Who'd ever have thought of such a thing?" Bunting
+exclaimed, in admiration. "The newspapers do have some useful
+hints in sometimes, Joe."
+
+But young Chandler shook his head. "Bloodhounds ain't no use," he
+said; "no use at all! If the Yard was to listen to all the
+suggestions that the last few days have brought in--well, all I
+can say is our work would be cut out for us--not but what it's
+cut out for us now, if it comes to that!" He sighed ruefully. He
+was beginning to feel very tired; if only he could stay in this
+pleasant, cosy room listening to Daisy Bunting reading on and on
+for ever, instead of having to go out, as he would presently have
+to do, into the cold and foggy night!
+
+Joe Chandler was fast becoming very sick of his new job. There
+was a lot of unpleasantness attached to the business, too. Why,
+even in the house where he lived, and in the little cook-shop where
+he habitually took his meals, the people round him had taken to
+taunt him with the remissness of the police. More than that one of
+his pals, a man he'd always looked up to, because the young fellow
+had the gift of the gab, had actually been among those who had
+spoken at the big demonstration in Victoria Park, making a violent
+speech, not only against the Commissioner of the Metropolitan
+Police, but also against the Home Secretary.
+
+But Daisy, like most people who believe themselves blessed with the
+possession of an accomplishment, had no mind to leave off reading
+just yet.
+
+"Here's another notion!" she exclaimed. "Another letter, father!"
+
+
+"PARDON TO ACCOMPLICES.
+
+
+"DEAR Sir--During the last day or two several of the more
+Intelligent of my acquaintances have suggested that The Avenger,
+whoever he may be, must be known to a certain number of persons.
+It is impossible that the perpetrator of such deeds, however
+nomad he may be in his habits--"
+
+"Now I wonder what 'nomad' can be?" Daisy interrupted herself, and
+looked round at her little audience.
+
+"I've always declared the fellow had all his senses about him,"
+observed Bunting confidently.
+
+Daisy went on, quite satisfied:
+
+"--however nomad he may be in his habit; must have some habitat
+where his ways are known to at least one person. Now the person
+who knows the terrible secret is evidently withholding information
+in expectation of a reward, or maybe because, being an accessory
+after the fact, he or she is now afraid of the consequences. My
+suggestion, Sir, is that the Home Secretary promise a free pardon.
+The more so that only thus can this miscreant be brought to justice.
+Unless he was caught red-handed in the act, it will be exceedingly
+difficult to trace the crime committed to any individual, for
+English law looks very askance at circumstantial evidence."
+
+"There's something worth listening to in that letter," said Joe,
+leaning forward.
+
+Now he was almost touching Daisy, and he smiled involuntarily as
+she turned her gay, pretty little face the better to hear what he
+was saying.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Chandler?" she said interrogatively.
+
+"Well, d'you remember that fellow what killed an old gentleman in
+a railway carriage? He took refuge with someone--a woman his
+mother had known, and she kept him hidden for quite a long time.
+But at last she gave him up, and she got a big reward, too!"
+
+"I don't think I'd like to give anybody up for a reward," said
+Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic way.
+
+"Oh, yes, you would, Mr. Bunting," said Chandler confidently. "You'd
+only be doing what it's the plain duty of everyone--everyone, that
+is, who's a good citizen. And you'd be getting something for doing
+it, which is more than most people gets as does their duty."
+
+"A man as gives up someone for a reward is no better than a common
+informer," went on Bunting obstinately. "And no man 'ud care to be
+called that! It's different for you, Joe," he added hastily. "It's
+your job to catch those who've done anything wrong. And a man'd be
+a fool who'd take refuge--like with you. He'd be walking into the
+lion's mouth--" Bunting laughed.
+
+And then Daisy broke in coquettishly: "If I'd done anything I
+wouldn't mind going for help to Mr. Chandler," she said.
+
+And Joe, with eyes kindling, cried, "No. And if you did you needn't
+be afraid I'd give you up, Miss Daisy!"
+
+And then, to their amazement, there suddenly broke from Mrs. Bunting,
+sitting with towed head over the table, an exclamation of impatience
+and anger, and, it seemed to those listening, of pain.
+
+"Why, Ellen, don't you feel well?" asked Bunting quickly.
+
+"Just a spasm, a sharp stitch in my side, like," answered the poor
+woman heavily. "It's over now. Don't mind me."
+
+"But I don't believe--no, that I don't--that there's anybody in
+the world who knows who The Avenger is," went on Chandler quickly.
+"It stands to reason that anybody'd give him up--in their own
+interest, if not in anyone else's. Who'd shelter such a creature?
+Why, 'twould be dangerous to have him in the house along with one!"
+
+"Then it's your idea that he's not responsible for the wicked things
+he does?" Mrs. Bunting raised her head, and looked over at Chandler
+with eager, anxious eyes.
+
+"I'd be sorry to think he wasn't responsible enough to hang!" said
+Chandler deliberately. "After all the trouble he's been giving us, too!"
+
+"Hanging'd be too good for that chap," said Bunting.
+
+"Not if he's not responsible," said his wife sharply. "I never
+heard of anything so cruel--that I never did! If the man's a
+madman, he ought to be in an asylum--that's where he ought to be."
+
+"Hark to her now!" Bunting looked at his Ellen with amusement.
+"Contrary isn't the word for her! But there, I've noticed the last
+few days that she seemed to be taking that monster's part. That's
+what comes of being a born total abstainer."
+
+Mrs. Bunting had got up from her chair. "What nonsense you do talk!"
+she said angrily. "Not but what it's a good thing if these murders
+have emptied the public-houses of women for a bit. England's drink
+is England's shame--I'll never depart from that! Now, Daisy, child,
+get up, do! Put down that paper. We've heard quite enough. You can
+be laying the cloth while I goes down the kitchen."
+
+"Yes, you mustn't be forgetting the lodger's supper," called out
+Bunting. "Mr. Sleuth don't always ring--" he turned to Chandler.
+"For one thing, he's often out about this time."
+
+"Not often--just now and again, when he wants to buy' something,"
+snapped out Mrs. Bunting. "But I hadn't forgot his supper. He
+never do want it before eight o'clock."
+
+"Let me take up the lodger's supper, Ellen," Daisy's eager voice
+broke in. She had got up in obedience to her stepmother, and was
+now laying the cloth.
+
+"Certainly not! I told you he only wanted me to wait on him. You
+have your work cut out looking after things down here--that's where
+I wants you to help me."
+
+Chandler also got up. Somehow he didn't like to be doing nothing
+while Daisy was so busy. "Yes," he said, looking across at Mrs.
+Bunting, "I'd forgotten about your lodger. Going on all right, eh?"
+
+"Never knew so quiet and well-behaved a gentleman," said Bunting.
+"He turned our luck, did Mr. Sleuth."
+
+His wife left the room, and after she had gone Daisy laughed.
+"You'll hardly believe it, Mr. Chandler, but I've never seen this
+wonderful lodger. Ellen keeps him to herself, that she does! If I
+was father I'd be jealous!"
+
+Both men laughed. Ellen? No, the idea was too funny.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go. One can't always do
+just what one wants to do--not in this world, at any rate!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular,
+though both her husband and her stepdaughter were in the room. She
+was standing by the table, staring straight before her, and as she
+spoke she avoided looking at either Bunting or Daisy. There was in
+her voice a tone of cross decision, of thin finality, with which
+they were both acquainted, and to which each listener knew the other
+would have to bow.
+
+There was silence for a moment, then Daisy broke out passionately,
+"I don't see why I should go if I don't want to!" she cried.
+"You'll allow I've been useful to you, Ellen? 'Tisn't even as if
+you was quite well."
+
+"I am quite well--perfectly well!" snapped out Mrs. Bunting, and
+she turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her
+stepdaughter.
+
+"'Tain't often I has a chance of being with you and father." There
+were tears in Daisy's voice, and Bunting glanced deprecatingly at
+his wife.
+
+An invitation had come to Daisy--an invitation from her own dead
+mother's sister, who was housekeeper in a big house in Belgrave
+Square. "The family" had gone away for the Christmas holidays, and
+Aunt Margaret--Daisy was her godchild--had begged that her niece
+might come and spend two or three days with her.
+
+But the girl had already had more than one taste of what life was
+like in the great gloomy basement of 100 Belgrave Square. Aunt
+Margaret was one of those old-fashioned servants for whom the modern
+employer is always sighing. While "the family" were away it was
+her joy--she regarded it as a privilege--to wash sixty-seven pieces
+of very valuable china contained in two cabinets in the drawing-room;
+she also slept in every bed by turns, to keep them all well aired.
+These were the two duties with which she intended her young niece
+to assist her, and Daisy's soul sickened at the prospect.
+
+But the matter had to be settled at once. The letter had come an
+hour ago, containing a stamped telegraph form, and Aunt Margaret
+was not one to be trifled with.
+
+Since breakfast the three had talked of nothing else, and from the
+very first Mrs. Bunting had said that Daisy ought to go--that there
+was no doubt about it, that it did not admit of discussion. But
+discuss it they all did, and for once Bunting stood up to his wife.
+But that, as was natural, only made his Ellen harder and more set
+on her own view.
+
+"What the child says is true," he observed. "It isn't as if you
+was quite well. You've been took bad twice in the last few days
+--you can't deny of it, Ellen. Why shouldn't I just take a bus
+and go over and see Margaret? I'd tell her just how it is. She'd
+understand, bless you!"
+
+"I won't have you doing nothing of the sort!" cried Mrs. Bunting,
+speaking almost as passionately as her stepdaughter had done.
+"Haven't I a right to be ill, haven't I a right to be took bad,
+aye, and to feel all right again--same as other people?"
+
+Daisy turned round and clasped her hands. "Oh, Ellen!" she cried;
+"do say that you can't spare me! I don't want to go across to that
+horrid old dungeon of a place."
+
+"Do as you like," said Mrs. Bunting sullenly. "I'm fair tired of
+you both! There'll come a day, Daisy, when you'll know, like me,
+that money is the main thing that matters in this world; and when
+your Aunt Margaret's left her savings to somebody else just because
+you wouldn't spend a few days with her this Christmas, then you'll
+know what it's like to go without--you'll know what a fool you
+were, and that nothing can't alter it any more!"
+
+And then, with victory actually in her grasp, poor Daisy saw it
+snatched from her.
+
+"Ellen is right," Bunting said heavily. "Money does matter--a
+terrible deal-though I never thought to hear Ellen say 'twas the
+only thing that mattered. But 'twould be foolish--very, very
+foolish, my girl, to offend your Aunt Margaret. It'll only be
+two days after all--two days isn't a very long time."
+
+But Daisy did not hear her father's last words. She had already
+rushed from the room, and gone down to the kitchen to hide her
+childish tears of disappointment--the childish tears which came
+because she was beginning to be a woman, with a woman's natural
+instinct for building her own human nest.
+
+Aunt Margaret was not one to tolerate the comings of any strange
+young man, and she had a peculiar dislike to the police.
+
+"Who'd ever have thought she'd have minded as much as that!"
+Bunting looked across at Ellen deprecatingly; already his heart
+was misgiving him.
+
+"It's plain enough why she's become so fond of us all of a sudden,"
+said Mrs. Bunting sarcastically. And as her husband stared at her
+uncomprehendingly, she added, in a tantalising tone, "as plain as
+the nose on your face, my man."
+
+"What d'you mean?" he said. "I daresay I'm a bit slow, Ellen, but
+I really don't know what you'd be at?"
+
+"Don't you remember telling me before Daisy came here that Joe
+Chandler had become sweet on her last summer? I thought it only
+foolishness then, but I've come round to your view--that's all."
+
+Bunting nodded his head slowly. Yes, Joe had got into the way of
+coming very often, and there had been the expedition to that gruesome
+Scotland Yard museum, but somehow he, Bunting, had been so interested
+in the Avenger murders that he hadn't thought of Joe in any other
+connection--not this time, at any rate.
+
+"And do you think Daisy likes him?" There was an unwonted tone of
+excitement, of tenderness, in Bunting's voice.
+
+His wife looked over at him; and a thin smile, not an unkindly
+smile by any means, lit up her pale face. "I've never been one
+to prophesy," she answered deliberately. "But this I don't mind
+telling you, Bunting--Daisy'll have plenty o' time to get tired
+of Joe Chandler before they two are dead. Mark my words!"
+
+"Well, she might do worse," said Bunting ruminatingly. "He's as
+steady as God makes them, and he's already earning thirty-two
+shillings a week. But I wonder how Old Aunt'd like the notion?
+I don't see her parting with Daisy before she must."
+
+"I wouldn't let no old aunt interfere with me about such a thing
+as that!" cried Mrs. Bunting. "No, not for millions of gold!"
+And Bunting looked at her in silent wonder. Ellen was singing a
+very different tune now to what she'd sung a few minutes ago, when
+she was so keen about the girl going to Belgrave Square.
+
+"If she still seems upset while she's having her dinner," said his
+wife suddenly, "well, you just wait till I've gone out for something,
+and then you just say to her, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'
+--just that, and nothing more! She'll take it from you. And I
+shouldn't be surprised if it comforted her quite a lot."
+
+"For the matter of that, there's no reason why Joe Chandler shouldn't
+go over and see her there," said Bunting hesitatingly.
+
+"Oh, yes, there is," said Mrs. Bunting, smiling shrewdly. "Plenty of
+reason. Daisy'll be a very foolish girl if she allows her aunt to
+know any of her secrets. I've only seen that woman once, but I know
+exactly the sort Margaret is. She's just waiting for Old Aunt to
+drop off and then she'll want to have Daisy herself--to wait on
+her, like. She'd turn quite nasty if she thought there was a young
+fellow what stood in her way."
+
+She glanced at the dock, the pretty little eight-day clock which
+had been a wedding present from a kind friend of her last mistress.
+It had mysteriously disappeared during their time of trouble, and
+had as mysteriously reappeared three or four days after Mr. Sleuth's
+arrival.
+
+"I've time to go out with that telegram," she said briskly--somehow
+she felt better, different to what she had done the last few days--
+"and then it'll be done. It's no good having more words about it,
+and I expect we should have plenty more words if I wait till the
+child comes upstairs again."
+
+She did not speak unkindly, and Bunting looked at her rather
+wonderingly. Ellen very seldom spoke of Daisy as "the child"
+--in fact, he could only remember her having done so once before,
+and that was a long time ago. They had been talking over their
+future life together, and she had said, very solemnly, "Bunting,
+I promise I will do my duty--as much as lies in my power, that
+is--by the child."
+
+But Ellen had not had much opportunity of doing her duty by Daisy.
+As not infrequently happens with the duties that we are willing to
+do, that particular duty had been taken over by someone else who
+had no mind to let it go.
+
+"What shall I do if Mr. Sleuth rings?" asked Bunting, rather
+nervously. It was the first time since the lodger had come to them
+that Ellen had offered to go out in the morning.
+
+She hesitated. In her anxiety to have the matter of Daisy settled,
+she had forgotten Mr. Sleuth. Strange that she should have done so
+--strange, and, to herself, very comfortable and pleasant.
+
+"Oh, well, you can just go up and knock at the door and say I'll be
+back in a few minutes--that I had to go out with a message. He's
+quite a reasonable gentleman." She went into the back room to put
+on her bonnet and thick jacket for it was very cold--getting colder
+every minute.
+
+As she stood, buttoning her gloves--she wouldn't have gone out
+untidy for the world--Bunting suddenly came across to her. "Give
+us a kiss, old girl," he said. And his wife turned up her face.
+
+"One 'ud think it was catching!" she said, but there was a lilt in
+her voice.
+
+"So it is," Bunting briefly answered. "Didn't that old cook get
+married just after us? She'd never 'a thought of it if it hadn't
+been for you!"
+
+But once she was out, walking along the damp, uneven pavement, Mr.
+Sleuth revenged himself for his landlady's temporary forgetfulness.
+
+During the last two days the lodger had been queer, odder than usual,
+unlike himself, or, rather, very much as he had been some ten days
+ago, just before that double murder had taken place.
+
+The night before, while Daisy was telling all about the dreadful
+place to which Joe Chandler had taken her and her father, Mrs.
+Bunting had heard Mr. Sleuth moving about overhead, restlessly
+walking up and down his sitting-room. And later, when she took up
+his supper, she had listened a moment outside the door, while he
+read aloud some of the texts his soul delighted in--terrible texts
+telling of the grim joys attendant on revenge.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was so absorbed in her thoughts, so possessed with the
+curious personality of her lodger, that she did not look where she
+was going, and suddenly a young woman bumped up against her.
+
+She started violently and looked round, dazed, as the young person
+muttered a word of apology;--then she again fell into deep thought.
+
+It was a good thing Daisy was going away for a few days; it made the
+problem of Mr. Sleuth and his queer ways less disturbing. She,
+Ellen, was sorry she had spoken so sharp-like to the girl, but after
+all it wasn't wonderful that she had been snappy. This last night
+she had hardly slept at all. Instead, she had lain awake listening
+--and there is nothing so tiring as to lie awake listening for a
+sound that never comes.
+
+The house had remained so still you could have heard a pin drop. Mr.
+Sleuth, lying snug in his nice warm bed upstairs, had not stirred.
+Had he stirred his landlady was bound to have heard him, for his bed
+was, as we know, just above hers. No, during those long hours of
+darkness Daisy's light, regular breathing was all that had fallen on
+Mrs. Bunting's ears.
+
+And then her mind switched off Mr. Sleuth. She made a determined
+effort to expel him, to toss him, as it were, out of her thoughts.
+
+It seemed strange that The Avenger had stayed his hand, for, as Joe
+had said only last evening, it was full time that he should again
+turn that awful, mysterious searchlight of his on himself. Mrs.
+Bunting always visioned The Avenger as a black shadow in the centre
+a bright blinding light--but the shadow had no form or definite
+substance. Sometimes he looked like one thing, sometimes like
+another . . .
+
+Mrs. Bunting had now come to the corner which led up the street
+where there was a Post Office. But instead of turning sharp to the
+left she stopped short for a minute.
+
+There had suddenly come over her a feeling of horrible self-rebuke
+and even self-loathing. It was dreadful that she, of all women,
+should have longed to hear that another murder had been committed
+last night!
+
+Yet such was the shameful fact. She had listened all through
+breakfast hoping to hear the dread news being shouted outside; yes,
+and more or less during the long discussion which had followed on
+the receipt of Margaret's letter she had been hoping--hoping
+against hope--that those dreadful triumphant shouts of the
+newspaper-sellers still might come echoing down the Marylebone Road.
+And yet hypocrite that she was, she had reproved Bunting when he
+had expressed, not disappointment exactly--but, well, surprise,
+that nothing had happened last night.
+
+Now her mind switched off to Joe Chandler. Strange to think how
+afraid she had been of that young man! She was no longer afraid of
+him, or hardly at all. He was dotty--that's what was the matter
+with him, dotty with love for rosy-checked, blue-eyed little Daisy.
+Anything might now go on, right under Joe Chandler's very nose--but,
+bless you, he'd never see it! Last summer, when this affair, this
+nonsense of young Chandler and Daisy had begun, she had had very
+little patience with it all. In fact, the memory of the way Joe
+had gone on then, the tiresome way he would be always dropping in,
+had been one reason (though not the most important reason of all)
+why she had felt so terribly put about at the idea of the girl
+coming again. But now? Well, now she had become quite tolerant,
+quite kindly--at any rate as far as Joe Chandler was concerned.
+
+She wondered why.
+
+Still, 'twouldn't do Joe a bit of harm not to see the girl for a
+couple of days. In fact 'twould be a very good thing, for then he'd
+think of Daisy--think of her to the exclusion of all else. Absence
+does make the heart grow fonder--at first, at any rate. Mrs.
+Bunting was well aware of that. During the long course of hers
+and Bunting's mild courting, they'd been separated for about three
+months, and it was that three months which had made up her mind for
+her. She had got so used to Bunting that she couldn't do without
+him, and she had felt--oddest fact of all--acutely, miserably
+jealous. But she hadn't let him know that--no fear!
+
+Of course, Joe mustn't neglect his job--that would never do, But
+what a good thing it was, after all, that he wasn't like some of
+those detective chaps that are written about in stories--the sort
+of chaps that know everything, see everything, guess everything
+--even where there isn't anything to see, or know, or guess!
+
+Why, to take only one little fact--Joe Chandler had never shown
+the slightest curiosity about their lodger. . ..
+
+Mrs. Bunting pulled herself together with a start, and hurried
+quickly on. Bunting would begin to wonder what had happened to her.
+
+She went into the Post Office and handed the form to the young woman
+without a word. Margaret, a sensible woman, who was accustomed to
+manage other people's affairs, had even written out the words: "Will
+be with you to tea.--DAISY."
+
+It was a comfort to have the thing settled once for all. If anything
+horrible was going to happen in the next two or three days--it was
+just as well Daisy shouldn't be at home. Not that there was any real
+danger that anything would happen,--Mrs. Bunting felt sure of that.
+
+By this time she was out in the street again, and she began mentally
+counting up the number of murders The Avenger had committed. Nine,
+or was it ten? Surely by now The Avenger must be avenged? Surely by
+now, if--as that writer in the newspaper had suggested--he was a
+quiet, blameless gentleman living in the West End, whatever vengeance
+he had to wreak, must be satisfied?
+
+She began hurrying homewards; it wouldn't do for the lodger to ring
+before she had got back. Bunting would never know how to manage Mr.
+Sleuth, especially if Mr. Sleuth was in one of his queer moods.
+
+******
+
+Mrs. Bunting put the key into the front door lock and passed into
+the house. Then her heart stood still with fear and terror. There
+came the sound of voices--of voices she thought she did not know--
+in the sitting-room.
+
+She opened the door, and' then drew a long breath. It was only Joe
+Chandler--Joe, Daisy, and Bunting, talking together. They stopped
+rather guiltily as she came in, but not before she had heard
+Chandler utter the words: "That don't mean nothing! I'll just run
+out and send another saying you won't come, Miss Daisy."
+
+And then the strangest smile came over Mrs. Bunting's face. There
+had fallen on her ear the still distant, but unmistakable, shouts
+which betokened that something had happened last night--something
+which made it worth while for the newspaper-sellers to come crying
+down the Marylebone Road.
+
+"Well?" she said a little breathlessly. "Well, Joe? I suppose
+you've brought us news? I suppose there's been another?"
+
+He looked at her, surprised. "No, that there hasn't, Mrs. Bunting
+--not as far as I know, that is. Oh, you're thinking of those
+newspaper chaps? They've got to cry out something," he grinned.
+"You wouldn't 'a thought folk was so bloodthirsty. They're just
+shouting out that there's been an arrest; but we don't take no
+stock of that. It's a Scotchman what gave himself up last night
+at Dorking. He'd been drinking, and was a-pitying of himself.
+Why, since this business began, there's been about twenty arrests,
+but they've all come to nothing."
+
+"Why, Ellen, you looks quite sad, quite disappointed," said Bunting
+jokingly. "Come to think of it, it's high time The Avenger was at
+work again." He laughed as he made his grim joke. Then turned to
+young Chandler: "Well, you'll be glad when its all over, my lad."
+
+"Glad in a way," said Chandler unwillingly. "But one 'ud have liked
+to have caught him. One doesn't like to know such a creature's at
+large, now, does one?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting had taken off her bonnet and jacket. "I must just go
+and see about Mr. Sleuth's breakfast," she said in a weary,
+dispirited voice, and left them there.
+
+She felt disappointed, and very, very depressed. As to the plot
+which had been hatching when she came in, that had no chance of
+success; Bunting would never dare let Daisy send out another
+telegram contradicting the first. Besides, Daisy's stepmother
+shrewdly suspected that by now the girl herself wouldn't care to
+do such a thing. Daisy had plenty of sense tucked away somewhere
+in her pretty little head. If it ever became her fate to live as
+a married woman in London, it would be best to stay on the right
+side of Aunt Margaret.
+
+And when she came into her kitchen the stepmother's heart became
+very soft, for Daisy had got everything beautifully ready. In fact,
+there was nothing to do but to boil Mr. Sleuth's two eggs. Feeling
+suddenly more cheerful than she had felt of late, Mrs. Bunting took
+the tray upstairs.
+
+"As it was rather late, I didn't wait for you to ring, sir," she
+said.
+
+And the lodger looked up from the table where, as usual, he was
+studying with painful, almost agonising intentness, the Book.
+"Quite right, Mrs. Bunting--quite right! I have been pondering
+over the command, 'Work while it is yet light.'"
+
+"Yes, sir?" she said, and a queer, cold feeling stole over her
+heart. "Yes, sir?"
+
+"'The spirit is willing, but the flesh--the flesh is weak,'" said
+Mr. Sleuth, with a heavy, sigh.
+
+"You studies too hard, and too long--that's what's ailing you, sir,"
+said Mr. Sleuth's landlady suddenly.
+
+******
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went down again she found that a great deal had
+been settled in her absence; among other things, that Joe Chandler
+was going to escort Miss Daisy across to Belgrave Square. He
+could carry Daisy's modest bag, and if they wanted to ride instead
+of walk, why, they could take the bus from Baker Street Station
+to Victoria--that would land them very near Belgrave Square.
+
+But Daisy seemed quite willing to walk; she hadn't had a walk, she
+declared, for a long, long time--and then she blushed rosy red,
+and even her stepmother had to admit to herself that Daisy was very
+nice looking, not at all the sort of girl who ought to be allowed to
+go about the London streets by herself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Daisy's father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door,
+watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness.
+
+A yellow pall of fog had suddenly descended on London, and Joe had
+come a full half-hour before they expected him, explaining, rather
+lamely, that it was the fog which had brought him so soon.
+
+"If we was to have waited much longer, perhaps, 'twouldn't have been
+possible to walk a yard," he explained, and they had accepted,
+silently, his explanation.
+
+"I hope it's quite safe sending her off like that?" Bunting looked
+deprecatingly at his wife. She had already told him more than once
+that he was too fussy about Daisy, that about his daughter he was
+like an old hen with her last chicken.
+
+"She's safer than she would be, with you or me. She couldn't have
+a smarter young fellow to look after her."
+
+"It'll be awful thick at Hyde Park Corner," said Bunting. "It's
+always worse there than anywhere else. If I was Joe I'd 'a taken
+her by the Underground Railway to Victoria--that 'ud been the best
+way, considering the weather 'tis."
+
+"They don't think anything of the weather, bless you!" said his
+wife. "They'll walk and walk as long as there's a glimmer left for
+'em to steer by. Daisy's just been pining to have a walk with that
+young chap. I wonder you didn't notice how disappointed they both
+were when you was so set on going along with them to that horrid
+place."
+
+"D'you really mean that, Ellen?" Bunting looked upset. "I understood
+Joe to say he liked my company."
+
+"Oh, did you?" said Mrs. Bunting dryly. "I expect he liked it just
+about as much as we liked the company of that old cook who would go
+out with us when we was courting. It always was a wonder to me how
+the woman could force herself upon two people who didn't want her."
+
+"But I'm Daisy's father; and an old friend of Chandler," said Bunting
+remonstratingly. "I'm quite different from that cook. She was
+nothing to us, and we was nothing to her."
+
+"She'd have liked to be something to you, I make no doubt," observed
+his Ellen, shaking her head, and her husband smiled, a little
+foolishly.
+
+By this time they were back in their nice, cosy sitting-room, and
+a feeling of not altogether unpleasant lassitude stole over Mrs.
+Bunting. It was a comfort to have Daisy out of her way for a bit.
+The girl, in some ways, was very wide awake and inquisitive, and
+she had early betrayed what her stepmother thought to be a very
+unseemly and silly curiosity concerning the lodger. "You might
+just let me have one peep at him, Ellen?" she had pleaded, only
+that morning. But Ellen had shaken her head. "No, that I won't!
+He's a very quiet gentleman; but he knows exactly what he likes,
+and he don't like anyone but me waiting on him. Why, even your
+father's hardly seen him."
+
+But that, naturally, had only increased Daisy's desire to view Mr.
+Sleuth.
+
+There was another reason why Mrs. Bunting was glad that her
+stepdaughter had gone away for two days. During her absence young
+Chandler was far less likely to haunt them in the way he had taken
+to doing lately, the more so that, in spite of what she had said to
+her husband, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that Daisy would ask Joe
+Chandler to call at Belgrave Square. 'Twouldn't be human nature
+--at any rate, not girlish human nature--not to do so, even if
+Joe's coming did anger Aunt Margaret.
+
+Yes, it was pretty safe that with Daisy away they, the Buntings,
+would be rid of that young chap for a bit, and that would be a
+good thing.
+
+When Daisy wasn't there to occupy the whole of his attention, Mrs.
+Bunting felt queerly afraid of Chandler. After all, he was a
+detective--it was his job to be always nosing about, trying to
+find out things. And, though she couldn't fairly say to herself
+that he had done much of that sort of thing in her house, he might
+start doing it any minute. And then--then--where would she, and
+--and Mr. Sleuth, be?
+
+She thought of the bottle of red ink--of the leather bag which
+must be hidden somewhere--and her heart almost stopped beating.
+Those were the sort of things which, in the stories Bunting was
+so fond of reading, always led to the detection of famous
+criminals. . . .
+
+Mr. Sleuth's bell for tea rang that afternoon far earlier than
+usual. The fog had probably misled him, and made him think it
+later than it was.
+
+When she went up, "I would like a cup of tea now, and just one
+piece of bread-and-butter," the lodger said wearily. "I don't
+feel like having anything else this afternoon."
+
+"It's a horrible day," Mrs. Bunting observed, in a cheerier voice
+than usual. "No wonder you don't feel hungry, sir. And then it
+isn't so very long since you had your dinner, is it?"
+
+"No," he said absently. "No, it isn't, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+She went down, made the tea, and brought it up again. And then,
+as she came into the room, she uttered an exclamation of sharp
+dismay.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was dressed for going out. He was wearing his long
+Inverness cloak, and his queer old high hat lay on the table,
+ready for him to put on.
+
+"You're never going out this afternoon, sir?" she asked falteringly.
+"Why, the fog's awful; you can't see a yard ahead of you!"
+
+Unknown to herself, Mrs. Bunting's voice had risen almost to a
+scream. She moved back, still holding the tray, and stood between
+the door and her lodger, as if she meant to bar his way--to erect
+between Mr. Sleuth and the dark, foggy world outside a living
+barrier.
+
+"The weather never affects me at all," he said sullenly; and he
+looked at her with so wild and pleading a look in his eyes that,
+slowly, reluctantly, she moved aside. As she did so she noticed
+for the first time that Mr. Sleuth held something in his right
+hand. It was the key of the chiffonnier cupboard. He had been
+on his way there when her coming in had disturbed him.
+
+"It's very kind of you to be so concerned about me," he stammered,
+"but--but, Mrs. Bunting, you must excuse me if I say that I do
+not welcome such solicitude. I prefer to be left alone. I--I
+cannot stay in your house if I feel that my comings and goings are
+watched--spied upon."
+
+She pulled herself together. "No one spies upon you, sir," she
+said, with considerable dignity. "I've done my best to satisfy
+you--"
+
+"You have--you have!" he spoke in a distressed, apologetic tone.
+"But you spoke just now as if you were trying to prevent my doing
+what I wish to do--indeed, what I have to do. For years I have
+been misunderstood--persecuted"--he waited a moment, then in
+a hollow voice added the one word, "tortured! Do not tell me that
+you are going to add yourself to the number of my tormentors, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She stared at him helplessly. "Don't you be afraid I'll ever be
+that, sir. I only spoke as I did because--well, sir, because I
+thought it really wasn't safe for a gentleman to go out this
+afternoon. Why, there's hardly anyone about, though we're so near
+Christmas."
+
+He walked across to the window and looked out. "The fog is clearing
+somewhat; Mrs. Bunting," but there was no relief in his voice, rather
+was there disappointment and dread.
+
+Plucking up courage, she followed him. Yes, Mr. Sleuth was right.
+The fog was lifting--rolling off in that sudden, mysterious way in
+which local fogs sometimes do lift in London.
+
+He turned sharply from the window. "Our conversation has made me
+forget an important thing, Mrs. Bunting. I should be glad if you
+would just leave out a glass of milk and some bread-and-butter for
+me this evening. I shall not require supper when I come in, for
+after my walk I shall probably go straight upstairs to carry through
+a very difficult experiment."
+
+"Very good, sir." And then Mrs. Bunting left the lodger.
+
+But when she found herself downstairs in the fog-laden hall, for it
+had drifted in as she and her husband had stood at the door seeing
+Daisy off, instead of going in to Bunting she did a very odd thing
+--a thing she had never thought of doing in her life before. She
+pressed her hot forehead against the cool bit of looking-glass let
+into the hat-and-umbrella stand. "I don't know what to do!" she
+moaned to herself, and then, "I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"
+
+But though she felt that her secret suspense and trouble was becoming
+intolerable, the one way in which she could have ended her misery
+never occurred to Mrs. Bunting.
+
+In the long history of crime it has very, very seldom happened that
+a woman has betrayed one who has taken refuge with her. The
+timorous and cautious woman has not infrequently hunted a human
+being fleeing from his pursuer from her door, but she has not
+revealed the fact that he was ever there. In fact, it may almost
+be said that such betrayal has never taken place unless the betrayer
+has been actuated by love of gain, or by a longing for revenge. So
+far, perhaps because she is subject rather than citizen, her duty
+as a component part of civilised society weighs but lightly on
+woman's shoulders.
+
+And then--and then, in a sort of way, Mrs. Bunting had become
+attached to Mr. Sleuth. A wan smile would sometimes light up his
+sad face when he saw her come in with one of his meals, and when
+this happened Mrs. Bunting felt pleased--pleased and vaguely
+touched. In between those--those dreadful events outside, which
+filled her with such suspicion, such anguish and such suspense,
+she never felt any fear, only pity, for Mr. Sleuth.
+
+Often and often, when lying wide awake at night, she turned over
+the strange problem in her mind. After all, the lodger must have
+lived somewhere during his forty-odd years of life. She did not
+even know if Mr. Sleuth had any brothers or sisters; friends she
+knew he had none. But, however odd and eccentric he was, he had
+evidently, or so she supposed, led a quiet, undistinguished kind
+of life, till--till now.
+
+What had made him alter all of a sudden--if, that is, he had
+altered? That was what Mrs. Bunting was always debating fitfully
+with herself; and, what was more, and very terribly, to the point,
+having altered, why should he not in time go back to what he
+evidently had been--that is, a blameless, quiet gentleman?
+
+If only he would! If only he would!
+
+As she stood in the hall, cooling her hot forehead, all these
+thoughts, these hopes and fears, jostled at lightning speed through
+her brain.
+
+She remembered what young Chandler had said the other day--that
+there had never been, in the history of the world, so strange a
+murderer as The Avenger had proved himself to be.
+
+She and Bunting, aye, and little Daisy too, had hung, fascinated,
+on Joe's words, as he had told them of other famous series of
+murders which had taken place in the past, not only in England but
+abroad--especially abroad.
+
+One woman, whom all the people round her believed to be a kind,
+respectable soul, had poisoned no fewer than fifteen people in order
+to get their insurance money. Then there had been the terrible tale
+of an apparently respectable, contented innkeeper and his wife, who,
+living at the entrance to a wood, killed all those humble travellers
+who took shelter under their roof, simply for their clothes, and any
+valuables they possessed. But in all those stories the murderer or
+murderers always had a very strong motive, the motive being, in
+almost every case, a wicked lust for gold.
+
+At last, after having passed her handkerchief over her forehead, she
+went into the room where Bunting was sitting smoking his pipe.
+
+"The fog's lifting a bit," she said in an ill-assured voice. "I hope
+that by this time Daisy and that Joe Chandler are right out of it."
+
+But the other shook his head silently. "No such luck!" he said
+briefly. "You don't know what it's like in Hyde Park, Ellen. I
+expect 'twill soon be just as heavy here as 'twas half an hour ago!"
+
+She wandered over to the window, and pulled the curtain back.
+"Quite a lot of people have come out, anyway," she observed.
+
+"There's a fine Christmas show in the Edgware Road. I was thinking
+of asking if you wouldn't like to go along there with me."
+
+"No," she said dully. "I'm quite content to stay at home."
+
+She was listening--listening for the sounds which would betoken
+that the lodger was coming downstairs.
+
+At last she heard the cautious, stuffless tread of his rubber-soled
+shoes shuffling along the hall. But Bunting only woke to the fact
+when the front door shut to.
+
+"That's never Mr. Sleuth going out?" He turned on his wife,
+startled. "Why, the poor gentleman'll come to harm--that he will!
+One has to be wide awake on an evening like this. I hope he hasn't
+taken any of his money out with him."
+
+"'Tisn't the first time Mr. Sleuth's been out in a fog," said Mrs.
+Bunting sombrely.
+
+Somehow she couldn't help uttering these over-true words. And then
+she turned, eager and half frightened, to see how Bunting had taken
+what she said.
+
+But he looked quite placid, as if he had hardly heard her. "We
+don't get the good old fogs we used to get--not what people used
+to call 'London particulars.' I expect the lodger feels like Mrs.
+Crowley--I've often told you about her, Ellen?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting nodded.
+
+Mrs. Crowley had been one of Bunting's ladies, one of those he had
+liked best--a cheerful, jolly lady, who used often to give her
+servants what she called a treat. It was seldom the kind of treat
+they would have chosen for themselves, but still they appreciated
+her kind thought.
+
+"Mrs. Crowley used to say," went on Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic
+way, "that she never minded how bad the weather was in London, so
+long as it was London and not the country. Mr. Crowley, he liked
+the country best, but Mrs. Crowley always felt dull-like there.
+Fog never kept her from going out--no, that it didn't. She wasn't
+a bit afraid. But--" he turned round and looked at his wife--
+"I am a bit surprised at Mr. Sleuth. I should have thought him a
+timid kind of gentleman--"
+
+He waited a moment, and she felt forced to answer him.
+
+"I wouldn't exactly call him timid," she said, in a low voice, "but
+he is very quiet, certainly. That's why he dislikes going out when
+there are a lot of people bustling about the streets. I don't
+suppose he'll be out long."
+
+She hoped with all her soul that Mr. Sleuth would be in very soon
+--that he would be daunted by the now increasing gloom.
+
+Somehow she did not feel she could sit still for very long. She
+got up, and went over to the farthest window.
+
+The fog had lifted, certainly. She could see the lamp-lights on
+the other side of the Marylebone Road, glimmering redly; and
+shadowy figures were hurrying past, mostly making their way towards
+the Edgware Road, to see the Christmas shops.
+
+At last to his wife's relief, Bunting got up too. He went over to
+the cupboard where he kept his little store of books, and took one
+out.
+
+"I think I'll read a bit," he said. "Seems a long time since I've
+looked at a book. The papers was so jolly interesting for a bit,
+but now there's nothing in 'em."
+
+His wife remained silent. She knew what he meant. A good many days
+had gone by since the last two Avenger murders, and the papers had
+very little to say about them that they hadn't said in different
+language a dozen times before.
+
+She went into her bedroom and came back with a bit of plain sewing.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was fond of sewing, and Bunting liked to see her so
+engaged. Since Mr. Sleuth had come to be their lodger she had not
+had much time for that sort of work.
+
+It was funny how quiet the house was without either Daisy, or--or
+the lodger, in it.
+
+At last she let her needle remain idle, and the bit of cambric
+slipped down on her knee, while she listened, longingly, for Mr.
+Sleuth's return home.
+
+And as the minutes sped by she fell to wondering with a painful
+wonder if she would ever see her lodger again, for, from what she
+knew of Mr. Sleuth, Mrs. Bunting felt sure that if he got into any
+kind of--well, trouble outside, he would never betray where he
+had lived during the last few weeks.
+
+No, in such a case the lodger would disappear in as sudden a way
+as he had come. And Bunting would never suspect, would never know,
+until, perhaps--God, what a horrible thought--a picture published
+in some newspaper might bring a certain dreadful fact to Bunting's
+knowledge.
+
+But if that happened--if that unthinkably awful thing came to pass,
+she made up her mind, here and now, never to say anything. She also
+would pretend to be amazed, shocked, unutterably horrified at the
+astounding revelation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"There he is at last, and I'm glad of it, Ellen. 'Tain't a night
+you would wish a dog to be out in."
+
+Bunting's voice was full of relief, but he did not turn round and
+look at his wife as he spoke; instead, he continued to read the
+evening paper he held in his hand.
+
+He was still close to the fire, sitting back comfortably in his
+nice arm-chair. He looked very well--well and ruddy. Mrs. Bunting
+stared across at him with a touch of sharp envy, nay, more, of
+resentment. And this was very curious, for she was, in her own dry
+way, very fond of Bunting.
+
+"You needn't feel so nervous about him; Mr. Sleuth can look out for
+himself all right."
+
+Bunting laid the paper he had been reading down on his knee. "I
+can't think why he wanted to go out in such weather," he said
+impatiently.
+
+"Well, it's none of your business, Bunting, now, is it?"
+
+"No, that's true enough. Still, 'twould be a very bad thing for us
+if anything happened to him. This lodger's the first bit of luck
+we've had for a terrible long time, Ellen."
+
+Mrs. Bunting moved a little impatiently in her high chair. She
+remained silent for a moment. What Bunting had said was too obvious
+to be worth answering. Also she was listening, following in
+imagination her lodger's quick, singularity quiet progress--
+"stealthy" she called it to herself--through the fog-filled,
+lamp-lit hall. Yes, now he was going up the staircase. What
+was that Bunting was saying?
+
+"It isn't safe for decent folk to be out in such weather--no, that
+it ain't, not unless they have something to do that won't wait till
+to-morrow." The speaker was looking straight into his wife's narrow,
+colourless face. Bunting was an obstinate man, and liked to prove
+himself right. "I've a good mind to speak to him about it, that
+I have! He ought to be told that it isn't safe--not for the sort
+of man he is--to be wandering about the streets at night. I read
+you out the accidents in Lloyd's--shocking, they were, and all
+brought about by the fog! And then, that horrid monster 'ull soon
+be at his work again--"
+
+"Monster?" repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.
+
+She was trying to hear the lodger's footsteps overhead. She was
+very curious to know whether he had gone into his nice sitting-room,
+or straight upstairs, to that cold experiment-room, as he now always
+called it.
+
+But her husband went on as if he had not heard her, and she gave up
+trying to listen to what was going on above.
+
+"It wouldn't be very pleasant to run up against such a party as that
+in the fog, eh, Ellen?" He spoke as if the notion had a certain
+pleasant thrill in it after all.
+
+"What stuff you do talk!" said Mrs. Bunting sharply. And then she
+got up. Her husband's remarks had disturbed her. Why couldn't they
+talk of something pleasant when they did have a quiet bit of time
+together?
+
+Bunting looked down again at his paper, and she moved quietly about
+the room. Very soon it would be time for supper, and to-night she
+was going to cook her husband a nice piece of toasted cheese. That
+fortunate man, as she was fond of telling him, with mingled contempt
+and envy, had the digestion of an ostrich, and yet he was rather
+fanciful, as gentlemen's servants who have lived in good places
+often are.
+
+Yes, Bunting was very lucky in the matter of his digestion. Mrs.
+Bunting prided herself on having a nice mind, and she would never
+have allowed an unrefined word--such a word as "stomach," for
+instance, to say nothing of an even plainer term--to pass her
+lips, except, of course, to a doctor in a sick-room.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's landlady did not go down at once into her cold kitchen;
+instead, with a sudden furtive movement, she opened the door leading
+into her bedroom, and then, closing the door quietly, stepped back
+into the darkness, and stood motionless, listening.
+
+At first she heard nothing, but gradually there stole on her
+listening ears the sound of someone moving softly about in the
+room just overhead, that is, in Mr. Sleuth's bedroom. But, try as
+she might, it was impossible for her to guess what the lodger was
+doing.
+
+At last she heard him open the door leading out on the little
+landing. She could hear the stairs creaking. That meant, no doubt,
+that Mr. Sleuth would pass the rest of the evening in the cheerless
+room above. He hadn't spent any time up there for quite a long
+while-in fact, not for nearly ten days. 'Twas odd he chose to-night,
+when it was so foggy, to carry out an experiment.
+
+She groped her way to a chair and sat down. She felt very tired--
+strangely tired, as if she had gone through some great physical
+exertion.
+
+Yes, it was true that Mr. Sleuth had brought her and Bunting luck,
+and it was wrong, very wrong, of her ever to forget that.
+
+As she sat there she also reminded herself, and not for the first
+time, what the lodger's departure would mean. It would almost
+certainly mean ruin; just as his staying meant all sorts of good
+things, of which physical comfort was the least. If Mr. Sleuth
+stayed on with them, as he showed every intention of doing, it
+meant respectability, and, above all, security.
+
+Mrs. Bunting thought of Mr. Sleuth's money. He never received a
+letter, and yet he must have some kind of income--so much was
+clear. She supposed he went and drew his money, in sovereigns, out
+of a bank as he required it.
+
+Her mind swung round, consciously, deliberately, away from Mr.
+Sleuth.
+
+The Avenger? What a strange name! Again she assured herself that
+there would come a time when The Avenger, whoever he was, must feel
+satiated; when he would feel himself to be, so to speak, avenged.
+
+To go back to Mr. Sleuth; it was lucky that the lodger seemed so
+pleased, not only with the rooms, but with his landlord and landlady
+--indeed, there was no real reason why Mr. Sleuth should ever wish
+to leave such nice lodgings.
+
+******
+
+Mrs. Bunting suddenly stood up. She made a strong effort, and shook
+off her awful sense of apprehension and unease. Feeling for the
+handle of the door giving into the passage she turned it, and then,
+with light, firm steps, she went down into the kitchen.
+
+When they had first taken the house, the basement had been made by
+her care, if not into a pleasant, then, at any rate, into a very
+clean place. She had had it whitewashed, and against the still
+white walls the gas stove loomed up, a great square of black iron
+and bright steel. It was a large gas-stove, the kind for which one
+pays four shillings a quarter rent to the gas company, and here, in
+the kitchen, there was no foolish shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.
+Mrs. Bunting was too shrewd a woman to have anything to do with that
+kind of business. There was a proper gas-meter, and she paid for
+what she consumed after she had consumed it.
+
+Putting her candle down on the well-scrubbed wooden table, she
+turned up the gas-jet, and blew out the candle.
+
+Then, lighting one of the gas-rings, she put a frying-pan on the
+stove, and once more her mind reverted, as if in spite of herself,
+to Mr. Sleuth. Never had there been a more confiding or trusting
+gentleman than the lodger, and yet in some ways he was so secret,
+so--so peculiar.
+
+She thought of the bag--that bag which had rumbled about so
+queerly in the chiffonnier. Something seemed to tell her that
+tonight the lodger had taken that bag out with him.
+
+And then she thrust away the thought of the bag almost violently
+from her mind, and went back to the more agreeable thought of Mr.
+Sleuth's income, and of how little trouble he gave. Of course,
+the lodger was eccentric, otherwise he wouldn't be their lodger
+at all--he would be living in quite a different sort of way with
+some of his relations, or with a friend in his own class.
+
+While these thoughts galloped disconnectedly through her mind,
+Mrs. Bunting went on with her cooking, preparing the cheese, cutting
+it up into little shreds, carefully measuring out the butter, doing
+everything, as was always her way, with a certain delicate and
+cleanly precision.
+
+And then, while in the middle of toasting the bread on which was to
+be poured the melted cheese, she suddenly heard sounds which startled
+her, made her feel uncomfortable.
+
+Shuffling, hesitating steps were creaking down the house.
+
+She looked up and listened.
+
+Surely the lodger was not going out again into the cold and foggy
+night--going out, as he had done the other evening, for a second
+time? But no; the sounds she heard, the sounds of now familiar
+footsteps, did not continue down the passage leading to the front
+door.
+
+Instead--Why, what was this she heard now? She began to listen
+so intently that the bread she was holding at the end of the
+toasting-fork grew quite black. With a start she became aware
+that this was so, and she frowned, vexed with herself. That came
+of not attending to one's work.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was evidently about to do what he had never yet done.
+He was coming down into the kitchen.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the thudding sounds, treading heavily on the
+kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Bunting's heart began to beat as if in
+response. She put out the flame of the gas-ring, unheedful of the
+fact that the cheese would stiffen and spoil in the cold air.
+
+Then she turned and faced the door.
+
+There came a fumbling at the handle, and a moment later the door
+opened, and revealed, as she had at once known and feared it would
+do, the lodger.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked even odder than usual. He was clad in a plaid
+dressing-gown, which she had never seen him wear before, though
+she knew that he had purchased it not long after his arrival. In
+his hand was a lighted candle.
+
+When he saw the kitchen all lighted up, and the woman standing in
+it, the lodger looked inexplicably taken aback, almost aghast.
+
+"Yes, sir? What can I do for you, sir? I hope you didn't ring, sir?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting held her ground in front of the stove. Mr. Sleuth had
+no business to come like this into her kitchen, and she intended to
+let him know that such was her view.
+
+"No, I--I didn't ring," he stammered awkwardly. "The truth is, I
+didn't know you were here, Mrs. Bunting. Please excuse my costume.
+My gas-stove has gone wrong, or, rather, that shilling-in-the-slot
+arrangement has done so. So I came down to see if you had a
+gas-stove. I am going to ask you to allow me to use it to-night for
+an important experiment I wish to make."
+
+Mrs. Bunting's heart was beating quickly--quickly. She felt
+horribly troubled, unnaturally so. Why couldn't Mr. Sleuth's
+experiment wait till the morning? She stared at him dubiously, but
+there was that in his face that made her at once afraid and pitiful.
+It was a wild, eager, imploring look.
+
+"Oh, certainly, sir; but you will find it very cold down here."
+
+"It seems most pleasantly warm," he observed, his voice full of
+relief, "warm and cosy, after my cold room upstairs."
+
+Warm and cosy? Mrs. Bunting stared at him in amazement. Nay, even
+that cheerless room at the top of the house must be far warmer and
+more cosy than this cold underground kitchen could possibly be.
+
+"I'll make you a fire, sir. We never use the grate, but it's in
+perfect order, for the first thing I did after I came into the house
+was to have the chimney swept. It was terribly dirty. It might
+have set the house on fire." Mrs. Bunting's housewifely instincts
+were roused. "For the matter of that, you ought to have a fire in
+your bedroom this cold night."
+
+"By no means--I would prefer not. I certainly do not want a fire
+there. I dislike an open fire, Mrs. Bunting. I thought I had told
+you as much."
+
+Mr. Sleuth frowned. He stood there, a strange-looking figure, his
+candle still alight, just inside the kitchen door.
+
+"I shan't be very long, sir. Just about a quarter of an hour. You
+could come down then. I'll have everything quite tidy for you. Is
+there anything I can do to help you?"
+
+"I do not require the use of your kitchen yet--thank you all the
+same, Mrs. Bunting. I shall come down later--altogether later--
+after you and your husband have gone to bed. But I should be much
+obliged if you would see that the gas people come to-morrow and
+put my stove in order. It might be done while I am out. That the
+shilling-in-the-slot machine should go wrong is very unpleasant.
+It has upset me greatly."
+
+"Perhaps Bunting could put it right for you, sir. For the matter
+of that, I could ask him to go up now."
+
+"No, no, I don't want anything of that sort done to-night. Besides,
+he couldn't put it right. I am something of an expert, Mrs. Bunting,
+and I have done all I could. The cause of the trouble is quite
+simple. The machine is choked up with shillings; a very foolish
+plan, so I always felt it to be."
+
+Mr. Sleuth spoke pettishly, with far more heat than he was wont to
+speak, but Mrs. Bunting sympathised with him in this matter. She
+had always suspected that those slot machines were as dishonest as
+if they were human. It was dreadful, the way they swallowed up
+the shillings! She had had one once, so she knew.
+
+And as if he were divining her thoughts, Mr. Sleuth walked forward
+and stared at the stove. "Then you haven't got a slot machine?" he
+said wonderingly. "I'm very glad of that, for I expect my experiment
+will take some time. But, of course, I shall pay you something for
+the use of the stove, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I wouldn't think of charging you anything for that.
+We don't use our stove very much, you know, sir. I'm never in the
+kitchen a minute longer than I can help this cold weather."
+
+Mrs. Bunting was beginning to feel better. When she was actually
+in Mr. Sleuth's presence her morbid fears would be lulled, perhaps
+because his manner almost invariably was gentle and very quiet.
+But still there came over her an eerie feeling, as, with him
+preceding her, they made a slow progress to the ground floor.
+
+Once there, the lodger courteously bade his landlady good-night,
+and proceeded upstairs to his own apartments.
+
+Mrs. Bunting returned to the kitchen. Again she lighted the stove;
+but she felt unnerved, afraid of she knew not what. As she was
+cooking the cheese, she tried to concentrate her mind on what she
+was doing, and on the whole she succeeded. But another part of her
+mind seemed to be working independently, asking her insistent
+questions.
+
+The place seemed to her alive with alien presences, and once she
+caught herself listening--which was absurd, for, of course, she
+could not hope to hear what Mr. Sleuth was doing two, if not three,
+flights upstairs. She wondered in what the lodger's experiments
+consisted. It was odd that she had never been able to discover what
+it was he really did with that big gas-stove. All she knew was
+that he used a very high degree of heat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The Buntings went to bed early that night. But Mrs. Bunting made
+up her mind to keep awake. She was set upon knowing at what hour
+of the night the lodger would come down into her kitchen to carry
+through his experiment, and, above all, she was anxious to know
+how long he would stay there.
+
+But she had had a long and a very anxious day, and presently she
+fell asleep.
+
+The church clock hard by struck two, and, suddenly Mrs. Bunting
+awoke. She felt put out sharply annoyed with herself. How could
+she have dropped off like that? Mr. Sleuth must have been down
+and up again hours ago!
+
+Then, gradually, she became aware that there was a faint acrid
+odour in the room. Elusive, intangible, it yet seemed to encompass
+her and the snoring man by her side, almost as a vapour might have
+done.
+
+Mrs. Bunting sat up in bed and sniffed; and then, in spite of the
+cold, she quietly crept out of her nice, warm bedclothes, and
+crawled along to the bottom of the bed. When there, Mr. Sleuth's
+landlady did a very curious thing; she leaned over the brass rail
+and put her face close to the hinge of the door giving into the
+hall. Yes, it was from here that this strange, horrible odor was
+coming; the smell must be very strong in the passage.
+
+As, shivering, she crept back under the bedclothes, she longed to
+give her sleeping husband a good shake, and in fancy she heard
+herself saying, "Bunting, get up! There's something strange and
+dreadful going on downstairs which we ought to know about."
+
+But as she lay there, by her husband's side, listening with painful
+intentness for the slightest sound, she knew very well that she
+would do nothing of the sort.
+
+What if the lodger did make a certain amount of mess--a certain
+amount of smell--in her nice clean kitchen? Was he not--was he
+not an almost perfect lodger? If they did anything to upset him,
+where could they ever hope to get another like him?
+
+Three o'clock struck before Mrs. Bunting heard slow, heavy steps
+creaking up the kitchen stairs. But Mr. Sleuth did not go straight
+up to his own quarters, as she had expected him to do. Instead, he
+went to the front door, and, opening it, put on the chain. Then he
+came past her door, and she thought--but could not be sure--that
+he sat down on the stairs.
+
+At the end of ten minutes or so she heard him go down the passage
+again. Very softly he closed the front door. By then she had
+divined why the lodger had behaved in this funny fashion. He wanted
+to get the strong, acrid smell of burning--was it of burning wool?
+--out of the house.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting, lying there in the darkness, listening to the
+lodger creeping upstairs, felt as if she herself would never get
+rid of the horrible odour.
+
+Mrs. Bunting felt herself to be all smell.
+
+At last the unhappy woman fell into a deep, troubled sleep; and
+then she dreamed a most terrible and unnatural dream. Hoarse
+voices seemed to be shouting in her ear: "The Avenger close here!
+The Avenger close here!" "'Orrible murder off the Edgware Road!"
+"The Avenger at his work again"'
+
+And even in her dream Mrs. Bunting felt angered--angered and
+impatient. She knew so well why she was being disturbed by this
+horrid nightmare! It was because of Bunting--Bunting, who could
+think and talk of nothing else than those frightful murders, in
+which only morbid and vulgar-minded people took any interest.
+
+Why, even now, in her dream, she could hear her husband speaking
+to her about it:
+
+"Ellen "--so she heard Bunting murmur in her ear--"Ellen, my dear,
+I'm just going to get up to get a paper. It's after seven o'clock."
+
+The shouting--nay, worse, the sound of tramping, hurrying feet
+smote on her shrinking ears. Pushing back her hair off her forehead
+with both hands, she sat up and listened.
+
+It had been no nightmare, then, but something infinitely worse--
+reality.
+
+Why couldn't Bunting have lain quiet abed for awhile longer, and
+let his poor wife go on dreaming? The most awful dream would have
+been easier to bear than this awakening.
+
+She heard her husband go to the front door, and, as he bought the
+paper, exchange a few excited words with the newspaper-seller. Then
+he came back. There was a pause, and she heard him lighting the
+gas-ring in the sitting-room.
+
+Bunting always made his wife a cup of tea in the morning. He had
+promised to do this when they first married, and he had never yet
+broken his word. It was a very little thing and a very usual thing,
+no doubt, for a kind husband to do, but this morning the knowledge
+that he was doing it brought tears to Mrs. Bunting's pale blue eyes.
+This morning he seemed to be rather longer than usual over the job.
+
+When, at last, he came in with the little tray, Bunting found his
+wife lying with her face to the wall.
+
+"Here's your tea, Ellen," he said, and there was a thrill of eager,
+nay happy, excitement in his voice.
+
+She turned herself round and sat up. "Well?" she asked. "Well?
+Why don't you tell me about it?"
+
+"I thought you was asleep," he stammered out. "I thought, Ellen,
+you never heard nothing."
+
+"How could I have slept through all that din? Of course I heard.
+Why don't you tell me?"
+
+"I've hardly had time to glance at the paper myself," he said slowly.
+
+"You was reading it just now," she said severely, "for I heard the
+rustling. You begun reading it before you lit the gas-ring. Don't
+tell me! What was that they was shouting about the Edgware Road?"
+
+"Well," said Bunting, "as you do know, I may as well tell you. The
+Avenger's moving West--that's what he's doing. Last time 'twas
+King's Cross--now 'tis the Edgware Road. I said he'd come our way,
+and he has come our way!"
+
+"You just go and get me that paper," she commanded. "I wants to
+see for myself."
+
+Bunting went into the next room; then he came back and handed her
+silently the odd-looking, thin little sheet.
+
+"Why, whatever's this?" she asked. "This ain't our paper!"
+
+"'Course not," he answered, a trifle crossly. "It's a special early
+edition of the Sun, just because of The Avenger. Here's the bit
+about it"--he showed her the exact spot. But she would have found
+it, even by the comparatively bad light of the gas-jet now flaring
+over the dressing-table, for the news was printed in large, clear
+characters:--
+
+"Once more the murder fiend who chooses to call himself The Avenger
+has escaped detection. While the whole attention of the police,
+and of the great army of amateur detectives who are taking an
+interest in this strange series of atrocious crimes, were
+concentrating their attention round the East End and King's Cross,
+he moved swiftly and silently Westward. And, choosing a time when
+the Edgware Road is at its busiest and most thronged, did another
+human being to death with lightning-like quickness and savagery.
+
+"Within fifty yards of the deserted warehouse yard where he had
+lured his victim to destruction were passing up and down scores of
+happy, busy people, intent on their Christmas shopping. Into that
+cheerful throng he must have plunged within a moment of committing
+his atrocious crime. And it was only owing to the merest accident
+that the body was discovered as soon as it was--that is, just
+after midnight.
+
+"Dr. Dowtray, who was called to the spot at once, is of opinion that
+the woman had been dead at least three hours, if not four. It was at
+first thought--we were going to say, hoped--that this murder had
+nothing to do with the series which is now puzzling and horrifying
+the whole of the civilised world. But no--pinned on the edge of the
+dead woman's dress was the usual now familiar triangular piece of
+grey paper--the grimmest visiting card ever designed by the wit of
+man! And this time The Avenger has surpassed himself as regards his
+audacity and daring--so cold in its maniacal fanaticism and abhorrent
+wickedness."
+
+All the time that Mrs. Bunting was reading with slow, painful
+intentness, her husband was looking at her, longing, yet afraid, to
+burst out with a new idea which he was burning to confide even to his
+Ellen's unsympathetic ears.
+
+At last, when she had quite finished, she looked up defiantly.
+
+"Haven't you anything better to do than to stare at me like that?"
+she said irritably. "Murder or no murder, I've got to get up! Go
+away--do!"
+
+And Bunting went off into the next room.
+
+After he had gone, his wife lay back and closed her eyes. She tried
+to think of nothing. Nay, more--so strong, so determined was her
+will that for a few moments she actually did think of nothing. She
+felt terribly tired and weak, brain and body both quiescent, as does
+a person who is recovering from a long, wearing illness.
+
+Presently detached, puerile thoughts drifted across the surface of
+her mind like little clouds across a summer sky. She wondered if
+those horrid newspaper men were allowed to shout in Belgrave Square;
+she wondered if, in that case, Margaret, who was so unlike her
+brother-in-law, would get up and buy a paper. But no. Margaret
+was not one to leave her nice warm bed for such a silly reason as
+that.
+
+Was it to-morrow Daisy was coming back? Yes--to-morrow, not
+to-day. Well, that was a comfort, at any rate. What amusing things
+Daisy would be able to tell about her visit to Margaret! The girl
+had an excellent gift of mimicry. And Margaret, with her precise,
+funny ways, her perpetual talk about "the family," lent herself to
+the cruel gift.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting's mind--her poor, weak, tired mind--wandered
+off to young Chandler. A funny thing love was, when you came to
+think of it--which she, Ellen Bunting, didn't often do. There was
+Joe, a likely young fellow, seeing a lot of young women, and pretty
+young women, too,--quite as pretty as Daisy, and ten times more
+artful--and yet there! He passed them all by, had done so ever
+since last summer, though you might be sure that they, artful minxes,
+by no manner of means passed him by,--without giving them a thought!
+As Daisy wasn't here, he would probably keep away to-day. There
+was comfort in that thought, too.
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful
+turgid flood. If Joe did come in, she must nerve herself to hear
+all that--that talk there'd be about The Avenger between him and
+Bunting.
+
+Slowly she dragged herself out of bed, feeling exactly as if she
+had just recovered from an illness which had left her very weak,
+very, very tired in body and soul.
+
+She stood for a moment listening--listening, and shivering, for
+it was very cold. Considering how early it still was, there
+seemed a lot of coming and going in the Marylebone Road. She could
+hear the unaccustomed sounds through her closed door and the tightly
+fastened windows of the sitting-room. There must be a regular
+crowd of men and women, on foot and in cabs, hurrying to the scene
+of The Avenger's last extraordinary crime.
+
+She heard the sudden thud made by their usual morning paper falling
+from the letter-box on to the floor of the hall, and a moment later
+came the sound of Bunting quickly, quietly going out and getting it.
+She visualised him coming back, and sitting down with a sigh of
+satisfaction by the newly-lit fire.
+
+Languidly she began dressing herself to the accompaniment of distant
+tramping and of noise of passing traffic, which increased in volume
+and in sound as the moments slipped by.
+
+******
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went down into her kitchen everything looked just
+as she had left it, and there was no trace of the acrid smell she
+had expected to find there. Instead, the cavernous, whitewashed
+room was full of fog, but she noticed that, though the shutters were
+bolted and barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had
+been widely opened to the air. She had left them shut.
+
+Making a "spill" out of a twist of newspaper--she had been taught
+the art as a girl by one of her old mistresses--she stooped and
+flung open the oven-door of her gas-stove. Yes, it was as she had
+expected a fierce heat had been generated there since she had last
+used the oven, and through to the stone floor below had fallen a
+mass of black, gluey soot.
+
+Mrs. Bunting took the ham and eggs that she had bought the previous
+day for her own and Bunting's breakfast upstairs, and broiled them
+over the gas-ring in their sitting-room. Her husband watched her in
+surprised silence. She had never done such a thing before.
+
+"I couldn't stay down there," she said; "it was so cold and foggy.
+I thought I'd make breakfast up here, just for to-day."
+
+"Yes," he said kindly; "that's quite right, Ellen. I think you've
+done quite right, my dear."
+
+But, when it came to the point, his wife could not eat any of the
+nice breakfast she had got ready; she only had another cup of tea.
+
+"I'm afraid you're ill, Ellen?" Bunting asked solicitously.
+
+"No," she said shortly; "I'm not ill at all. Don't be silly! The
+thought of that horrible thing happening so close by has upset me,
+and put me off my food. Just hark to them now!"
+
+Through their closed windows penetrated the sound of scurrying feet
+and loud, ribald laughter. What a crowd; nay, what a mob, must be
+hastening busily to and from the spot where there was now nothing
+to be seen!
+
+Mrs. Bunting made her husband lock the front gate. "I don't want
+any of those ghouls in here!" she exclaimed angrily. And then,
+"What a lot of idle people there are in the world!" she said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Bunting began moving about the room restlessly. He would go to the
+window; stand there awhile staring out at the people hurrying past;
+then, coming back to the fireplace, sit down.
+
+But he could not stay long quiet. After a glance at his paper, up
+he would rise from his chair, and go to the window again.
+
+"I wish you'd stay still," his wife said at last. And then, a few
+minutes later, "Hadn't you better put your hat and coat on and go
+out?" she exclaimed.
+
+And Bunting, with a rather shamed expression, did put on his hat
+and coat and go out.
+
+As he did so he told himself that, after all, he was but human; it
+was natural that he should be thrilled and excited by the dreadful,
+extraordinary thing which had just happened close by. Ellen wasn't
+reasonable about such things. How queer and disagreeable she had
+been that very morning--angry with him because he had gone out
+to hear what all the row was about, and even more angry when he had
+come back and said nothing, because he thought it would annoy her
+to hear about it!
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Bunting forced herself to go down again into the
+kitchen, and as she went through into the low, whitewashed place,
+a tremor of fear, of quick terror, came over her. She turned and
+did what she had never in her life done before, and what she had
+never heard of anyone else doing in a kitchen. She bolted the door.
+
+But, having done this, finding herself at last alone, shut off from
+everybody, she was still beset by a strange, uncanny dread. She
+felt as if she were locked in with an invisible presence, which
+mocked and jeered, reproached and threatened her, by turns.
+
+Why had she allowed, nay encouraged, Daisy to go away for two days?
+Daisy, at any rate, was company--kind, young, unsuspecting company.
+With Daisy she could be her old sharp self. It was such a comfort
+to be with someone to whom she not only need, but ought to, say
+nothing. When with Bunting she was pursued by a sick feeling of
+guilt, of shame. She was the man's wedded wife--in his stolid way
+he was very kind to her, and yet she was keeping from him something
+he certainly had a right to know.
+
+Not for worlds, however, would she have told Bunting of her dreadful
+suspicion--nay, of her almost certainty.
+
+At last she went across to the door and unlocked it. Then she went
+upstairs and turned out her bedroom. That made her feel a little
+better.
+
+She longed for Bunting to return, and yet in a way she was relieved
+by his absence. She would have liked to feel him near by, and yet
+she welcomed anything that took her husband out of the house.
+
+And as Mrs. Bunting swept and dusted, trying to put her whole mind
+into what she was doing, she was asking herself all the time what
+was going on upstairs.
+
+What a good rest the lodger was having! But there, that was only
+natural. Mr. Sleuth, as she well knew, had been up a long time last
+night, or rather this morning.
+
+******
+
+Suddenly, the drawing-room bell rang. But Mr. Sleuth's landlady did
+not go up, as she generally did, before getting ready the simple meal
+which was the lodger's luncheon and breakfast combined. Instead, she
+went downstairs again and hurriedly prepared the lodger's food.
+
+Then, very slowly, with her heart beating queerly, she walked up, and
+just outside the sitting-room--for she felt sure that Mr. Sleuth had
+got up, that he was there already, waiting for her--she rested the
+tray on the top of the banisters and listened. For a few moments she
+heard nothing; then through the door came the high, quavering voice
+with which she had become so familiar:
+
+"'She saith to him, stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in
+secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there,
+and that her guests are in the depths of hell.'"
+
+There was a long pause. Mrs. Bunting could hear the leaves of
+her Bible being turned over, eagerly, busily; and then again Mr.
+Sleuth broke out, this time in a softer voice:
+
+"'She hath cast down many wounded from her; yea, many strong men
+have been slain by her.'" And in a softer, lower, plaintive tone
+came the words: "'I applied my heart to know, and to search, and
+to seek out wisdom and the reason of things; and to know the
+wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness.'"
+
+And as she stood there listening, a feeling of keen distress, of
+spiritual oppression, came over Mrs. Bunting. For the first time
+in her life she visioned the infinite mystery, the sadness and
+strangeness, of human life.
+
+Poor Mr. Sleuth--poor unhappy, distraught Mr. Sleuth! An
+overwhelming pity blotted out for a moment the fear, aye, and the
+loathing, she had been feeling for her lodger.
+
+She knocked at the door, and then she took up her tray.
+
+"Come in, Mrs. Bunting." Mr. Sleuth's voice sounded feebler, more
+toneless than usual.
+
+She turned the handle of the door and walked in. The lodger was
+not sitting in his usual place; he had taken the little round table
+on which his candle generally rested when he read in bed, out of
+his bedroom, and placed it over by the drawing-room window. On it
+were placed, open, the Bible and the Concordance. But as his
+landlady came in, Mr. Sleuth hastily closed the Bible, and began
+staring dreamily out of the window, down at the sordid, hurrying
+crowd of men and women which now swept along the Marylebone Road.
+
+"There seem a great many people out today," he observed, without
+looking round.
+
+"Yes, sir, there do."
+
+Mrs. Bunting began busying herself with laying the cloth and
+putting out the breakfast-lunch, and as she did so she was seized
+with a mortal, instinctive terror of the man sitting there.
+
+At last Mr. Sleuth got up and turned round. She forced herself to
+look at him. How tired, how worn, he looked, and--how strange!
+
+Walking towards the table on which lay his meal, he rubbed his hands
+together with a nervous gesture--it was a gesture he only made when
+something had pleased, nay, satisfied him. Mrs. Bunting, looking at
+him, remembered that he had rubbed his hands together thus when he
+had first seen the room upstairs, and realised that it contained a
+large gas-stove and a convenient sink.
+
+What Mr. Sleuth was doing now also reminded her in an odd way of a
+play she had once seen--a play to which a young man bad taken her
+when she was a girl, unnumbered years ago, and which had thrilled
+and fascinated her. "Out, out, damned spot!" that was what the tall,
+fierce, beautiful lady who had played the part of a queen had said,
+twisting her hands together just as the lodger was doing now.
+
+"It's a fine day," said Mr. Sleuth, sitting down and unfolding his
+napkin. "The fog has cleared. I do not know if you will agree with
+me, Mrs. Bunting, but I always feel brighter when the sun is shining,
+as it is now, at any rate, trying to shine." He looked at her
+inquiringly, but Mrs. Bunting could not speak. She only nodded.
+However, that did not affect Mr. Sleuth adversely.
+
+He had acquired a great liking and respect for this well-balanced,
+taciturn woman. She was the first woman for whom he had experienced
+any such feeling for many years past.
+
+He looked down at the still covered dish, and shook his head. "I
+don't feel as if I could eat very much to-day," he said plaintively.
+And then he suddenly took a half-sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket.
+
+Already Mrs. Bunting had noticed that it was not the same waistcoat
+Mr. Sleuth had been wearing the day before.
+
+"Mrs. Bunting, may I ask you to come here?"
+
+And after a moment of hesitation his landlady obeyed him.
+
+"Will you please accept this little gift for the use you kindly
+allowed me to make of your kitchen last night?" he said quietly.
+"I tried to make as little mess as I could, Mrs. Bunting, but--
+well, the truth is I was carrying out a very elaborate experiment."
+
+Mrs. Bunting held out her hand, she hesitated, and then she took
+the coin. The fingers which for a moment brushed lightly against
+her palm were icy cold--cold and clammy. Mr. Sleuth was evidently
+not well.
+
+As she walked down the stairs, the winter sun, a scarlet ball
+hanging in the smoky sky, glinted in on Mr. Sleuth's landlady, and
+threw blood-red gleams, or so it seemed to her, on to the piece of
+gold she was holding in her hand.
+
+******
+
+The day went by, as other days had gone by in that quiet household,
+but, of course, there was far greater animation outside the little
+house than was usually the case.
+
+Perhaps because the sun was shining for the first time for some
+days, the whole of London seemed to be making holiday in that part
+of the town.
+
+When Bunting at last came back, his wife listened silently while he
+told her of the extraordinary excitement reigning everywhere. And
+then, after he had been talking a long while, she suddenly shot a
+strange look at him.
+
+"I suppose you went to see the place?" she said.
+
+And guiltily he acknowledged that he had done so.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, there wasn't anything much to see--not now. But, oh, Ellen,
+the daring of him! Why, Ellen, if the poor soul had had time to cry
+out--which they don't believe she had--it's impossible someone
+wouldn't 'a heard her. They say that if he goes on doing it like
+that--in the afternoon, like--he never will be caught. He must
+have just got mixed up with all the other people within ten seconds
+of what he'd done!"
+
+During the afternoon Bunting bought papers recklessly--in fact, he
+must have spent the best part of six-pence. But in spite of all the
+supposed and suggested clues, there was nothing--nothing at all new
+to read, less, in fact than ever before.
+
+The police, it was clear, were quite at a loss, and Mrs. Bunting
+began to feel curiously better, less tired, less ill, less--less
+terrified than she had felt through the morning.
+
+And then something happened which broke with dramatic suddenness the
+quietude of the day.
+
+They had had their tea, and Bunting was reading the last of the
+papers he had run out to buy, when suddenly there came a loud,
+thundering, double knock at the door.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. "Why, whoever can that be?" she
+said.
+
+But as Bunting got up she added quickly, "You just sit down again.
+I'll go myself. Sounds like someone after lodgings. I'll soon send
+them to the right-about!"
+
+And then she left the room, but not before there had come another
+loud double knock.
+
+Mrs. Bunting opened the front door. In a moment she saw that the
+person who stood there was a stranger to her. He was a big, dark
+man, with fierce, black moustaches. And somehow--she could not
+have told you why--he suggested a policeman to Mrs. Bunting's mind.
+
+This notion of hers was confirmed by the very first words he uttered.
+For, "I'm here to execute a warrant!" he exclaimed in a theatrical,
+hollow tone.
+
+With a weak cry of protest Mrs. Bunting suddenly threw out her arms
+as if to bar the way; she turned deadly white--but then, in an
+instant the supposed stranger's laugh rang out, with loud, jovial,
+familiar sound!
+
+"There now, Mrs. Bunting! I never thought I'd take you in as well
+as all that!"
+
+It was Joe Chandler--Joe Chandler dressed up, as she knew he
+sometimes, not very often, did dress up in the course of his work.
+
+Mrs. Bunting began laughing--laughing helplessly, hysterically,
+just as she had done on the morning of Daisy's arrival, when the
+newspaper-sellers had come shouting down the Marylebone Road.
+
+"What's all this about?" Bunting came out
+
+Young Chandler ruefully shut the front door. "I didn't mean to
+upset her like this," he said, looking foolish; "'twas just my silly
+nonsense, Mr. Bunting." And together they helped her into the
+sitting-room.
+
+But, once there, poor Mrs. Bunting went on worse than ever; she
+threw her black apron over her face, and began to sob hysterically.
+
+"'I made sure she'd know who I was when I spoke," went on the young
+fellow apologetically. "But, there now, I have upset her. I am
+sorry!"
+
+"It don't matter!" she exclaimed, throwing the apron off her face,
+but the tears were still streaming from her eyes as she sobbed and
+laughed by turns. "Don't matter one little bit, Joe! 'Twas stupid
+of me to be so taken aback. But, there, that murder that's happened
+close by, it's just upset me--upset me altogether to-day."
+
+"Enough to upset anyone--that was," acknowledged the young man
+ruefully. "I've only come in for a minute, like. I haven't no
+right to come when I'm on duty like this--"
+
+Joe Chandler was looking longingly at what remains of the meal were
+still on the table.
+
+"You can take a minute just to have a bite and a sup," said Bunting
+hospitably; "and then you can tell us any news there is, Joe. We're
+right in the middle of everything now, ain't we?" He spoke with
+evident enjoyment, almost pride, in the gruesome fact.
+
+Joe nodded. Already his mouth was full of bread-and-butter. He
+waited a moment, and then: "Well I have got one piece of news--not
+that I suppose it'll interest you very much."
+
+They both looked at him--Mrs. Bunting suddenly calm, though her
+breast still heaved from time to time.
+
+"Our Boss has resigned!" said Joe Chandler slowly, impressively.
+
+"No! Not the Commissioner o' Police?" exclaimed Bunting.
+
+"Yes, he has. He just can't bear what's said about us any longer
+--and I don't wonder! He done his best, and so's we all. The
+public have just gone daft--in the West End, that is, to-day. As
+for the papers, well, they're something cruel--that's what they
+are. And the ridiculous ideas they print! You'd never believe the
+things they asks us to do--and quite serious-like."
+
+"What d'you mean?" questioned Mrs. Bunting. She really wanted to
+know.
+
+"Well, the Courier declares that there ought to be a house-to-house
+investigation--all over London. Just think of it! Everybody to
+let the police go all over their house, from garret to kitchen,
+just to see if The Avenger isn't concealed there. Dotty, I calls
+it! Why, 'twould take us months and months just to do that one
+job in a town like London."
+
+"I'd like to see them dare come into my house!" said Mrs. Bunting
+angrily.
+
+"It's all along of them blarsted papers that The Avenger went to
+work a different way this time," said Chandler slowly.
+
+Bunting had pushed a tin of sardines towards his guest, and was
+eagerly listening. "How d'you mean?" he asked. "I don't take
+your meaning, Joe."
+
+"Well, you see, it's this way. The newspapers was always saying
+how extraordinary it was that The Avenger chose such a peculiar
+time to do his deeds--I mean, the time when no one's about the
+streets. Now, doesn't it stand to reason that the fellow, reading
+all that, and seeing the sense of it, said to himself, 'I'll go on
+another tack this time'? Just listen to this!" He pulled a strip
+of paper, part of a column cut from a newspaper, out of his pocket:
+
+
+"'AN EX-LORD MAYOR OF LONDON ON THE AVENGER
+
+
+"'Will the murderer be caught? Yes,' replied Sir John, 'he will
+certainly be caught--probably when he commits his next crime. A
+whole army of bloodhounds, metaphorical and literal, will be on his
+track the moment he draws blood again. With the whole community
+against him, he cannot escape, especially when it be remembered that
+he chooses the quietest hour in the twenty-four to commit his crimes.
+
+"'Londoners are now in such a state of nerves--if I may use the
+expression, in such a state of funk--that every passer-by, however
+innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his
+avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one and
+three in the morning.'
+
+"I'd like to gag that ex-Lord Mayor!" concluded Joe Chandler
+wrathfully.
+
+Just then the lodger's bell rang.
+
+"Let me go up, my dear," said Bunting.
+
+His wife still looked pale and shaken by the fright she had had.
+
+"No, no," she said hastily. "You stop down here, and talk to Joe.
+I'll look after Mr. Sleuth. He may be wanting his supper just a
+bit earlier than usual to-day."
+
+Slowly, painfully, again feeling as if her legs were made of cotton
+wool, she dragged herself up to the first floor, knocked at the door,
+and then went in.
+
+"You did ring, sir?" she said, in her quiet, respectful way.
+
+And Mr. Sleuth looked up.
+
+She thought--but, as she reminded herself afterwards, it might have
+been just her idea, and nothing else--that for the first time the
+lodger looked frightened--frightened and cowed.
+
+"I heard a noise downstairs," he said fretfully, "and I wanted to
+know what it was all about. As I told you, Mrs. Bunting, when I
+first took these rooms, quiet is essential to me.".
+
+"It was just a friend of ours, sir. I'm sorry you were disturbed.
+Would you like the knocker taken off to-morrow? Bunting'll be
+pleased to do it if you don't like to hear the sound of the knocks."
+
+"Oh, no, I wouldn't put you to such trouble as that." Mr. Sleuth
+looked quite relieved. "Just a friend of yours, was it, Mrs.
+Bunting? He made a great deal of noise."
+
+"Just a young fellow," she said apologetically. "The son of one of
+Bunting's old friends. He often comes here, sir; but he never did
+give such a great big double knock as that before. I'll speak to
+him about it"
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. Bunting. I would really prefer you did nothing of
+the kind. It was just a passing annoyance--nothing more!"
+
+She waited a moment. How strange that Mr. Sleuth said nothing of
+the hoarse cries which had made of the road outside a perfect Bedlam
+every hour or two throughout that day, But no, Mr. Sleuth made no
+allusion to what might well have disturbed any quiet gentleman at
+his reading.
+
+"I thought maybe you'd like to have supper a little earlier to-night,
+sir?"
+
+"Just when you like, Mrs. Bunting--just when it's convenient. I
+do not wish to put you out in any way."
+
+She felt herself dismissed, and going out quietly, closed the door.
+
+As she did so, she heard the front door banging to. She sighed
+--Joe Chandler was really a very noisy young fellow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mrs. Bunting slept well the night following that during which the
+lodger had been engaged in making his mysterious experiments in her
+kitchen. She was so tired, so utterly exhausted, that sleep came
+to her the moment she laid her head upon her pillow.
+
+Perhaps that was why she rose so early the next morning. Hardly
+giving herself time to swallow the tea Bunting had made and brought
+her, she got up and dressed.
+
+She had suddenly come to the conclusion that the hall and staircase
+required a thorough "doing down," and she did not even wait till
+they had eaten their breakfast before beginning her labours. It
+made Bunting feel quite uncomfortable. As he sat by the fire reading
+his morning paper--the paper which was again of such absorbing
+interest--he called out, "There's no need for so much hurry, Ellen.
+Daisy'll be back to-day. Why don't you wait till she's come home to
+help you?"
+
+But from the hall where she was busy dusting, sweeping, polishing,
+his wife's voice came back: "Girls ain't no good at this sort of
+work. Don't you worry about me. I feel as if I'd enjoy doing an
+extra bit of cleaning to-day. I don't like to feel as anyone could
+come in and see my place dirty."
+
+"No fear of that!" Bunting chuckled. And then a new thought struck
+him. "Ain't you afraid of waking the lodger?" he called out.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth slept most of yesterday, and all last night," she
+answered quickly. "As it is, I study him over-much; it's a long,
+long time since I've done this staircase down."
+
+All the time she was engaged in doing the hall, Mrs. Bunting left
+the sitting-room door wide open.
+
+That was a queer thing of her to do, but Bunting didn't like to get
+up and shut her out, as it were. Still, try as he would, he couldn't
+read with any comfort while all that noise was going on. He had
+never known Ellen make such a lot of noise before. Once or twice he
+looked up and frowned rather crossly.
+
+There came a sudden silence, and he was startled to see that. Ellen
+was standing in the doorway, staring at him, doing nothing.
+
+"Come in," he said, "do! Ain't you finished yet?"
+
+"I was only resting a minute," she said. "You don't tell me nothing.
+I'd like to know if there's anything--I mean anything new--in the
+paper this morning."
+
+She spoke in a muffled voice, almost as if she were ashamed of her
+unusual curiosity; and her look of fatigue, of pallor, made Bunting
+suddenly uneasy. "Come in--do!" he repeated sharply. "You've
+done quite enough--and before breakfast, too. 'Tain't necessary.
+Come in and shut that door."
+
+He spoke authoritatively, and his wife, for a wonder, obeyed him.
+
+She came in, and did what she had never done before--brought the
+broom with her, and put it up against the wall in the corner.
+
+Then she sat down.
+
+"I think I'll make breakfast up here," she said. "I--I feel cold,
+Bunting." And her husband stared at her surprised, for drops of
+perspiration were glistening on her forehead.
+
+He got up. "All right. I'll go down and bring the eggs up. Don't
+you worry. For the matter of that, I can cook them downstairs if
+you like."
+
+"No," she said obstinately. "I'd rather do my own work. You just
+bring them up here--that'll be all right. To-morrow morning we'll
+have Daisy to help see to things."
+
+"Come over here and sit down comfortable in my chair," he suggested
+kindly. "You never do take any bit of rest, Ellen. I never see'd
+such a woman!"
+
+And again she got up and meekly obeyed him, walking across the room
+with languid steps.
+
+He watched her, anxiously, uncomfortably.
+
+She took up the newspaper he had just laid down, and Bunting took
+two steps towards her.
+
+"I'll show you the most interesting bit" he said eagerly. "It's
+the piece headed, 'Our Special Investigator.' You see, they've
+started a special investigator of their own, and he's got hold of
+a lot of little facts the police seem to have overlooked. The man
+who writes all that--I mean the Special Investigator--was a
+famous 'tec in his time, and he's just come back out of his
+retirement o' purpose to do this bit of work for the paper. You
+read what he says--I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he ends by
+getting that reward! One can see he just loves the work of
+tracking people down."
+
+"There's nothing to be proud of in such a job," said his wife
+listlessly.
+
+"He'll have something to be proud of if he catches The Avenger!"
+cried Bunting. He was too keen about this affair to be put off
+by Ellen's contradictory remarks. "You just notice that bit about
+the rubber soles. Now, no one's thought o' that. I'll just tell
+Chandler--he don't seem to me to be half awake, that young man
+don't."
+
+"He's quite wide awake enough without you saying things to him!
+How about those eggs, Bunting? I feel quite ready for my breakfast
+even if you don't--"
+
+Mrs. Bunting now spoke in what her husband sometimes secretly
+described to himself as "Ellen's snarling voice."
+
+He turned away and left the room, feeling oddly troubled. There
+was something queer about her, and he couldn't make it out. He
+didn't mind it when she spoke sharply and nastily to him. He was
+used to that. But now she was so up and down; so different from
+what she used to be! In old days she had always been the same, but
+now a man never knew where to have her.
+
+And as he went downstairs he pondered uneasily over his wife's
+changed ways and manner.
+
+Take the question of his easy chair. A very small matter, no doubt,
+but he had never known Ellen sit in that chair--no, not even once,
+for a minute, since it had been purchased by her as a present for him.
+
+They had been so happy, so happy, and so--so restful, during that
+first week after Mr. Sleuth had come to them. Perhaps it was the
+sudden, dramatic change from agonising anxiety to peace and security
+which had been too much for Ellen--yes, that was what was the matter
+with her, that and the universal excitement about these Avenger
+murders, which were shaking the nerves of all London. Even Bunting,
+unobservant as he was, had come to realise that his wife took a
+morbid interest in these terrible happenings. And it was the more
+queer of her to do so that at first she refused to discuss them, and
+said openly that she was utterly uninterested in murder or crime of
+any sort.
+
+He, Bunting, had always had a mild pleasure in such things. In his
+time he had been a great reader of detective tales, and even now he
+thought there was no pleasanter reading. It was that which had first
+drawn him to Joe Chandler, and made him welcome the young chap as
+cordially as he had done when they first came to London.
+
+But though Ellen had tolerated, she had never encouraged, that sort
+of talk between the two men. More than once she had exclaimed
+reproachfully: "To hear you two, one would think there was no nice,
+respectable, quiet people left in the world!"
+
+But now all that was changed. She was as keen as anyone could be
+to hear the latest details of an Avenger crime. True, she took her
+own view of any theory suggested. But there! Ellen always had had
+her own notions about everything under the sun. Ellen was a woman
+who thought for herself--a clever woman, not an everyday woman by
+any manner of means.
+
+While these thoughts were going disconnectedly through his mind,
+Bunting was breaking four eggs into a basin. He was going to give
+Ellen a nice little surprise--to cook an omelette as a French chef
+had once taught him to do, years and years ago. He didn't know how
+she would take his doing such a thing after what she had said; but
+never mind, she would enjoy the omelette when done. Ellen hadn't
+been eating her food properly of late.
+
+And when he went up again, his wife, to his relief, and, it must be
+admitted, to his surprise, took it very well. She had not even
+noticed how long he had been downstairs, for she had been reading
+with intense, painful care the column that the great daily paper
+they took in had allotted to the one-time famous detective.
+
+According to this Special Investigator's own account he had
+discovered all sorts of things that had escaped the eye of the
+police and of the official detectives. For instance, owing, he
+admitted, to a fortunate chance, he had been at the place where
+the two last murders had been committed very soon after the double
+crime had been discovered--in fact within half an hour, and he
+had found, or so he felt sure, on the slippery, wet pavement
+imprints of the murderer's right foot.
+
+The paper reproduced the impression of a half-worn rubber sole.
+At the same time, he also admitted--for the Special Investigator
+was very honest, and he had a good bit of space to fill in the
+enterprising paper which had engaged him to probe the awful
+mystery--that there were thousands of rubber soles being worn in
+London. . . .
+
+And when she came to that statement Mrs. Bunting looked up, and
+there came a wan smile over her thin, closely-shut lips. It was
+quite true--that about rubber soles; there were thousands of
+rubber soles being worn just now. She felt grateful to the Special
+Investigator for having stated the fact so clearly.
+
+The column ended up with the words:
+
+"And to-day will take place the inquest on the double crime of ten
+days ago. To my mind it would be well if a preliminary public
+inquiry could be held at once. Say, on the very day the discovery
+of a fresh murder is made. In that way alone would it be possible
+to weigh and sift the evidence offered by members of the general
+public. For when a week or more has elapsed, and these same people
+have been examined and cross-examined in private by the police,
+their impressions have had time to become blurred and hopelessly
+confused. On that last occasion but one there seems no doubt
+that several people, at any rate two women and one man, actually
+saw the murderer hurrying from the scene of his atrocious double
+crime--this being so, to-day's investigation may be of the highest
+value and importance. To-morrow I hope to give an account of
+the impression made on me by the inquest, and by any statements
+made during its course."
+
+Even when her husband had come in with the tray Mrs. Bunting had
+gone on reading, only lifting up her eyes for a moment. At last he
+said rather crossly, "Put down that paper, Ellen, this minute! The
+omelette I've cooked for you will be just like leather if you don't
+eat it."
+
+But once his wile had eaten her breakfast--and, to Bunting's
+mortification, she left more than half the nice omelette untouched
+--she took the paper up again. She turned over the big sheets,
+until she found, at the foot of one of the ten columns devoted to
+The Avenger and his crimes, the information she wanted, and then
+uttered an exclamation under her breath.
+
+What Mrs. Bunting had been looking for--what at last she had found
+--was the time and place of the inquest which was to be held that
+day. The hour named was a rather odd time--two o'clock in the
+afternoon, but, from Mrs. Bunting's point of view, it was most
+convenient.
+
+By two o'clock, nay, by half-past one, the lodger would have had
+his lunch; by hurrying matters a little she and Bunting would have
+had their dinner, and--and Daisy wasn't coming home till tea-time.
+
+She got up out of her husband's chair. "I think you're right," she
+said, in a quick, hoarse tone. "I mean about me seeing a doctor,
+Bunting.' I think I will go and see a doctor this very afternoon."
+
+"Wouldn't you like me to go with you?" he asked.
+
+"No, that I wouldn't. In fact I wouldn't go at all you was to go
+with me."
+
+"All right," he said vexedly. "Please yourself, my dear; you know
+best."
+
+"I should think I did know best where my own health is concerned."
+
+Even Bunting was incensed by this lack of gratitude. "'Twas I said,
+long ago, you ought to go and see the doctor; 'twas you said you
+wouldn't!" he exclaimed pugnaciously.
+
+"Well, I've never said you was never right, have I? At any rate,
+I'm going."
+
+"Have you a pain anywhere?" He stared at her with a look of real
+solicitude on his fat, phlegmatic face.
+
+Somehow Ellen didn't look right, standing there opposite him. Her
+shoulders seemed to have shrunk; even her cheeks had fallen in a
+little. She had never looked so bad--not even when they had been
+half starving, and dreadfully, dreadfully worked.
+
+"Yes," she said briefly, "I've a pain in my head, at the back of
+my neck. It doesn't often leave me; it gets worse when anything
+upsets me, like I was upset last night by Joe Chandler."
+
+"He was a silly ass to come and do a thing like that!" said Bunting
+crossly. "I'd a good mind to tell him so, too. But I must say,
+Ellen, I wonder he took you in--he didn't me!"
+
+"Well, you had no chance he should--you knew who it was," she said
+slowly.
+
+And Bunting remained silent, for Ellen was right. Joe Chandler had
+already spoken when he, Bunting, came out into the hall, and saw
+their cleverly disguised visitor.
+
+"Those big black moustaches," he went on complainingly, "and that
+black wig--why, 'twas too ridic'lous--that's what I call it!"
+
+"Not to anyone who didn't know Joe," she said sharply.
+
+"Well, I don't know. He didn't look like a real man--nohow. If
+he's a wise lad, he won't let our Daisy ever see him looking like
+that!" and Bunting laughed, a comfortable laugh.
+
+He had thought a good deal about Daisy and young Chandler the last
+two days, and, on the whole, he was well pleased.  It was a dull,
+unnatural life the girl was leading with Old Aunt. And Joe was
+earning good money. They wouldn't have long to wait, these two
+young people, as a beau and his girl often have to wait, as he,
+Bunting, and Daisy's mother had had to do, for ever so long before
+they could be married. No, there was no reason why they shouldn't
+be spliced quite soon--if so the fancy took them. And Bunting
+had very little doubt that so the fancy would take Joe, at any rate.
+
+But there was plenty of time. Daisy wouldn't be eighteen till the
+week after next. They might wait till she was twenty. By that
+time Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might have come into quite
+a tidy little bit of money.
+
+"What are you smiling at?" said his wife sharply.
+
+And he shook himself. "I--smiling? At nothing that I knows of."
+Then he waited a moment. "Well, if you will know, Ellen, I was
+just thinking of Daisy and that young chap Joe Chandler. He is
+gone on her, ain't he?"
+
+"Gone?" And then Mrs. Bunting laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly
+laugh. "Gone, Bunting?" she repeated. "Why, he's out o' sight
+--right, out of sight!"
+
+Then hesitatingly, and looking narrowly at her husband, she went on,
+twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke:--
+"I suppose he'll be going over this afternoon to fetch her? Or--or
+d'you think he'll have to be at that inquest, Bunting?"
+
+"Inquest? What inquest?" He looked at her puzzled.
+
+"Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by King's
+Cross."
+
+"Oh, no; he'd have no call to be at the inquest. For the matter o'
+that, I know he's going over to fetch Daisy. He said so last night
+--just when 'you went up to the lodger."
+
+"That's just as well." Mrs. Bunting spoke with considerable
+satisfaction. "Otherwise I suppose you'd ha' had to go. I wouldn't
+like the house left--not with us out of it. Mr. Sleuth would be
+upset if there came a ring at the door."
+
+"Oh, I won't leave the house, don't you be afraid, Ellen--not while
+you're out"
+
+"Not even if I'm out a good while, Bunting."
+
+"No fear. Of course, you'll be a long time if it's your idea to see
+that doctor at Ealing?"
+
+He looked at her questioningly, and Mrs. Bunting nodded. Somehow
+nodding didn't seem as bad as speaking a lie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Any ordeal is far less terrifying, far easier to meet with courage,
+when it is repeated, than is even a milder experience which is
+entirely novel.
+
+Mrs. Bunting had already attended an inquest, in the character of a
+witness, and it was one of the few happenings of her life which was
+sharply etched against the somewhat blurred screen of her memory.
+
+In a country house where the then Ellen Green had been staying for
+a fortnight with her elderly mistress, there had occurred one of
+those sudden, pitiful tragedies which occasionally destroy the
+serenity, the apparent decorum, of a large, respectable household.
+
+The under-housemaid, a pretty, happy-natured girl, had drowned
+herself for love of the footman, who had given his sweetheart cause
+for bitter jealousy. The girl had chosen to speak of her troubles
+to the strange lady's maid rather than to her own fellow-servants,
+and it was during the conversation the two women had had together
+that the girl had threatened to take her own life.
+
+As Mrs. Bunting put on her outdoor clothes, preparatory to going
+out, she recalled very clearly all the details of that dreadful
+affair, and of the part she herself had unwillingly played in it.
+
+She visualised the country inn where the inquest on that poor,
+unfortunate creature had been held.
+
+The butler had escorted her from the Hall, for he also was to give
+evidence, and as they came up there had been a look of cheerful
+animation about the inn yard; people coming and going, many women
+as well as men, village folk, among whom the dead girl's fate had
+aroused a great deal of interest, and the kind of horror which those
+who live on a dull countryside welcome rather than avoid.
+
+Everyone there had been particularly nice and polite to her, to
+Ellen Green; there had been a time of waiting in a room upstairs in
+the old inn, and the witnesses had been accommodated, not only with
+chairs, but with cake and wine.
+
+She remembered how she had dreaded being a witness, how she had
+felt as if she would like to run away from her nice, easy place,
+rather than have to get up and tell the little that she knew of the
+sad business.
+
+But it had not been so very dreadful after all. The coroner had
+been a kindly-spoken gentleman; in fact he had complimented her on
+the clear, sensible way she had given her evidence concerning the
+exact words the unhappy girl had used.
+
+One thing Ellen Green had said, in answer to a question put by
+an inquisitive juryman, had raised a laugh in the crowded,
+low-ceilinged room. "Ought not Miss Ellen Green," so the man had
+asked, "to have told someone of the girl's threat? If she had done
+so, might not the girl have been prevented from throwing herself
+into the lake?" And she, the witness, had answered, with some
+asperity--for by that time the coroner's kind manner had put her
+at her ease--that she had not attached any importance to what the
+girl had threatened to do, never believing that any young woman
+could be so silly as to drown herself for love!
+
+******
+
+Vaguely Mrs. Bunting supposed that the inquest at which she was
+going to be present this afternoon would be like that country
+inquest of long ago.
+
+It had been no mere perfunctory inquiry; she remembered very well
+how little by little that pleasant-spoken gentleman, the coroner,
+had got the whole truth out--the story, that is, of how that
+horrid footman, whom she, Ellen Green, had disliked from the first
+minute she had set eyes on him, had, taken up with another young
+woman. It had been supposed that this fact would not be elicited
+by the coroner; but it had been, quietly, remorselessly; more, the
+dead girl's letters had been read out--piteous, queerly expressed
+letters, full of wild love and bitter, threatening jealousy. And
+the jury had censured the young man most severely; she remembered
+the look on his face when the people, shrinking back, had made a
+passage for him to slink out of the crowded room.
+
+Come to think of it now, it was strange she had never told Bunting
+that long-ago tale. It had occurred years before she knew him, and
+somehow nothing had ever happened to make her tell him about it.
+
+She wondered whether Bunting had ever been to an inquest. She longed
+to ask him. But if she asked him now, this minute, he might guess
+where she was thinking of going.
+
+And then, while still moving about her bedroom, she shook her head
+--no, no, Bunting would never guess such a thing; he would never,
+never suspect her of telling him a lie.
+
+Stop--had she told a lie? She did mean to go to the doctor after
+the inquest was finished--if there was time, that is. She wondered
+uneasily how long such an inquiry was likely to last. In this case,
+as so very little had been discovered, the proceedings would surely
+be very formal--formal and therefore short.
+
+She herself had one quite definite object--that of hearing the
+evidence of those who believed they had seen the murderer leaving
+the spot where his victims lay weltering in their still flowing
+blood. She was filled with a painful, secret, and, yes, eager
+curiosity to hear how those who were so positive about the matter
+would describe the appearance of The Avenger. After all, a lot of
+people must have seen him, for, as Bunting had said only the day
+before to young Chandler, The Avenger was not a ghost; he was a
+living man with some kind of hiding-place where he was known, and
+where he spent his time between his awful crimes.
+
+As she came back to the sitting-room, her extreme pallor struck her
+husband.
+
+"Why, Ellen," he said, "it is time you went to the doctor. You
+looks just as if you was going to a funeral. I'll come along with
+you as far as the station. You're going by train, ain't you? Not
+by bus, eh? It's a very long way to Ealing, you know."
+
+"There you go! Breaking your solemn promise to me the very first
+minute!" But somehow she did not speak unkindly, only fretfully
+and sadly.
+
+And Bunting hung his head. "Why, to be sure I'd gone and clean
+forgot the lodger! But will you be all right, Ellen? Why not wait
+till to-morrow, and take Daisy with you?"
+
+"I like doing my own business in my own way, and not in someone
+else's way!" she snapped out; and then more gently, for Bunting
+really looked concerned, and she did feel very far from well, "I'll
+be all right, old man. Don't you worry about me!"
+
+As she turned to go across to the door, she drew the black shawl
+she had put over her long jacket more closely round her.
+
+She felt ashamed, deeply ashamed, of deceiving so kind a husband.
+And yet, what could she do? How could she share her dreadful burden
+with poor Bunting? Why, 'twould be enough to make a man go daft.
+Even she often felt as if she could stand it no longer--as if she
+would give the world to tell someone--anyone--what it was that she
+suspected, what deep in her heart she so feared to be the truth.
+
+But, unknown to herself, the fresh outside air, fog-laden though it
+was, soon began to do her good. She had gone out far too little the
+last few days, for she had had a nervous terror of leaving the house
+unprotected, as also a great unwillingness to allow Bunting to come
+into contact with the lodger.
+
+When she reached the Underground station she stopped short. There
+were two ways of getting to St. Pancras--she could go by bus, or
+she could go by train. She decided on the latter. But before
+turning into the station her eyes strayed over the bills of the
+early afternoon papers lying on the ground.
+
+Two words,
+
+  THE AVENGER,
+
+stared up at her in varying type.
+
+Drawing her black shawl yet a little closer about her shoulders,
+Mrs. Bunting looked down at the placards. She did not feel inclined
+to buy a paper, as many of the people round her were doing. Her eyes
+were smarting, even now, from their unaccustomed following of the
+close print in the paper Bunting took in.
+
+Slowly she turned, at last, into the Underground station.
+
+And now a piece of extraordinary good fortune befell Mrs. Bunting.
+
+The third-class carriage in which she took her place happened to be
+empty, save for the presence of a police inspector. And once they
+were well away she summoned up courage, and asked him the question
+she knew she would have to ask of someone within the next few minutes.
+
+"Can you tell me," she said, in a low voice, "where death inquests
+are held "--she moistened her lips, waited a moment, and then
+concluded--"in the neighbourhood of King's Cross?"
+
+The man turned and, looked at her attentively. She did not look at
+all the sort of Londoner who goes to an inquest--there are many
+such--just for the fun of the thing. Approvingly, for he was a
+widower, he noted her neat black coat and skirt; and the plain
+Princess bonnet which framed her pale, refined face.
+
+"I'm going to the Coroner's Court myself." he said good-naturedly.
+"So you can come along of me. You see there's that big Avenger
+inquest going on to-day, so I think they'll have had to make other
+arrangements for--hum, hum--ordinary cases." And as she looked
+at him dumbly, he went on, "There'll be a mighty crowd of people at
+The Avenger inquest--a lot of ticket folk to be accommodated, to
+say nothing of the public."
+
+"That's the inquest I'm going to," faltered Mrs. Bunting. She could
+scarcely get the words out. She realised with acute discomfort,
+yes, and shame, how strange, how untoward, was that which she was
+going to do. Fancy a respectable woman wanting to attend a murder
+inquest!
+
+During the last few days all her perceptions had become sharpened
+by suspense and fear. She realised now, as she looked into the
+stolid face of her unknown friend, how she herself would have
+regarded any woman who wanted to attend such an inquiry from a
+simple, morbid feeling of curiosity. And yet--and yet that was
+just what she was about to do herself.
+
+"I've got a reason for wanting to go there," she murmured. It was
+a comfort to unburden herself this little way even to a stranger.
+
+"Ah!" he said reflectively. "A--a relative connected with one of
+the two victims' husbands, I presume?"
+
+And Mrs. Bunting bent her head.
+
+"Going to give evidence?" he asked casually, and then he turned and
+looked at Mrs. Bunting with far more attention than he had yet done.
+
+"Oh, no!" There was a world of horror, of fear in the speaker's voice.
+
+And the inspector felt concerned and sorry. "Hadn't seen her for
+quite a long time, I suppose?"
+
+"Never had, seen her. I'm from the country." Something impelled
+Mrs. Bunting to say these words. But she hastily corrected herself,
+"At least, I was."
+
+"Will he be there?"
+
+She looked at him dumbly; not in the least knowing to whom he was
+alluding.
+
+"I mean the husband," went on the inspector hastily. "I felt sorry
+for the last poor chap--I mean the husband of the last one--he
+seemed so awfully miserable. You see, she'd been a good wife and a
+good mother till she took to the drink."
+
+"It always is so," breathed out Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"Aye." he waited a moment. "D'you know anyone about the court?" he
+asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, don't you worry. I'll take you in along o' me. You'd never
+get in by yourself."
+
+They got out; and oh, the comfort of being in some one's charge, of
+having a determined man in uniform to look after one! And yet even
+now there was to Mrs. Bunting something dream-like, unsubstantial
+about the whole business.
+
+"If he knew--if he only knew what I know!" she kept saying over
+and over again to herself as she walked lightly by the big, burly
+form of the police inspector.
+
+"'Tisn't far--not three minutes," he said suddenly. "Am I walking
+too quick for you, ma'am?"'
+
+"No, not at all. I'm a quick walker."
+
+And then suddenly they turned a corner and came on a mass of people,
+a densely packed crowd of men and women, staring at a mean-looking
+little door sunk into a high wall.
+
+"Better take my arm," the inspector suggested. "Make way there!
+Make way!" he cried authoritatively; and he swept her through the
+serried ranks which parted at the sound of his voice, at the sight
+of his uniform.
+
+"Lucky you met me," he said, smiling. "You'd never have got
+through alone. And 'tain't a nice crowd, not by any manner of
+means."
+
+The small door opened just a little way, and they found themselves
+on a narrow stone-flagged path, leading into a square yard. A few
+men were out there, smoking.
+
+Before preceding her into the building which rose at the back of
+the yard, Mrs. Bunting's kind new friend took out his watch.
+"There's another twenty minutes before they'll begin," he said.
+"There's the mortuary"--he pointed with his thumb to a low room
+built out to the right of the court. "Would you like to go in and
+see them?" he whispered.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried, in a tone of extreme horror. And he looked
+down at her with sympathy, and with increased respect. She was a
+nice, respectable woman, she was. She had not come here imbued
+with any morbid, horrible curiosity, but because she thought it
+her duty to do so. He suspected her of being sister-in-law to
+one of The Avenger's victims.
+
+They walked through into a big room or hall, now full of men
+talking in subdued yet eager, animated tones.
+
+"I think you'd better sit down' here," he said considerately, and,
+leading her to one of the benches that stood out from the whitewashed
+walls--"unless you'd rather be with the witnesses, that is."
+
+But again she said, "Oh, no!" And then, with an effort, "Oughtn't
+I to go into the court now, if it's likely to be so full?"
+
+"Don't you worry," he said kindly. "I'll see you get a proper place.
+I must leave you now for a minute, but I'll come back in good time
+and look after you."
+
+She raised the thick veil she had pulled down over her face while
+they were going through that sinister, wolfish-looking crowd outside,
+and looked about her.
+
+Many of the gentlemen--they mostly wore tall hats and good overcoats
+--standing round and about her looked vaguely familiar. She picked
+out one at once. He was a famous journalist, whose shrewd, animated
+face was familiar to her owing to the fact that it was widely
+advertised in connection with a preparation for the hair--the
+preparation which in happier, more prosperous days Bunting had had
+great faith in, and used, or so he always said, with great benefit to
+himself. This gentleman was the centre of an eager circle; half a
+dozen men were talking to him, listening deferentially when he spoke,
+and each of these men, so Mrs. Bunting realised, was a Somebody.
+
+How strange, how amazing, to reflect that from all parts of London,
+from their doubtless important avocations, one unseen, mysterious
+beckoner had brought all these men here together, to this sordid
+place, on this bitterly cold, dreary day. Here they were, all
+thinking of, talking of, evoking one unknown, mysterious personality
+--that of the shadowy and yet terribly real human being who chose
+to call himself The Avenger. And somewhere, not so very far away
+from them all The Avenger was keeping these clever, astute, highly
+trained minds--aye, and bodies, too--at bay.
+
+Even Mrs. Bunting, sitting here unnoticed, realised the irony of her
+presence among them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that she had been sitting there a long
+time--it was really about a quarter of an hour--when her official
+friend came back.
+
+"Better come along now," he whispered; "it'll begin soon."
+
+She followed him out into a passage, up a row of steep stone steps,
+and so into the Coroner's Court.
+
+The court was big, well-lighted room, in some ways not unlike a
+chapel, the more so that a kind of gallery ran half-way round, a
+gallery evidently set aside for the general public, for it was now
+crammed to its utmost capacity.
+
+Mrs. Bunting glanced timidly towards the serried row of faces. Had
+it not been for her good fortune in meeting the man she was now
+following, it was there that she would have had to try and make her
+way. And she would have failed. Those people had rushed in the
+moment the doors were opened, pushing, fighting their way in a way
+she could never have pushed or fought.
+
+There were just a few women among them, set, determined-looking
+women, belonging to every class, but made one by their love of
+sensation and their power of forcing their way in where they wanted
+to be. But the women were few; the great majority of those standing
+there were men--men who were also representative of every class of
+Londoner.
+
+The centre of the court was like an arena; it was sunk two or three
+steps below the surrounding gallery. Just now it was comparatively
+clear of people, save for the benches on which sat the men who were
+to compose the jury. Some way from these men, huddled together in
+a kind of big pew, stood seven people--three women and four men.
+
+"D'you see the witnesses?" whispered the inspector, pointing these
+out to her. He supposed her to know one of them with familiar
+knowledge, but, if that were so, she made no sign.
+
+Between the windows, facing the whole room, was a kind of little
+platform, on which stood a desk and an arm-chair. Mrs. Bunting
+guessed rightly that it was there the coroner would sit. And to
+the left of the platform was the witness-stand, also raised
+considerably above the jury.
+
+Amazingly different, and far, far more grim and awe-inspiring than
+the scene of the inquest which had taken place so long ago, on that
+bright April day, in the village inn. There the coroner had sat on
+the same level as the jury, and the witnesses had simply stepped
+forward one by one, and taken their place before him.
+
+Looking round her fearfully, Mrs. Bunting thought she would surely
+die if ever she were exposed to the ordeal of standing in that
+curious box-like stand, and she stared across at the bench where sat
+the seven witnesses with a feeling of sincere pity in her heart.
+
+But even she soon realised that her pity was wasted. Each woman
+witness looked eager, excited, and animated; well pleased to be the
+centre of attention and attraction to the general public. It was
+plain each was enjoying her part of important, if humble, actress
+in the thrilling drama which was now absorbing the attention of all
+London--it might almost be said of the whole world.
+
+Looking at these women, Mrs. Bunting wondered vaguely which was
+which. Was it that rather draggle-tailed-looking young person who
+had certainly, or almost certainly, seen The Avenger within ten
+seconds of the double crime being committed? The woman who, aroused
+by one of his victims' cry of terror, had rushed to her window and
+seen the murderer's shadowy form pass swiftly by in the fog?
+
+Yet another woman, so Mrs. Bunting now remembered, had given a most
+circumstantial account of what The Avenger looked like, for he, it
+was supposed, had actually brushed by her as he passed.
+
+Those two women now before her had been interrogated and
+cross-examined again and again, not only by the police, but by
+representatives of every newspaper in London. It was from what they
+had both said--unluckily their accounts materially differed--that
+that official description of The Avenger had been worked up--that
+which described him as being a good-looking, respectable young fellow
+of twenty-eight, carrying a newspaper parcel.
+
+As for the third woman, she was doubtless an acquaintance, a boon
+companion of the dead.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked away from the witnesses, and focused her gaze
+on another unfamiliar sight. Specially prominent, running indeed
+through the whole length of the shut-in space, that is, from the
+coroner's high dais right across to the opening in the wooden barrier,
+was an ink-splashed table at which, when she had first taken her
+place, there had been sitting three men busily sketching; but now
+every seat at the table was occupied by tired, intelligent-looking
+men, each with a notebook, or with some loose sheets of paper,
+before him.
+
+"Them's the reporters," whispered her friend. "They don't like
+coming till the last minute, for they has to be the last to go.
+At an ordinary inquest there are only two--maybe three--attending,
+but now every paper in the kingdom has pretty well applied for a
+pass to that reporters' table."
+
+He looked consideringly down into the well of the court. "Now let
+me see what I can do for you--"
+
+Then he beckoned to the coroner's officer: "Perhaps you could put
+this lady just over there, in a corner by herself? Related to a
+relation of the deceased, but doesn't want to be--" He whispered
+a word or two, and the other nodded sympathetically, and looked at
+Mrs. Bunting with interest. "I'll put her just here," he muttered.
+"There's no one coming there to-day. You see, there are only seven
+witnesses--sometimes we have a lot more than that."
+
+And he kindly put her on a now empty bench opposite to where the
+seven witnesses stood and sat with their eager, set faces, ready
+--aye, more than ready--to play their part.
+
+For a moment every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but
+soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised
+that she had nothing to do with the case. She was evidently there
+as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a "friend at
+court," and so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having to
+stand in the crowd.
+
+But she was not long left in isolation. Very soon some of the
+important-looking gentlemen she had seen downstairs came into the
+court, and were ushered over to her seat while two or three among
+them, including the famous writer whose face was so familiar that
+it almost seemed to Mrs. Bunting like that of a kindly acquaintance,
+were accommodated at the reporters' table.
+
+"Gentlemen, the Coroner."
+
+The jury stood up, shuffling their feet, and then sat down again;
+over the spectators there fell a sudden silence.
+
+And then what immediately followed recalled to Mrs. Bunting, for the
+first time, that informal little country inquest of long ago.
+
+First came the "Oyez! Oyez!" the old Norman-French summons to all
+whose business it is to attend a solemn inquiry into the death
+--sudden, unexplained, terrible--of a fellow-being.
+
+The jury--there were fourteen of them--all stood up again. They
+raised their hands and solemnly chanted together the curious words
+of their oath.
+
+Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences 'twixt the coroner
+and his officer.
+
+Yes, everything was in order. The jury had viewed the bodies--he
+quickly corrected himself--the body, for, technically speaking, the
+inquest just about to be held only concerned one body.
+
+And then, amid a silence so absolute that the slightest rustle could
+be heard through the court, the coroner--a clever-looking gentleman,
+though not so old as Mrs. Bunting thought he ought to have been to
+occupy so important a position on so important a day--gave a little
+history, as it were, of the terrible and mysterious Avenger crimes.
+
+He spoke very dearly, warming to his work as he went on.
+
+He told them that he had been present at the inquest held on one of
+The Avenger's former victims. "I only went through professional
+curiosity," he threw in by way of parenthesis, "little thinking,
+gentlemen, that the inquest on one of these unhappy creatures would
+ever be held in my court."
+
+On and on, he went, though he had, in truth, but little to say, and
+though that little was known to every one of his listeners.
+
+Mrs. Bunting heard one of the older gentlemen sitting near her
+whisper to another: "Drawing it out all he can; that's what he's
+doing. Having the time of his life, evidently!" And then the other
+whispered back, so low that she could only just catch the words,
+"Aye, aye. But he's a good chap--I knew his father; we were at
+school together. Takes his job very seriously, you know--he does
+to-day, at any rate."
+
+******
+
+She was listening intently, waiting for a word, a sentence, which
+would relieve her hidden terrors, or, on the other hand, confirm
+them. But the word, the sentence, was never uttered.
+
+And yet, at the very end of his long peroration, the coroner did
+throw out a hint which might mean anything--or nothing.
+
+"I am glad to say that we hope to obtain such evidence to-day as
+will in time lead to the apprehension of the miscreant who has
+committed, and is still committing, these terrible crimes."
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared uneasily up into the coroner's firm,
+determined-looking face. What did he mean by that? Was there any
+new evidence--evidence of which Joe Chandler, for instance, was
+ignorant? And, as if in answer to the unspoken question, her heart
+gave a sudden leap, for a big, burly man had taken his place in the
+witness-box--a policeman who had not been sitting with the other
+witnesses.
+
+But soon her uneasy terror became stilled. This witness was simply
+the constable who had found the first body. In quick, business-like
+tones he described exactly what had happened to him on that cold,
+foggy morning ten days ago. He was shown a plan, and he marked it
+slowly, carefully, with a thick finger. That was the exact place
+--no, he was making a mistake--that was the place where the other
+body had lain. He explained apologetically that he had got rather
+mixed up between the two bodies--that of Johanna Cobbett and Sophy
+Hurtle.
+
+And then the coroner intervened authoritatively: "For the purpose
+of this inquiry," he said, "we must, I think, for a moment consider
+the two murders together."
+
+After that, the witness went on far more comfortably; and as he
+proceeded, in a quick monotone, the full and deadly horror of
+The Avenger's acts came over Mrs. Bunting in a great seething flood
+of sick fear and--and, yes, remorse.
+
+Up to now she had given very little thought--if, indeed, any thought
+--to the drink-sodden victims of The Avenger. It was he who had
+filled her thoughts,--he and those who were trying to track him down.
+But now? Now she felt sick and sorry she had come here to-day. She
+wondered if she would ever be able to get the vision the policeman's
+words had conjured up out of her mind--out of her memory.
+
+And then there, came an eager stir of excitement and of attention
+throughout the whole court, for the policeman had stepped down out of
+the witness-box, and one of the women witnesses was being conducted to
+his place.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked with interest and sympathy at the woman,
+remembering how she herself had trembled with fear, trembled as that
+poor, bedraggled, common-looking person was trembling now. The woman
+had looked so cheerful, so--so well pleased with herself till a
+minute ago, but now she had become very pale, and she looked round
+her as a hunted animal might have done.
+
+But the coroner was very kind, very soothing and gentle in his
+manner, just as that other coroner had been when dealing with Ellen
+Green at the inquest on that poor drowned girl.
+
+After the witness had repeated in a toneless voice the solemn words
+of the oath, she began to be taken, step by step, though her story.
+At once Mrs. Bunting realised that this was the woman who claimed
+to have seen The Avenger from her bedroom window. Gaining confidence,
+as she went on, the witness described how she had heard a long-drawn,
+stifled screech, and, aroused from deep sleep, had instinctively
+jumped out of bed and rushed to her window.
+
+The coroner looked down at something lying on his desk. "Let me
+see! Here is the plan. Yes--I think I understand that the house
+in which you are lodging exactly faces the alley where the two crimes
+were committed?"
+
+And there arose a quick, futile discussion. The house did not face
+the alley, but the window of the witness's bedroom faced the alley.
+
+"A distinction without a difference," said the coroner testily.
+"And now tell us as clearly and quickly as you can what you saw when
+you looked out."
+
+There fell a dead silence on the crowded court. And then the woman
+broke out, speaking more volubly and firmly than she had yet done.
+"I saw 'im!" she cried. "I shall never forget it--no, not till my
+dying day!" And she looked round defiantly.
+
+Mrs. Bunting suddenly remembered a chat one of the newspaper men had
+had with a person who slept under this woman's room. That person
+had unkindly said she felt sure that Lizzie Cole had not got up that
+night--that she had made up the whole story. She, the speaker, slept
+lightly, and that night had been tending a sick child. Accordingly,
+she would have heard if there had been either the scream described
+by Lizzie Cole, or the sound of Lizzie Cole jumping out of bed.
+
+"We quite understand that you think you saw the"--the coroner
+hesitated--"the individual who had just perpetrated these terrible
+crimes. But what we want to have from you is a description of him.
+In spite of the foggy atmosphere about which all are agreed, you
+say you saw him distinctly, walking along for some yards below your
+window. Now, please, try and tell us what he was like."
+
+The woman began twisting and untwisting the corner of a coloured
+handkerchief she held in her hand.
+
+"Let us begin at the beginning," said the coroner patiently. "What
+sort of a hat was this man wearing when you saw him hurrying from
+the passage?"
+
+"It was just a black 'at" said the witness at last, in a husky,
+rather anxious tone.
+
+"Yes--just a black hat. And a coat--were you able to see what
+sort of a coat he was wearing?"
+
+"'E 'adn't got no coat" she said decidedly. "No coat at all! I
+remembers that very perticulerly. I thought it queer, as it was
+so cold--everybody as can wears some sort o' coat this weather!"
+
+A juryman who had been looking at a strip of newspaper, and
+apparently not attending at all to what the witness was saying, here
+jumped up and put out his hand.
+
+"Yes?" the coroner turned to him.
+
+"I just want to say that this 'ere witness--if her name is Lizzie
+Cole, began by saying The Avenger was wearing a coat--a big, heavy
+coat. I've got it here, in this bit of paper."
+
+"I never said so!" cried the woman passionately. "I was made to
+say all those things by the young man what came to me from the
+Evening Sun. Just put in what 'e liked in 'is paper, 'e did--not
+what I said at all!"
+
+At this there was some laughter, quickly suppressed.
+
+"In future," said the coroner severely, addressing the juryman, who
+had now sat down again, "you must ask any question you wish to ask
+through your foreman, and please wait till I have concluded my
+examination of the witness."
+
+But this interruption, this--this accusation, had utterly upset
+the witness. She began contradicting herself hopelessly. The man
+she had seen hurrying by in the semi-darkness below was tall--no,
+he was short. He was thin--no, he was a stoutish young man. And
+as to whether he was carrying anything, there was quite an
+acrimonious discussion.
+
+Most positively, most confidently, the witness declared that she had
+seen a newspaper parcel under his arm; it had bulged out at the back
+--so she declared. But it was proved, very gently and firmly, that
+she had said nothing of the kind to the gentleman from Scotland Yard
+who had taken down her first account--in fact, to him she had
+declared confidently that the man had carried nothing--nothing at
+all; that she had seen his arms swinging up and down.
+
+One fact--if fact it could be called--the coroner did elicit.
+Lizzie Cole suddenly volunteered the statement that as he had passed
+her window he had looked up at her. This was quite a new statement.
+
+"He looked up at you?" repeated the coroner. "You said nothing of
+that in your examination."
+
+"I said nothink because I was scared--nigh scared to death!"
+
+"If you could really see his countenance, for we know the night was
+dark and foggy, will you please tell me what he was like?"
+
+But the coroner was speaking casually, his hand straying over his
+desk; not a creature in that court now believed the woman's story.
+
+"Dark!" she answered dramatically. "Dark, almost black! If you can
+take my meaning, with a sort of nigger look."
+
+And then there was a titter. Even the jury smiled. And sharply the
+coroner bade Lizzie Cole stand down.
+
+Far more credence was given to the evidence of the next witness.
+
+This was an older, quieter-looking woman, decently dressed in black.
+Being the wife of a night watchman whose work lay in a big warehouse
+situated about a hundred yards from the alley or passage where the
+crimes had taken place, she had gone out to take her husband some
+food he always had at one in the morning. And a man had passed her,
+breathing hard and walking very quickly. Her attention had been
+drawn to him because she very seldom met anyone at that hour, and
+because he had such an odd, peculiar look and manner.
+
+Mrs. Bunting, listening attentively, realised that it was very much
+from what this witness had said that the official description of The
+Avenger had been composed--that description which had brought such
+comfort to her, Ellen Bunting's, soul.
+
+This witness spoke quietly, confidently, and her account of the
+newspaper parcel the man was carrying was perfectly clear and
+positive.
+
+"It was a neat parcel," she said, "done up with string."
+
+She had thought it an odd thing for a respectably dressed young man
+to carry such a parcel--that was what had made her notice it. But
+when pressed, she had to admit that it had been a very foggy night
+--so foggy that she herself had been afraid of losing her way,
+though every step was familiar.
+
+When the third woman went into the box, and with sighs and tears
+told of her acquaintance with one of the deceased, with Johanna
+Cobbett, there was a stir of sympathetic attention. But she had
+nothing to say throwing any light on the investigation, save that
+she admitted reluctantly that "Anny" would have been such a nice,
+respectable young woman if it hadn't been for the drink.
+
+Her examination was shortened as much as possible; and so was that
+of the next witness, the husband of Johanna Cobbett. He was a very
+respectable-looking man, a foreman in a big business house at Croydon.
+He seemed to feel his position most acutely. He hadn't seen his
+wife for two years; he hadn't had news of her for six months. Before
+she took to drink she had been an admirable wife, and--and yes,
+mother.
+
+Yet another painful few minutes, to anyone who had a heart, or
+imagination to understand, was spent when the father of the murdered
+woman was in the box. He had had later news of his unfortunate
+daughter than her husband had had, but of course he could throw no
+light at all on her murder or murderer.
+
+A barman, who had served both the women with drink just before the
+public-house closed for the night, was handled rather roughly. He
+had stepped with a jaunty air into the box, and came out of it
+looking cast down, uneasy.
+
+And then there took place a very dramatic, because an utterly
+unexpected, incident. It was one of which the evening papers made
+the utmost much to Mrs. Bunting's indignation. But neither coroner
+nor jury--and they, after all, were the people who mattered--
+thought a great deal of it.
+
+There had come a pause in the proceedings. All seven witnesses had
+been heard, and a gentleman near Mrs. Bunting whispered, "They are
+now going to call Dr. Gaunt. He's been in every big murder case for
+the last thirty years. He's sure to have something interesting to
+say. It was really to hear him I came."
+
+But before Dr. Gaunt had time even to get up from the seat with
+which he had been accommodated close to the coroner, there came a
+stir among the general public, or, rather, among those spectators
+who stood near the low wooden door which separated the official
+part of the court from the gallery.
+
+The coroner's officer, with an apologetic air, approached the
+coroner, and banded him up an envelope. And again in an instant,
+there fell absolute silence on the court.
+
+Looking rather annoyed, the coroner opened the envelope. He glanced
+down the sheet of notepaper it contained. Then he looked up.
+
+"Mr.--" then he glanced down again. "Mr.--ah--Mr.--is it Cannot?"
+he said doubtfully, "may come forward."
+
+There ran a titter though the spectators, and the coroner frowned.
+
+A neat, jaunty-looking old gentleman, in a nice fur-lined overcoat,
+with a fresh, red face and white side-whiskers, was conducted from
+the place where he had been standing among the general public, to
+the witness-box.
+
+"This is somewhat out of order, Mr.--er--Cannot," said the
+coroner severely. "You should have sent me this note before the
+proceedings began. This gentleman," he said, addressing the jury,
+"informs me that he has something of the utmost importance to
+reveal in connection with our investigation."
+
+"I have remained silent--I have locked what I knew within my own
+breast"--began Mr. Cannot in a quavering voice, "because I am so
+afraid of the Press! I knew if I said anything, even to the police,
+that my house would be besieged by reporters and newspaper men. . . .
+I have a delicate wife, Mr. Coroner. Such a state of things--the
+state of things I imagine--might cause her death--indeed, I hope
+she will never read a report of these proceedings. Fortunately, she
+has an excellent trained nurse--"
+
+"You will now take the oath," said the coroner sharply. He already
+regretted having allowed this absurd person to have his say.
+
+Mr. Cannot took the oath with a gravity and decorum which had been
+lacking in most of those who had preceded him.
+
+"I will, address myself to the jury," he began.
+
+"You will do nothing of the sort," broke in the coroner. "Now,
+please attend to me. You assert in your letter that you know who
+is the--the--"
+
+"The Avenger," put in Mr. Cannot promptly.
+
+"The perpetrator of these crimes. You further declare that you met
+him on the very night he committed the murder we are now
+investigating?"
+
+"I do so declare," said Mr. Cannot confidently. "Though in the best
+of health myself,"--he beamed round the court, a now amused,
+attentive court--"it is my fate to be surrounded by sick people, to
+have only ailing friends. I have to trouble you with my private
+affairs, Mr. Coroner, in order to explain why I happened to be out
+at so undue an hour as one o'clock in the morning--"
+
+Again a titter ran through the court. Even the jury broke into
+broad smiles.
+
+"Yes," went on the witness solemnly, "I was with a sick friend--in
+fact, I may say a dying friend, for since then he has passed away.
+I will not reveal my exact dwelling-place; you, sir, have it on my
+notepaper. It is not necessary to reveal it, but you will understand
+me when I say that in order to come home I had to pass through a
+portion of the Regent's Park; and it was there--to be exact, about
+the middle of Prince's Terrace--when a very peculiar-looking
+individual stopped and accosted me."
+
+Mrs. Bunting's hand shot up to her breast. A feeling of deadly fear
+took possession of her.
+
+"I mustn't faint," she said to herself hurriedly. "I mustn't faint!
+Whatever's the matter with me?" She took out her bottle of
+smelling-salts, and gave it a good, long sniff.
+
+"He was a grim, gaunt man, was this stranger, Mr. Coroner, with a
+very odd-looking face. I should say an educated man--in common
+parlance, a gentleman. What drew my special attention to him was
+that he was talking aloud to himself--in fact, he seemed to be
+repeating poetry. I give you my word, I had no thought of The
+Avenger, no thought at all. To tell you the truth, I thought this
+gentleman was a poor escaped lunatic, a man who'd got away from his
+keeper. The Regent's Park, sir, as I need hardly tell you, is a
+most quiet and soothing neighbourhood--"
+
+And then a member of the general public gave a loud guffaw.
+
+"I appeal to you; sir," the old gentleman suddenly cried out "to
+protect me from this unseemly levity! I have not come here with
+any other object than that of doing my duty as a citizen!"
+
+"I must ask you to keep to what is strictly relevant" said the
+coroner stiffly. "Time is going on, and I have another important
+witness to call--a medical witness. Kindly tell me, as shortly as
+possible, what made you suppose that this stranger could possibly
+be--" with an effort he brought out for the first time since the
+proceedings began, the words, "The Avenger?"
+
+"I am coming to that!" said Mr. Cannot hastily. "I am coming to
+that! Bear with me a little longer, Mr. Coroner. It was a foggy
+night, but not as foggy as it became later. And just when we were
+passing one an-other, I and this man, who was talking aloud to
+himself--he, instead of going on, stopped and turned towards
+me. That made me feel queer and uncomfortable, the more so that
+there was a very wild, mad look on his face. I said to him, as
+soothingly as possible, 'A very foggy night, sir.' And he said,
+'Yes--yes, it is a foggy night, a night fit for the commission of
+dark and salutary deeds.' A very strange phrase, sir, that--'dark
+and salutary deeds.'" He looked at the coroner expectantly--
+
+"Well? Well, Mr. Cannot? Was that all? Did you see this person
+go off in the direction of--of King's Cross, for instance?"
+
+"No." Mr. Cannot reluctantly shook his head. "No, I must honestly
+say I did not. He walked along a certain way by my side, and then
+he crossed the road and was lost in the fog."
+
+"That will do," said the coroner. He spoke more kindly. "I thank
+you, Mr. Cannot, for coming here and giving us what you evidently
+consider important information."
+
+Mr. Cannot bowed, a funny, little, old-fashioned bow, and again some
+of those present tittered rather foolishly.
+
+As he was stepping down from the witness-box, he turned and looked
+up at the coroner, opening his lips as he did so. There was a
+murmur of talking going on, but Mrs. Bunting, at any rate, heard
+quite distinctly what it was that he said:
+
+"One thing I have forgotten, sir, which may be of importance. The
+man carried a bag--a rather light-coloured leather bag, in his left
+hand. It was such a bag, sir, as might well contain a long-handled
+knife."
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked at the reporters' table. She remembered suddenly
+that she had told Bunting about the disappearance of Mr. Sleuth's bag.
+And then a feeling of intense thankfulness came over her; not a
+single reporter at the long, ink-stained table had put down that last
+remark of Mr. Cannot. In fact, not one of them had heard it.
+
+Again the last witness put up his hand to command attention. And
+then silence did fall on the court.
+
+"One word more," he said in a quavering voice. "May I ask to be
+accommodated with a seat for the rest of the proceedings? I see
+there is some room left on the witnesses' bench." And, without
+waiting for permission, he nimbly stepped across and sat down.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. Her friend, the inspector, was
+bending over her.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to come along now," he said urgently.--"I
+don't suppose you want to hear the medical evidence. It's always
+painful for a female to hear that. And there'll be an awful rush
+when the inquest's over. I could get you away quietly now."
+
+She rose, and, pulling her veil down over her pale face, followed
+him obediently.
+
+Down the stone staircase they went, and through the big, now empty,
+room downstairs.
+
+"I'll let you out the back way," he said. "I expect you're tired,
+ma'am, and will like to get home to a cup o' tea."
+
+"I don't know how to thank you!" There were tears in her eyes.
+She was trembling with excitement and emotion. "You have been good
+to me."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," he said a little awkwardly. "I expect you
+went though a pretty bad time, didn't you?"
+
+"Will they be having that old gentleman again?" she spoke in a
+whisper, and looked up at him with a pleading, agonised look.
+
+"Good Lord, no! Crazy old fool! We're troubled with a lot of
+those sort of people, you know, ma'am, and they often do have funny
+names, too. You see, that sort is busy all their lives in the City,
+or what not; then they retires when they gets about sixty, and
+they're fit to hang themselves with dulness. Why, there's hundreds
+of lunies of the sort to be met in London. You can't go about at
+night and not meet 'em. Plenty of 'em!"
+
+"Then you don't think there was anything in what he said?" she
+ventured.
+
+"In what that old gent said? Goodness--no!" he laughed
+good-naturedly. "But I'll tell you what I do think. If it wasn't
+for the time that had gone by, I should believe that the second
+witness had seen that crafty devil--" he lowered his voice. "But,
+there, Dr. Gaunt declares most positively--so did two other medical
+gentlemen--that the poor creatures had been dead hours when they
+was found. Medical gentlemen are always very positive about their
+evidence. They have to be--otherwise who'd believe 'em? If we'd
+time I could tell you of a case in which--well, 'twas all because
+of Dr. Gaunt that the murderer escaped. We all knew perfectly well
+the man we caught did it, but he was able to prove an alibi as to
+the time Dr. Gaunt said the poor soul was killed."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+It was not late even now, for the inquest had begun very punctually,
+but Mrs. Bunting felt that no power on earth should force her to go
+to Ealing. She felt quite tired out and as if she could think of
+nothing.
+
+Pacing along very slowly, as if she were an old, old woman, she
+began listlessly turning her steps towards home. Somehow she felt
+that it would do her more good to stay out in the air than take the
+train. Also she would thus put off the moment--the moment to which
+she looked forward with dread and dislike--when she would have to
+invent a circumstantial story as to what she had said to the doctor,
+and what the doctor had said to her.
+
+Like most men and women of his class, Bunting took a great interest
+in other people's ailments, the more interest that he was himself so
+remarkably healthy. He would feel quite injured if Ellen didn't
+tell him everything that had happened; everything, that is, that the
+doctor had told her.
+
+As she walked swiftly along, at every corner, or so it seemed to her,
+and outside every public-house, stood eager boys selling the latest
+edition of the afternoon papers to equally eager buyers. "Avenger
+Inquest?" they shouted exultantly. "All the latest evidence!" At
+one place, where there were a row of contents-bills pinned to the
+pavement by stones, she stopped and looked down. "Opening of the
+Avenger Inquest. What is he really like? Full description." On yet
+another ran the ironic query: "Avenger Inquest. Do you know him?"
+
+And as that facetious question stared up at her in huge print, Mrs.
+Bunting turned sick--so sick and faint that she did what she had
+never done before in her life--she pushed her way into a
+public-house, and, putting two pennies down on the counter, asked
+for, and received, a glass of cold water.
+
+As she walked along the now gas-lit streets, she found her mind
+dwelling persistently--not on the inquest at which she had been
+present, not even on The Avenger, but on his victims.
+
+Shudderingly, she visualised the two cold bodies lying in the
+mortuary. She seemed also to see that third body, which, though
+cold, must yet be warmer than the other two, for at this time
+yesterday The Avenger's last victim had been alive, poor soul--
+alive and, according to a companion of hers whom the papers had
+already interviewed, particularly merry and bright.
+
+Hitherto Mrs. Bunting had been spared in any real sense a vision of
+The Avenger's victims. Now they haunted her, and she wondered
+wearily if this fresh horror was to be added to the terrible fear
+which encompassed her night and day.
+
+As she came within sight of home, her spirit suddenly lightened.
+The narrow, drab-coloured little house, flanked each side by others
+exactly like it in every single particular, save that their front
+yards were not so well kept, looked as if it could, aye, and would,
+keep any secret closely hidden.
+
+For a moment, at any rate, The Avenger's victims receded from her
+mind. She thought of them no more. All her thoughts were
+concentrated on Bunting--Bunting and Mr. Sleuth. She wondered what
+had happened during her absence--whether the lodger had rung his
+bell, and, if so, how he had got on with Bunting, and Bunting with
+him?
+
+She walked up the little flagged path wearily, and yet with a
+pleasant feeling of home-coming. And then she saw that Bunting must
+have been watching for her behind the now closely drawn curtains,
+for before she could either knock or ring he had opened the door.
+
+"I was getting quite anxious about you," he exclaimed. "Come in,
+Ellen, quick! You must be fair perished a day like now--and you
+out so little as you are. Well? I hope you found the doctor all
+right?" He looked at her with affectionate anxiety.
+
+And then there came a sudden, happy thought to Mrs. Bunting. "No,"
+she said slowly, "Doctor Evans wasn't in. I waited, and waited, and
+waited, but he never came in at all. 'Twas my own fault," she added
+quickly. Even at such a moment as this she told herself that though
+she had, in a sort of way, a kind of right to lie to her husband,
+she had no sight to slander the doctor who had been so kind to her
+years ago. "I ought to have sent him a card yesterday night," she
+said. "Of course, I was a fool to go all that way, just on chance
+of finding a doctor in. It stands to reason they've got to go out
+to people at all times of day."
+
+"I hope they gave you a cup of tea?" he said.
+
+And again she hesitated, debating a point with herself: if the
+doctor had a decent sort of servant, of course, she, Ellen Bunting,
+would have been offered a cup of tea, especially if she explained
+she'd known him a long time.
+
+She compromised. "I was offered some," she said, in a weak, tired
+voice. "But there, Bunting, I didn't feel as if I wanted it. I'd
+be very grateful for a cup now--if you'd just make it for me over
+the ring."
+
+"'Course I will," he said eagerly. "You just come in and sit down,
+my dear. Don't trouble to take your things off now--wait till
+you've had tea."
+
+And she obeyed him. "Where's Daisy?" she asked suddenly. "I thought
+the girl would be back by the time I got home."
+
+"She ain't coming home to-day"--there was an odd, sly, smiling look
+on Bunting's face.
+
+"Did she send a telegram?" asked Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"No. Young Chandler's just come in and told me. He's been over
+there and,--would you believe it, Ellen?--he's managed to make
+friends with Margaret. Wonderful what love will do, ain't it? He
+went over there just to help Daisy carry her bag back, you know,
+and then Margaret told him that her lady had sent her some money
+to go to the play, and she actually asked Joe to go with them this
+evening--she and Daisy--to the pantomime. Did you ever hear o'
+such a thing?"
+
+"Very nice for them, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bunting absently. But
+she was pleased--pleased to have her mind taken off herself. "Then
+when is that girl coming home?" she asked patiently.
+
+"Well, it appears that Chandler's got to-morrow morning off too--
+this evening and to-morrow morning. He'll be on duty all night,
+but he proposes to go over and bring Daisy back in time for early
+dinner. Will that suit you, Ellen?"
+
+"Yes. That'll be all right," she said. "I don't grudge the girl
+her bit of pleasure. One's only young once. By the way, did the
+lodger ring while I was out?"
+
+Bunting turned round from the gas-ring, which he was watching to
+see the kettle boil. "No," he said. "Come to think of it, it's
+rather a funny thing, but the truth is, Ellen, I never gave Mr.
+Sleuth a thought. You see, Chandler came in and was telling me all
+about Margaret, laughing-like, and then something else happened
+while you was out, Ellen."
+
+"Something else happened?" she said in a startled voice. Getting
+up from her chair she came towards her husband: "What happened?
+Who came?"
+
+"Just a message for me, asking if I could go to-night to wait at a
+young lady's birthday party. In Hanover Terrace it is. A waiter
+--one of them nasty Swiss fellows as works for nothing--fell out
+just at the last minute and so they had to send for me."
+
+His honest face shone with triumph. The man who had taken over his
+old friend's business in Baker Street had hitherto behaved very
+badly to Bunting, and that though Bunting had been on the books for
+ever so long, and had always given every satisfaction. But this new
+man had never employed him--no, not once.
+
+"I hope you didn't make yourself too cheap?" said his wife jealously.
+
+"No, that I didn't! I hum'd and haw'd a lot; and I could see the
+fellow was quite worried--in fact, at the end he offered me
+half-a-crown more. So I graciously consented!"
+
+Husband and wife laughed more merrily than they had done for a long
+time.
+
+"You won't mind being alone, here? I don't count the lodger--he's
+no good--" Bunting looked at her anxiously. He was only prompted
+to ask the question because lately Ellen had been so queer, so
+unlike herself. Otherwise it never would have occurred to him that
+she could be afraid of being alone in the house. She had often been
+so in the days when he got more jobs.
+
+She stared at him, a little suspiciously. "I be afraid?" she echoed.
+"Certainly not. Why should I be? I've never been afraid before.
+What d'you exactly mean by that, Bunting?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. I only thought you might feel funny-like, all alone
+on this ground floor. You was so upset yesterday when that young
+fool Chandler came, dressed up, to the door."
+
+"I shouldn't have been frightened if he'd just been an ordinary
+stranger," she said shortly. "He said something silly to me--just
+in keeping with his character-like, and it upset me. Besides, I
+feel better now."
+
+As she was sipping gratefully her cup of tea, there came a noise
+outside, the shouts of newspaper-sellers.
+
+"I'll just run out," said Bunting apologetically, "and see what
+happened at that inquest to-day. Besides, they may have a clue
+about the horrible affair last night. Chandler was full of it--
+when he wasn't talking about Daisy and Margaret, that is. He's
+on to-night, luckily not till twelve o'clock; plenty of time to
+escort the two of 'em back after the play. Besides, he said
+he'll put them into a cab and blow the expense, if the panto'
+goes on too long for him to take 'em home."
+
+"On to-night?". repeated Mrs. Bunting. "Whatever for?"
+
+"Well, you see, The Avenger's always done 'em in couples, so to
+speak. They've got an idea that he'll have a try again to-night.
+However, even so, Joe's only on from midnight till five o'clock.
+Then he'll go and turn in a bit before going off to fetch Daisy,
+Fine thing to be young, ain't it, Ellen?"
+
+"I can't believe that he'd go out on such a night as this!"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Bunting, staring at her. Ellen had spoken
+so oddly, as if to herself, and in so fierce and passionate a tone.
+
+"What do I mean?" she repeated--and a great fear clutched at her
+heart. What had she said? She had been thinking aloud.
+
+"Why, by saying he won't go out. Of course, he has to go out.
+Besides, he'll have been to the play as it is. 'Twould be a pretty
+thing if the police didn't go out, just because it was cold!"
+
+"I--I was thinking of The Avenger," said Mrs. Bunting. She looked
+at her husband fixedly. Somehow she had felt impelled to utter
+those true words.
+
+"He don't take no heed of heat nor cold," said Bunting sombrely.
+"I take it the man's dead to all human feeling--saving, of
+course, revenge."
+
+"So that's your idea about him, is it?" She looked across at her
+husband. Somehow this dangerous, this perilous conversation between
+them attracted her strangely. She felt as if she must go on with it.
+"D'you think he was the man that woman said she saw? That young
+man what passed her with a newspaper parcel?"
+
+"Let me see," he said slowly. "I thought that 'twas from the bedroom
+window a woman saw him?"
+
+"No, no. I mean the other woman, what was taking her husband's
+breakfast to him in the warehouse. She was far the most
+respectable-looking woman of the two," said Mrs. Bunting impatiently.
+
+And then, seeing her husband's look of utter, blank astonishment,
+she felt a thrill of unreasoning terror. She must have gone suddenly
+mad to have said what she did! Hurriedly she got up from her chair.
+"There, now," she said; "here I am gossiping all about nothing when
+I ought to be seeing about the lodger's supper. It was someone in
+the train talked to me about that person as thinks she saw The
+Avenger."
+
+Without waiting for an answer, she went into her bedroom, lit the
+gas, and shut the door. A moment later she heard Bunting go out to
+buy the paper they had both forgotten during their dangerous
+discussion.
+
+As she slowly, languidly took off her nice, warm coat and shawl,
+Mrs. Bunting found herself shivering. It was dreadfully cold, quite
+unnaturally cold even for the time of year.
+
+She looked longingly towards the fireplace. It was now concealed
+by the washhand-stand, but how pleasant it would be to drag that
+stand aside and light a bit of fire, especially as Bunting was going
+to be out to-night. He would have to put on his dress clothes, and
+she didn't like his dressing in the sitting-room. It didn't suit
+her ideas that he should do so. How if she did light the fire here,
+in their bedroom? It would be nice for her to have bit of fire to
+cheer her up after he had gone.
+
+Mrs. Bunting knew only too well that she would have very little
+sleep the coming night. She looked over, with shuddering distaste,
+at her nice, soft bed. There she would lie, on that couch of little
+ease, listening--listening. . . .
+
+She went down to the kitchen. Everything was ready for Mr. Sleuth's
+supper, for she had made all her preparations before going out so
+as not to have to hurry back before it suited her to do so.
+
+Leaning the tray for a moment on the top of the banisters, she
+listened. Even in that nice warm drawing-room, and with a good
+fire, how cold the lodger must feel sitting studying at the table!
+But unwonted sounds were coming through the door. Mr. Sleuth was
+moving restlessly about the room, not sitting reading, as was his
+wont at this time of the evening.
+
+She knocked, and then waited a moment.
+
+There came the sound of a sharp click, that of the key turning in
+the lock of the chiffonnier cupboard--or so Mr. Sleuth's landlady
+could have sworn.
+
+There was a pause--she knocked again.
+
+"Come in," said Mr. Sleuth loudly, and she opened the door and
+carried in the tray.
+
+"You are a little earlier than usual, are you not Mrs. Bunting?"
+he said, with a touch of irritation in his voice.
+
+"I don't think so, sir, but I've been out. Perhaps I lost count of
+the time. I thought you'd like your breakfast early, as you had
+dinner rather sooner than usual."
+
+"Breakfast? Did you say breakfast, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure! I meant supper." He looked at
+her fixedly. It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that there was a terrible
+questioning look in his dark, sunken eyes.
+
+"Aren't you well?" he said slowly. "You don't look well, Mrs.
+Bunting."
+
+"No, sir," she said. "I'm not well. I went over to see a doctor
+this afternoon, to Ealing, sir."
+
+"I hope he did you good, Mrs. Bunting"--the lodger's voice had
+become softer, kinder in quality.
+
+"It always does me good to see the doctor," said Mrs. Bunting
+evasively.
+
+And then a very odd smile lit up Mr. Sleuth's face. "Doctors are a
+maligned body of men," he said. "I'm glad to hear you speak well of
+them. They do their best, Mrs. Bunting. Being human they are liable
+to err, but I assure you they do their best."
+
+"That I'm sure they do, sir "--she spoke heartily, sincerely.
+Doctors had always treated her most kindly, and even generously.
+
+And then, having laid the cloth, and put the lodger's one hot dish
+upon it, she went towards the door. "Wouldn't you like me to bring
+up another scuttleful of coals, sir? it's bitterly cold--getting
+colder every minute. A fearful night to have to go out in--" she
+looked at him deprecatingly.
+
+And then Mr. Sleuth did something which startled her very much.
+Pushing his chair back, he jumped up and drew himself to his full
+height.
+
+"What d'you mean?" he stammered. "Why did you say that, Mrs.
+Bunting?"
+
+She stared at him, fascinated, affrighted. Again there came an
+awful questioning look over his face.
+
+"I was thinking of Bunting, sir. He's got a job to-night. He's
+going to act as waiter at a young lady's birthday party. I was
+thinking it's a pity he has to turn out, and in his thin clothes,
+too"--she brought out her words jerkily.
+
+Mr. Sleuth seemed somewhat reassured, and again he sat down. "Ah!"
+he said. "Dear me--I'm sorry to hear that! I hope your husband
+will not catch cold, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+And then she shut the door, and went downstairs.
+
+******
+
+Without telling Bunting what she meant to do, she dragged the heavy
+washhand-stand away from the chimneypiece, and lighted the fire.
+
+Then in some triumph she called Bunting in.
+
+"Time for you to dress," she cried out cheerfully, "and I've got a
+little bit of fire for you to dress by."
+
+As he exclaimed at her extravagance, "Well, 'twill be pleasant for
+me, too; keep me company-like while you're out; and make the room
+nice and warm when you come in. You'll be fair perished, even
+walking that short way," she said.
+
+And then, while her husband was dressing, Mrs. Bunting went upstairs
+and cleared away Mr. Sleuth's supper.
+
+The lodger said no word while she was so engaged--no word at all.
+
+He was sitting away from the table, rather an unusual thing for him
+to do, and staring into the fire, his hands on his knees.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked lonely, very, very lonely and forlorn. Somehow, a
+great rush of pity, as well as of horror, came over Mrs. Bunting's
+heart. He was such a--a--she searched for a word in her mind, but
+could only find the word "gentle"--he was such a nice, gentle
+gentleman, was Mr. Sleuth. Lately he had again taken to leaving his
+money about, as he had done the first day or two, and with some
+concern his landlady had seen that the store had diminished a good
+deal. A very simple calculation had made her realise that almost the
+whole of that missing money had come her way, or, at any rate, had
+passed through her hands.
+
+Mr. Sleuth never stinted himself as to food, or stinted them, his
+landlord and his landlady, as to what he had said he would pay.
+And Mrs. Bunting's conscience pricked her a little, for he hardly
+ever used that room upstairs--that room for which he had paid extra
+so generously. If Bunting got another job or two through that nasty
+man in Baker Street,--and now that the ice had been broken between
+them it was very probable that he would do so, for he was a very
+well-trained, experienced waiter--then she thought she would tell
+Mr. Sleuth that she no longer wanted him to pay as much as he was
+now doing.
+
+She looked anxiously, deprecatingly, at his long, bent back.
+
+"Good-night, sir," she said at last.
+
+Mr. Sleuth turned round. His face looked sad and worn.
+
+"I hope you'll sleep well, sir."
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I shall sleep well. But perhaps I shall take a
+little turn first. Such is my way, Mrs. Bunting; after I have been
+studying all day I require a little exercise."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't go out to-night," she said deprecatingly. "'Tisn't
+fit for anyone to be out in the bitter cold."
+
+"And yet--and yet"--he looked at her attentively--"there will
+probably be many people out in the streets to-night."
+
+"A many more than usual, I fear, sir."
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Sleuth quickly. "Is it not a strange thing,
+Mrs. Bunting, that people who have all day in which to amuse
+themselves should carry their revels far into the night?"
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking of revellers, sir; I was thinking"--she
+hesitated, then, with a gasping effort Mrs. Bunting brought out the
+words, "of the police."
+
+"The police?" He put up his right hand and stroked his chin two or
+three times with a nervous gesture. "But what is man--what is man's
+puny power or strength against that of God, or even of those over
+whose feet God has set a guard?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked at his landlady with a kind of triumph lighting up
+his face, and Mrs. Bunting felt a shuddering sense of relief. Then
+she had not offended her lodger? She had not made him angry by that,
+that--was it a hint she had meant to convey to him?
+
+"Very true, sir," she said respectfully. "But Providence means us
+to take care o' ourselves too." And then she closed the door behind
+her and went downstairs.
+
+But Mr. Sleuth's landlady did not go on, down to the kitchen. She
+came into her sitting-room, and, careless of what Bunting would think
+the next morning, put the tray with the remains of the lodger's meal on
+her table. Having done that, and having turned out the gas in the
+passage and the sitting-room, she went into her bedroom and closed the
+door.
+
+The fire was burning brightly and clearly. She told herself that
+she did not need any other light to undress by.
+
+What was it made the flames of the fire shoot up, shoot down, in
+that queer way? But watching it for awhile, she did at last doze
+off a bit.
+
+And then--and then Mrs. Bunting woke with a sudden thumping of her
+heart. Woke to see that the fire was almost out--woke to hear a
+quarter to twelve chime out--woke at last to the sound she had been
+listening for before she fell asleep--the sound of Mr. Sleuth,
+wearing his rubber-soled shoes, creeping downstairs, along the
+passage, and so out, very, very quietly by the front door.
+
+But once she was in bed Mrs. Bunting turned restless. She tossed
+this way and that, full of discomfort and unease. Perhaps it was
+the unaccustomed firelight dancing on the walls, making queer shadows
+all round her, which kept her so wide awake.
+
+She lay thinking and listening--listening and thinking. It even
+occurred to her to do the one thing that might have quieted her
+excited brain--to get a book, one of those detective stories of
+which Bunting had a slender store in the next room, and then,
+lighting the gas, to sit up and read.
+
+No, Mrs. Bunting had always been told it was very wrong to read in
+bed, and she was not in a mood just now to begin doing anything that
+she had been told was wrong. . . .
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+It was a very cold night--so cold, so windy, so snow-laden was the
+atmosphere, that everyone who could do so stayed indoors.
+
+Bunting, however, was now on his way home from what had proved a
+really pleasant job. A remarkable piece of luck had come his way
+this evening, all the more welcome because it was quite unexpected!
+The young lady at whose birthday party he had been present in
+capacity of waiter had come into a fortune that day, and she had had
+the gracious, the surprising thought of presenting each of the hired
+waiters with a sovereign!
+
+This gift, which had been accompanied by a few kind words, had gone
+to Bunting's heart. It had confirmed him in his Conservative
+principles; only gentlefolk ever behaved in that way; quiet,
+old-fashioned, respectable, gentlefolk, the sort of people of whom
+those nasty Radicals know nothing and care less!
+
+But the ex-butler was not as happy as he should have been.
+Slackening his footsteps, he began to think with puzzled concern of
+how queer his wife had seemed lately. Ellen had become so nervous,
+so "jumpy," that he didn't know what to make of her sometimes. She
+had never been really good-tempered--your capable, self-respecting
+woman seldom is--but she had never been like what she was now. And
+she didn't get better as the days went on; in fact she got worse.
+Of late she had been quite hysterical, and for no reason at all!
+Take that little practical joke of young Joe Chandler. Ellen knew
+quite well he often had to go about in some kind of disguise, and yet
+how she had gone on, quite foolish-like--not at all as one would
+have expected her to do.
+
+There was another queer thing about her which disturbed him in more
+senses than one. During the last three weeks or so Ellen had taken
+to talking in her sleep. "No, no, no!" she had cried out, only the
+night before. "It isn't true--I won't have it said--it's a lie!"
+And there had been a wail of horrible fear and revolt in her usually
+quiet, mincing voice.
+
+******
+
+Whew! it was cold; and he had stupidly forgotten his gloves.
+
+He put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and began walking
+more quickly.
+
+As h& tramped steadily along, the ex-butler suddenly caught sight
+of his lodger walking along the opposite side of the solitary street
+--one of those short streets leading off the broad road which
+encircles Regent's Park.
+
+Well! This was a funny time o' night to be taking a stroll for
+pleasure, like!
+
+Glancing across, Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth's tall, thin figure
+was rather bowed, and that his head was bent toward the ground. His
+left arm was thrust into his long Inverness tape, and so was quite
+hidden, but the other side of the cape bulged out, as if the lodger
+were carrying a bag or parcel in the hand which hung down straight.
+
+Mr. Sleuth was walking rather quickly, and as he walked he talked
+aloud, which, as Bunting knew, is not unusual with gentlemen who live
+much alone. It was clear that he had not yet become aware of the
+proximity of his landlord.
+
+Bunting told himself that Ellen was right. Their lodger was
+certainly a most eccentric, peculiar person. Strange, was it not,
+that that odd, luny-like gentleman should have made all the
+difference to his, Bunting's, and Mrs. Bunting's happiness and
+comfort in life?
+
+Again glancing across at Mr. Sleuth, he reminded himself, not for
+the first time, of this perfect lodger's one fault--his odd dislike
+to meat, and to what Bunting vaguely called to himself, sensible food.
+
+But there, you can't have everything! The more so that the lodger
+was not one of those crazy vegetarians who won't eat eggs and cheese.
+No, he was reasonable in this, as in everything else connected with
+his dealings with the Buntings.
+
+As we know, Bunting saw far less of the lodger than did his wife.
+Indeed, he had been upstairs only three or four times since Mr.
+Sleuth had been with them, and when his landlord had had occasion
+to wait on him the lodger had remained silent. Indeed, their
+gentleman had made it very clear that he did not like either the
+husband or wife to come up to his rooms without being definitely
+asked to do so.
+
+Now, surely, would be a good opportunity for a little genial
+conversation? Bunting felt pleased to see his lodger; it increased
+his general comfortable sense of satisfaction.
+
+So it was that the butler, still an active man for his years,
+crossed over the road, and, stepping briskly forward, began trying
+to overtake Mr. Sleuth. But the more he hurried along, the more the
+other hastened, and that without ever turning round to see whose
+steps he could hear echoing behind him on the now freezing pavement.
+
+Mr. Sleuth's own footsteps were quite inaudible--an odd circumstance,
+when you came to think of it--as Bunting did think of it later,
+lying awake by Mrs. Bunting's side in the pitch darkness. What it
+meant of course, was that the lodger had rubber soles on his shoes.
+Now Bunting had never had a pair of rubber-soled shoes sent down to
+him to dean. He had always supposed the lodger had only one pair of
+outdoor boots.
+
+The two men--the pursued and the pursuer--at last turned into the
+Marylebone Road; they were now within a few hundred yards of home.
+Plucking up courage, Bunting called out, his voice echoing freshly
+on the still air:
+
+"Mr Sleuth, sir? Mr. Sleuth!"
+
+The lodger stopped and turned round.
+
+He had been walking so quickly, and he was in so poor a physical
+condition, that the sweat was pouring down his face.
+
+"Ah! So it's you, Mr. Bunting? I heard footsteps behind me, and
+I hurried on. I wish I'd known that it was you; there are so many
+queer characters about at night in London."
+
+"Not on a night like this, sir. Only honest folk who have business
+out of doors would be out such a night as this. It is cold, sir!"
+
+And then into Bunting's slow and honest mind there suddenly crept
+the query as to what on earth Mr. Sleuth's own business out could be
+on this bitter night.
+
+"Cold?" the lodger repeated; he was panting a little, and his words
+came out sharp and quick through his thin lips. "I can't say that
+I find it cold, Mr. Bunting. When the snow falls, the air always
+becomes milder."
+
+"Yes, sir; but to-night there's such a sharp east wind. Why, it
+freezes the very marrow in one's bones! Still, there's nothing like
+walking in cold weather to make one warm, as you seem to have found,
+sir."
+
+Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth kept his distance in a rather strange
+way; he walked at the edge of the pavement, leaving the rest of it,
+on the wall side, to his landlord.
+
+"I lost my way," he said abruptly. "I've been over Primrose Hill to
+see a friend of mine, a man with whom I studied when I was a lad,
+and then, coming back, I lost my way."
+
+Now they had come right up to the little gate which opened on the
+shabby, paved court in front of the house--that gate which now was
+never locked.
+
+Mr. Sleuth, pushing suddenly forward, began walking up the flagged
+path, when, with a "By your leave, sir," the ex-butler, stepping
+aside, slipped in front of his lodger, in order to open the front
+door for him.
+
+As he passed by Mr. Sleuth, the back of Bunting's bare left hand
+brushed lightly against the long Inverness cape the lodger was
+wearing, and, to Bunting's surprise, the stretch of cloth against
+which his hand lay for a moment was not only damp, damp maybe from
+stray flakes of snow which had settled upon it, but wet--wet and
+gluey.
+
+Bunting thrust his left hand into his pocket; it was with the other
+that he placed the key in the lock of the door.
+
+The two men passed into the hail together.
+
+The house seemed blackly dark in comparison with the lighted-up
+road outside, and as he groped forward, closely followed by the
+lodger, there came over Bunting a sudden, reeling sensation of
+mortal terror, an instinctive, assailing knowledge of frightful
+immediate danger.
+
+A stuffless voice--the voice of his first wife, the long-dead
+girl to whom his mind so seldom reverted nowadays--uttered into
+his ear the words, "Take care!"
+
+And then the lodger spoke. His voice was harsh and grating,
+though not loud.
+
+"I'm afraid, Mr. Bunting, that you must have felt something dirty,
+foul, on my coat? It's too long a story to tell you now, but I
+brushed up against a dead animal, a creature to whose misery some
+thoughtful soul had put an end, lying across a bench on Primrose
+Hill."
+
+"No, sir, no. I didn't notice nothing. I scarcely touched you,
+sir."
+
+It seemed as if a power outside himself compelled Bunting to utter
+these lying words. "And now, sir, I'll be saying good-night to you,"
+he said.
+
+Stepping back he pressed with all the strength that was in him
+against the wall, and let the other pass him. There was a pause,
+and then--"Good-night," returned Mr. Sleuth, in a hollow voice.
+Bunting waited until the lodger had gone upstairs, and then,
+lighting the gas, he sat down there, in the hall. Mr. Sleuth's
+landlord felt very queer--queer and sick.
+
+He did not draw his left hand out of his pocket till he heard Mr.
+Sleuth shut the bedroom door upstairs. Then he held up his left
+hand and looked at it curiously; it was flecked, streaked with
+pale reddish blood.
+
+Taking off his boots, he crept into the room where his wife lay
+asleep. Stealthily he walked across to the wash-hand-stand, and
+dipped a hand into the water-jug.
+
+"Whatever are you doing? What on earth are you doing?" came a
+voice from the bed, and Bunting started guiltily.
+
+"I'm just washing my hands."
+
+"Indeed, you're doing nothing of the sort! I never heard of such
+a thing--putting your hand into the water in which I was going to
+wash my face to-morrow morning!"
+
+"I'm very sorry, Ellen," he said meekly; "I meant to throw it away.
+You don't suppose I would have let you wash in dirty water, do you?"
+
+She said no more, but, as he began undressing himself, Mrs. Bunting
+lay staring at him in a way that made her husband feel even more
+uncomfortable than he was already.
+
+At last he got into bed. He wanted to break the oppressive silence
+by telling Ellen about the sovereign the young lady had given him,
+but that sovereign now seemed to Bunting of no more account than if
+it had been a farthing he had picked up in the road outside.
+
+Once more his wife spoke, and he gave so great a start that it shook
+the bed.
+
+"I suppose that you don't know that you've left the light burning in
+the hall, wasting our good money?" she observed tartly.
+
+He got up painfully and opened the door into the passage. It was as
+she had said; the gas was flaring away, wasting their good money--or,
+rather, Mr. Sleuth's good money. Since he had come to be their lodger
+they had not had to touch their rent money.
+
+Bunting turned out the light and groped his way back to the room, and
+so to bed. Without speaking again to each other, both husband and
+wife lay awake till dawn.
+
+The next morning Mr. Sleuth's landlord awoke with a start; he felt
+curiously heavy about the limbs, and tired about the eyes.
+
+Drawing his watch from under his pillow, he saw that it was seven
+o'clock. Without waking his wife, he got out of bed and pulled the
+blind a little to one side. It was snowing heavily, and, as is the
+way when it snows, even in London, everything was strangely,
+curiously still. After he had dressed he went out into the passage.
+As he had at once dreaded and hoped, their newspaper was already
+lying on the mat. It was probably the sound of its being pushed
+through the letter-box which had waked him from his unrestful
+sleep.
+
+He picked the paper up and went into the sitting-room then,
+shutting the door behind him carefully, he spread the newspaper
+wide open on the table, and bent over it.
+
+As Bunting at last looked up and straightened himself, an expression
+of intense relief shone upon his stolid face. The item of news he
+had felt certain would be printed in big type on the middle sheet
+was not there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Feeling amazingly light-hearted, almost light-headed, Bunting lit
+the gas-ring to make his wife her morning cup of tea.
+
+While he was doing it, he suddenly heard her call out:
+
+"Bunting!" she cried weakly. "Bunting!" Quickly he hurried in
+response to her call. "Yes," he said. "What is it, my dear? I
+won't be a minute with your tea." And he smiled broadly, rather
+foolishly.
+
+She sat up and looked at him, a dazed expression on her face.
+
+"What are you grinning at?" she asked suspiciously.
+
+"I've had a wonderful piece of luck," he explained. "But you was
+so cross last night that I simply didn't dare tell you about it."
+
+"Well, tell me now," she said in a low voice.
+
+"I had a sovereign given me by the young lady. You see, it was her
+birthday party, Ellen, and she'd come into a nice bit of money, and
+she gave each of us waiters a sovereign."
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no comment. Instead, she lay back and closed her
+eyes.
+
+"What time d'you expect Daisy?" she asked languidly. "You didn't
+say what time Joe was going to fetch her, when we was talking about
+it yesterday."
+
+"Didn't I? Well, I expect they'll be in to dinner."
+
+"I wonder, how long that old aunt of hers expects us to keep her?"
+said Mrs. Bunting thoughtfully. All the cheer died out of Bunting's
+round face. He became sullen and angry. It would be a pretty thing
+if he couldn't have his own daughter for a bit--especially now that
+they were doing so well!
+
+"Daisy'll stay here just as long as she can," he said shortly.
+"It's too bad of you, Ellen, to talk like that! She helps you all
+she can; and she brisks us both up ever so much. Besides, 'twould
+be cruel--cruel to take the girl away just now, just as she and
+that young chap are making friends-like. One would suppose that
+even you would see the justice o' that!"
+
+But Mrs. Bunting made no answer.
+
+Bunting went off, back into the sitting-room. The water was boiling
+now, so he made the tea; and then, as he brought the little tray in,
+his heart softened. Ellen did look really ill--ill and wizened.
+He wondered if she had a pain about which she wasn't saying anything.
+She had never been one to grouse about herself.
+
+"The lodger and me came in together last night," he observed
+genially. "He's certainly a funny kind of gentleman. It wasn't
+the sort of night one would have chosen to go out for a walk, now
+was it? And yet he must'a been out a long time if what he said
+was true."
+
+"I don't wonder a quiet gentleman like Mr. Sleuth hates the
+crowded streets," she said slowly. "They gets worse every day--
+that they do! But go along now; I want to get up."
+
+He went back into their sitting-room, and, having laid the fire
+and put a match to it, he sat down comfortably with his newspaper.
+
+Deep down in his heart Bunting looked back to this last night with
+a feeling of shame and self-rebuke. Whatever had made such horrible
+thoughts and suspicions as had possessed him suddenly come into his
+head? And just because of a trifling thing like that blood. No
+doubt Mr. Sleuth's nose had bled--that was what had happened;
+though, come to think of it, he had mentioned brushing up against
+a dead animal.
+
+Perhaps Ellen was right after all. It didn't do for one to be
+always thinking of dreadful subjects, of murders and such-like. It
+made one go dotty--that's what it did.
+
+And just as he was telling himself that, there came to the door a
+loud knock, the peculiar rat-tat-tat of a telegraph boy. But before
+he had time to get across the room, let alone to the front door,
+Ellen had rushed through the room, clad only in a petticoat and
+shawl.
+
+"I'll go," she cried breathlessly. "I'll go, Bunting; don't you
+trouble."
+
+He stared at her, surprised, and followed her into the hall.
+
+She put out a hand, and hiding herself behind the door, took the
+telegram from the invisible boy. "You needn't wait," she said.
+"If there's an answer we'll send it out ourselves." Then she tore
+the envelope open--"Oh!" she said with a gasp of relief. "It's
+only from Joe Chandler, to say he can't go over to fetch Daisy this
+morning. Then you'll have to go."
+
+She walked back into their sitting-room. "There!" she said.
+"There it is, Bunting. You just read it."
+
+"Am on duty this morning. Cannot fetch Miss Daisy as arranged.--
+Chandler."
+
+"I wonder why he's on duty?" said Bunting slowly, uncomfortably.
+"I thought Joe's hours was as regular as clockwork--that nothing
+could make any difference to them. However, there it is. I suppose
+it'll do all right if I start about eleven o'clock? It may have
+left off snowing by then. I don't feel like going out again just
+now. I'm pretty tired this morning."
+
+"You start about twelve," said his wife quickly.
+
+"That'll give plenty of time."
+
+The morning went on quietly, uneventfully. Bunting received a
+letter from Old Aunt saying Daisy must come back next Monday, a
+little under a week from now. Mr. Sleuth slept soundly, or, at
+any rate, he made no sign of being awake; and though Mrs. Bunting
+often, stopped to listen, while she was doing her room, there
+came no sounds at all from overhead.
+
+Scarcely aware that it was so, both Bunting and his wife felt more
+cheerful than they had done for a long time. They had quite a
+pleasant little chat when Mrs. Bunting came and sat down for a bit,
+before going down to prepare Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
+
+"Daisy will be surprised to see you--not to say disappointed!" she
+observed, and she could not help laughing a little to herself at
+the thought. And when, at eleven, Bunting got up to go, she made
+him stay on a little longer. "There's no such great hurry as that,"
+she said good-temperedly. "It'll do quite well if you're there by
+half-past twelve. I'll get dinner ready myself. Daisy needn't help
+with that. I expect Margaret has worked her pretty hard."
+
+But at last there came the moment when Bunting had to start, and
+his wife went with him to the front door. It was still snowing,
+less heavily, but still snowing. There were very few people coming
+and going, and only just a few cabs and carts dragging cautiously
+along through the slush.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was still in the kitchen when there came a ring and a
+knock at the door--a now very familiar ring and knock. "Joe thinks
+Daisy's home again by now!" she said, smiling to herself.
+
+Before the door was well open, she heard Chandler's voice. "Don't
+be scared this time, Mrs. Bunting!" But though not exactly scared,
+she did give a gasp of surprise. For there stood Joe, made up to
+represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection,
+with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his
+seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, and greenish-black pot hat.
+
+"I haven't a minute," he said a little breathlessly. "But I thought
+I'd just run in to know if Miss Daisy was safe home again. You got
+my telegram all right? I couldn't send no other kind of message."
+
+"She's not back yet. Her father hasn't been gone long after her."
+Then, struck by a look in his eyes, "Joe, what's the matter?" she
+asked quickly.
+
+There came a thrill of suspense in her voice, her face grew drawn,
+while what little colour there was in it receded, leaving it very
+pale.
+
+"Well," he said. "Well, Mrs. Bunting, I've no business to say
+anything about it--but I will tell you!"
+
+He walked in and shut the door of the sitting-room carefully behind
+him. "There's been another of 'em!" he whispered. "But this time
+no one is to know anything about it--not for the present, I mean,"
+he corrected himself hastily. "The Yard thinks we've got a clue--
+and a good clue, too, this time."
+
+"But where--and how?" faltered Mrs. Bunting.
+
+"Well, 'twas just a bit of luck being able to keep it dark for the
+present"--he still spoke in that stifled, hoarse whisper. "The
+poor soul' was found dead on a bench on Primrose Hill. And just by
+chance 'twas one of our fellows saw the body first. He was on his
+way home, over Hampstead way. He knew where he'd be able to get an
+ambulance quick, and he made a very clever, secret job of it. I
+'spect he'll get promotion for that!"
+
+"What about the clue?" asked Mrs. Bunting, with dry lips. "You said
+there was a clue?"
+
+"Well, I don't rightly understand about the clue myself. All I
+knows is it's got something to do with a public-house, 'The Hammer
+and Tongs,' which isn't far off there. They feels sure The Avenger
+was in the bar just on closing-time."
+
+And then Mrs. Bunting sat down. She felt better now. It was natural
+the police should suspect a public-house loafer. "Then that's why you
+wasn't able to go and fetch Daisy, I suppose?"
+
+He nodded. "Mum's the word, Mrs. Bunting! It'll all be in the last
+editions of the evening newspapers--it can't be kep' out. There'd be
+too much of a row if 'twas!"
+
+"Are you going off to that public-house now?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I am. I've got a awk'ard job--to try and worm something out
+of the barmaid."
+
+"Something out of the barmaid?" repeated Mrs. Bunting nervously.
+"Why, whatever for?"
+
+He came and stood close to her. "They think 'twas a gentleman," he
+whispered.
+
+"A gentleman?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared at Chandler with a scared expression. "Whatever
+makes them think such a silly thing as that?"
+
+"Well, just before closing-time a very peculiar-looking gent, with a
+leather bag in his hand, went into the bar and asked for a glass of
+milk. And what d'you think he did? Paid for it with a sovereign!
+He wouldn't take no change--just made the girl a present of it!
+That's why the young woman what served him seems quite unwilling to
+give him away. She won't tell now what he was like. She doesn't
+know what he's wanted for, and we don't want her to know just yet.
+That's one reason why nothing's being said public about it. But
+there! I really must be going now. My time'll be up at three
+o'clock. I thought of coming in on the way back, and asking you for
+a cup o' tea, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"Do," she said. "Do, Joe. You'll be welcome," but there was no
+welcome in her tired voice.
+
+She let him go alone to the door, and then she went down to her
+kitchen, and began cooking Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
+
+The lodger would be sure to ring soon; and then any minute Bunting
+and Daisy might be home, and they'd want something, too. Margaret
+always had breakfast even when "the family" were away, unnaturally
+early.
+
+As she bustled about Mrs. Bunting tried to empty her mind of all
+thought. But it is very difficult to do that when one is in a state
+of torturing uncertainty. She had not dared to ask Chandler what
+they supposed that man who had gone into the public-house was really
+like. It was fortunate, indeed, that the lodger and that inquisitive
+young chap had never met face to face.
+
+At last Mr. Sleuth's bell rang--a quiet little tinkle. But when
+she went up with his breakfast the lodger was not in his sitting-room.
+
+Supposing him to be still in his bedroom, Mrs. Bunting put the cloth
+on the table, and then she heard the sound of his footsteps coming
+down the stairs, and her quick ears detected the slight whirring
+sound which showed that the gas-stove was alight. Mr. Sleuth had
+already lit the stove; that meant that he would carry out some
+elaborate experiment this afternoon.
+
+"Still snowing?" he said doubtfully. "How very, very quiet and
+still London is when under snow, Mrs. Bunting. I have never known
+it quite as quiet as this morning. Not a sound, outside or in. A
+very pleasant change from the shouting which sometimes goes on in
+the Marylebone Road."
+
+"Yes," she said dully. "It's awful quiet to-day--too quiet to my
+thinking. 'Tain't natural-like."
+
+The outside gate swung to, making a noisy clatter in the still air.
+
+"Is that someone coming in here?" asked Mr. Sleuth, drawing a quick,
+hissing breath. "Perhaps you will oblige me by going to the window
+and telling me who it is, Mrs. Bunting?"
+
+And his landlady obeyed him.
+
+"It's only Bunting, sir--Bunting and his daughter."
+
+"Oh! Is that all?"
+
+Mr. Sleuth hurried after her, and she shrank back a little. She
+had never been quite so near to the lodger before, save on that
+first day when she had been showing him her rooms.
+
+Side by side they stood, looking out of the window. And, as if
+aware that someone was standing there, Daisy turned her bright face
+up towards the window and smiled at her stepmother, and at the
+lodger, whose face she could only dimly discern.
+
+"A very sweet-looking young girl," said Mr. Sleuth thoughtfully.
+And then he quoted a little bit of poetry, and this took Mrs.
+Bunting very much aback.
+
+"Wordsworth," he murmured dreamily. "A poet too little read
+nowadays, Mrs. Bunting; but one with a beautiful feeling for nature,
+for youth, for innocence."
+
+"Indeed, sir?" Mrs. Bunting stepped back a little. "Your breakfast
+will be getting cold, sir, if you don't have it now."
+
+He went back to the table, obediently, and sat down as a child
+rebuked might have done.
+
+And then his landlady Left him.
+
+"Well?" said Bunting cheerily. "Everything went off quite all right.
+And Daisy's a lucky girl--that she is! Her Aunt Margaret gave her
+five shillings."
+
+But Daisy did not look as pleased as her father thought she ought
+to do.
+
+"I hope nothing's happened to Mr. Chandler," she said a little
+disconsolately. "The very last words he said to me last night was
+that he'd be there at ten o'clock. I got quite fidgety as the time
+went on and he didn't come."
+
+"He's been here," said Mrs. Bunting slowly.
+
+"Been here?" cried her husband. "Then why on earth didn't he go and
+fetch Daisy, if he'd time to come here?"
+
+"He was on the way to his job," his wife answered. "You run along,
+child, downstairs. Now that you are here you can make yourself
+useful."
+
+And Daisy reluctantly obeyed. She wondered what it was her
+stepmother didn't want her to hear.
+
+"I've something to tell you, Bunting."
+
+"Yes?" He looked across uneasily. "Yes, Ellen?"
+
+"There's been another o' those murders. But the police don't want
+anyone to know about it--not yet. That's why Joe couldn't go over
+and fetch Daisy. They're all on duty again."
+
+Bunting put out his hand and clutched hold of the edge of the
+mantelpiece. He had gone very red, but his wife was far too much
+concerned with her own feelings and sensations to notice it.
+
+There was a long silence between them. Then he spoke, making a
+great effort to appear unconcerned.
+
+"And where did it happen?" he asked. "Close to the other one?"
+
+She hesitated, then: "I don't know. He didn't say. But hush!"
+she added quickly. "Here's Daisy! Don't let's talk of that horror
+in front of her-like. Besides, I promised Chandler I'd be mum."
+
+And he acquiesced.
+
+"You can be laying the cloth, child, while I go up and clear away
+the lodger's breakfast." Without waiting for an answer, she hurried
+upstairs.
+
+Mr. Sleuth had left the greater part of the nice lemon sole untouched.
+"I don't feel well to-day," he said fretfully. "And, Mrs. Bunting?
+I should be much obliged if your husband would lend me that paper I
+saw in his hand. I do not often care to look at the public prints,
+but I should like to do so now."
+
+She flew downstairs. "Bunting," she said a little breathlessly,
+"the lodger would like you just to lend him the Sun."
+
+Bunting handed it over to her. "I've read it through," he observed.
+"You can tell him that I don't want it back again."
+
+On her way up she glanced down at the pink sheet. Occupying a third
+of the space was an irregular drawing, and under it was written, in
+rather large characters:
+
+"We are glad to be able to present our readers with an authentic
+reproduction of the footprint of the half-worn rubber sole which
+was almost certainly worn by The Avenger when he committed his
+double murder ten days ago."
+
+She went into the sitting-room. To her relief it was empty.
+
+"Kindly put the paper down on the table," came Mr. Sleuth's muffled
+voice from the upper landing.
+
+She did so. "Yes, sir. And Bunting don't want the paper back
+again, sir. He says he's read it." And then she hurried out of
+the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+All afternoon it went on snowing; and the three of them sat there,
+listening and waiting--Bunting and his wife hardly knew for what;
+Daisy for the knock which would herald Joe Chandler.
+
+And about four there came the now familiar sound.
+
+Mrs. Bunting hurried out into the passage, and as she opened the
+front door she whispered, "We haven't said anything to Daisy yet.
+Young girls can't keep secrets."
+
+Chandler nodded comprehendingly. He now looked the low character
+he had assumed to the life, for he was blue with cold, disheartened,
+and tired out.
+
+Daisy gave a little cry of shocked surprise, of amusement, of
+welcome, when she saw how cleverly he was disguised.
+
+"I never!" she exclaimed. "What a difference it do make, to be
+sure! Why, you looks quite horrid, Mr. Chandler."
+
+And, somehow, that little speech of hers amused her father so much
+that he quite cheered up. Bunting had been very dull and quiet
+all that afternoon.
+
+"It won't take me ten minutes to make myself respectable again,"
+said the young man rather ruefully.
+
+His host and hostess, looking at him eagerly, furtively, both came
+to the conclusion that he had been unsuccessful--that he had failed,
+that is, in getting any information worth having. And though, in a
+sense, they all had a pleasant tea together, there was an air of
+constraint, even of discomfort, over the little party.
+
+Bunting felt it hard that he couldn't ask the questions that were
+trembling on his lips; he would have felt it hard any time during
+the last month to refrain from knowing anything Joe could tell him,
+but now it seemed almost intolerable to be in this queer kind of
+half suspense. There was one important fact he longed to know,
+and at last came his opportunity of doing so, for Joe Chandler rose
+to leave, and this time it was Bunting who followed him out into
+the hall.
+
+"Where did it happen?" he whispered. "Just tell me that, Joe?"
+
+"Primrose Hill," said the other briefly. "You'll know all about it
+in a minute or two, for it'll be all in the last editions of the
+evening papers. That's what's been arranged."
+
+"No arrest I suppose?"
+
+Chandler shook his head despondently. "No," he said, "I'm inclined
+to think the Yard was on a wrong tack altogether this time. But one
+can only do one's best. I don't know if Mrs. Bunting told you I'd
+got to question a barmaid about a man who was in her place just
+before closing-time. Well, she's said all she knew, and it's as
+clear as daylight to me that the eccentric old gent she talks about
+was only a harmless luny. He gave her a sovereign just because she
+told him she was a teetotaller!" He laughed ruefully.
+
+Even Bunting was diverted at the notion. "Well, that's a queer
+thing for a barmaid to be!" he exclaimed. "She's niece to the people
+what keeps the public," explained Chandler; and then he went out of
+the front door with a cheerful "So long!"
+
+When Bunting went back into the sitting-room Daisy had disappeared.
+She had gone downstairs with the tray. "Where's my girl?" he said
+irritably.
+
+"She's just taken the tray downstairs."
+
+He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called out sharply,
+"Daisy! Daisy, child! Are you down there?"
+
+"Yes, father," came her eager, happy voice.
+
+"Better come up out of that cold kitchen."
+
+He turned and came back to his wife. "Ellen, is the lodger in? I
+haven't heard him moving about. Now mind what I says, please! I
+don't want Daisy to be mixed up with him."
+
+"Mr. Sleuth don't seem very well to-day," answered Mrs. Bunting
+quietly. "'Tain't likely I should let Daisy have anything to do
+with him. Why, she's never even seen him. 'Tain't likely I should
+allow her to begin waiting on him now."
+
+But though she was surprised and a little irritated by the tone in
+which Bunting had spoken, no glimmer of the truth illumined her mind.
+So accustomed had she become to bearing alone the burden of her awful
+secret, that it would have required far more than a cross word or
+two, far more than the fact that Bunting looked ill and tired, for
+her to have come to suspect that her secret was now shared by another,
+and that other her husband.
+
+Again and again the poor soul had agonised and trembled at the
+thought of her house being invaded by the police, but that was only
+because she had always credited the police with supernatural powers
+of detection. That they should come to know the awful fact she kept
+hidden in her breast would have seemed to her, on the whole, a
+natural thing, but that Bunting should even dimly suspect it appeared
+beyond the range of possibility.
+
+And yet even Daisy noticed a change in her father. He sat cowering
+over the fire--saying nothing, doing nothing.
+
+"Why, father, ain't you well?" the girl asked more than once.
+
+And, looking up, he would answer, "Yes, I'm well enough, nay girl,
+but I feels cold. It's awful cold. I never did feel anything like
+the cold we've got just now."
+
+    *    *    *
+
+At eight the now familiar shouts and cries began again outside.
+
+"The Avenger again!" "Another horrible crime!" "Extra speshul
+edition!"--such were the shouts, the exultant yells, hurled through
+the clear, cold air. They fell, like bombs into the quiet room.
+
+Both Bunting and his wife remained silent, but Daisy's cheeks grew
+pink with excitement, and her eye sparkled.
+
+"Hark, father! Hark, Ellen! D'you hear that?" she exclaimed
+childishly, and even clapped her hands. "I do wish Mr. Chandler
+had been here. He would 'a been startled!"
+
+"Don't, Daisy!" and Bunting frowned.
+
+Then, getting up, he stretched himself. "It's fair getting on my
+mind," he said, "these horrible things happening. I'd like to get
+right away from London, just as far as I could--that I would!"
+
+"Up to John-o'-Groat's?" said Daisy, laughing. And then, "Why,
+father, ain't you going out to get a paper?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose I must."
+
+Slowly he went out of the room, and, lingering a moment in the hall,
+he put on his greatcoat and hat. Then he opened the front door,
+and walked down the flagged path. Opening the iron gate, he stepped
+out on the pavement, then crossed the road to where the newspaper-boys
+now stood.
+
+The boy nearest to him only had the Sun--a late edition of the paper
+he had already read. It annoyed Bunting to give a penny for a
+ha'penny rag of which he already knew the main contents. But there
+was nothing else to do.
+
+Standing under a lamp-post, he opened out the newspaper. It was
+bitingly cold; that, perhaps, was why his hand shook as he looked
+down at the big headlines. For Bunting had been very unfair to the
+enterprise of the editor of his favourite evening paper. This
+special edition was full of new matter--new matter concerning
+The Avenger.
+
+First, in huge type right across the page, was the brief statement
+that The Avenger had now committed his ninth crime, and that he had
+chosen quite a new locality, namely, the lonely stretch of rising
+ground known to Londoners as Primrose Hill.
+
+"The police." so Bunting read, "are very reserved as to the
+circumstances which led to the finding of the body of The Avenger's
+latest victim. But we have reason to believe that they possess
+several really important clues, and that one of them is concerned
+with the half-worn rubber sole of which we are the first to reproduce
+an outline to-day. (See over page.)"
+
+And Bunting, turning the sheet round about, saw the irregular outline
+he had already seen in the early edition of the Sun, that purporting
+to be a facsimile of the imprint left by The Avenger's rubber sole.
+
+He stared down at the rough outline which took up so much of the
+space which should have been devoted to reading matter with a queer,
+sinking feeling of terrified alarm. Again and again criminals had
+been tracked by the marks their boots or shoes had made at or near
+the scenes of their misdoings.
+
+Practically the only job Bunting did in his own house of a menial
+kind was the cleaning of the boots and shoes. He had already
+visualised early this very afternoon the little row with which he
+dealt each morning--first came his wife's strong, serviceable
+boots, then his own two pairs, a good deal patched and mended, and
+next to his own Mr. Sleuth's strong, hardly worn, and expensive
+buttoned boots. Of late a dear little coquettish high-heeled pair
+of outdoor shoes with thin, paperlike soles, bought by Daisy for
+her trip to London, had ended the row. The girl had worn these
+thin shoes persistently, in defiance of Ellen's reproof and advice,
+and he, Bunting, had only once had to clean her more sensible
+country pair, and that only because the others had become wet though
+the day he and she had accompanied young Chandler to Scotland Yard.
+
+Slowly he returned across the road. Somehow the thought of going
+in again, of hearing his wife's sarcastic comments, of parrying
+Daisy's eager questions, had become intolerable. So he walked
+slowly, trying to put off the evil moment when he would have to tell
+them what was in his paper.
+
+The lamp under which he had stood reading was not exactly opposite
+the house. It was rather to the right of it. And when, having
+crossed over the roadway, he walked along the pavement towards his
+own gate, he heard odd, shuffling sounds coming from the inner side
+of the low wall which shut off his little courtyard from the pavement.
+
+Now, under ordinary circumstances Bunting would have rushed forward
+to drive out whoever was there. He and his wife had often had
+trouble, before the cold weather began, with vagrants seeking shelter
+there. But to-night he stayed outside, listening intently, sick
+with suspense and fear.
+
+Was it possible that their place was being watched--already? He
+thought it only too likely. Bunting, like Mrs. Bunting, credited
+the police with almost supernatural powers, especially since he
+had paid that visit to Scotland Yard.
+
+But to Bunting's amazement, and, yes, relief, it was his lodger who
+suddenly loomed up in the dim light.
+
+Mr. Sleuth must have been stooping down, for his tall, lank form
+had been quite concealed till he stepped forward from behind the
+low wall on to the flagged path leading to the front door.
+
+The lodger was carrying a brown paper parcel, and, as he walked
+along, the new boots he was wearing creaked, and the tap-tap of
+hard nail-studded heels rang out on the flat-stones of the narrow
+path.
+
+Bunting, still standing outside the gate, suddenly knew what it was
+his lodger had been doing on the other side of the low wall. Mr.
+Sleuth had evidently been out to buy himself another pair of new
+boots, and then he had gone inside the gate and had put them on,
+placing his old footgear in the paper in which the new pair had
+been wrapped.
+
+The ex-butler waited--waited quite a long time, not only until Mr.
+Sleuth had let himself into the house, but till the lodger had had
+time to get well away, upstairs.
+
+Then he also walked up the flagged pathway, and put his latchkey in
+the door. He lingered as long over the job of hanging his hat and
+coat up in the hall as he dared, in fact till his wife called out
+to him. Then he went in, and throwing the paper down on the table,
+he said sullenly: "There it is! You can see it all for yourself--
+not that there's very much to see," and groped his way to the fire.
+
+His wife looked at him in sharp alarm. "Whatever have you done to
+yourself?" she exclaimed. "You're ill--that's what it is, Bunting.
+You got a chill last night!"
+
+"I told you I'd got a chill," he muttered. "'Twasn't last night,
+though; 'twas going out this morning, coming back in the bus.
+Margaret keeps that housekeeper's room o' hers like a hothouse--
+that's what she does. 'Twas going out from there into the biting
+wind, that's what did for me. It must be awful to stand about in
+such weather; 'tis a wonder to me how that young fellow, Joe Chandler,
+can stand the life--being out in all weathers like he is."
+
+Bunting spoke at random, his one anxiety being to get away from what
+was in the paper, which now lay, neglected, on the table.
+
+"Those that keep out o' doors all day never do come to no harm,"
+said his wife testily. "But if you felt so bad, whatever was you
+out so long for, Bunting? I thought you'd gone away somewhere!
+D'you mean you only went to get the paper?"
+
+"I just stopped for a second to look at it under the lamp," he
+muttered apologetically.
+
+"That was a silly thing to do!"
+
+"Perhaps it was," he admitted meekly.
+
+Daisy had taken up the paper. "Well, they don't say much," she
+said disappointedly. "Hardly anything at all! But perhaps Mr.
+Chandler 'll be in soon again. If so, he'll tell us more about it."
+
+"A young girl like you oughtn't to want to know anything about
+murders," said her stepmother severely. "Joe won't think any the
+better of you for your inquisitiveness about such things. If I
+was you, Daisy, I shouldn't say nothing about it if he does come in
+--which I fair tell you I hope he won't. I've seen enough of that
+young chap to-day."
+
+"He didn't come in for long--not to-day," said Daisy, her lip
+trembling.
+
+"I can tell you one thing that'll surprise you, my dear"--Mrs.
+Bunting looked significantly at her step-daughter. She also wanted
+to get away from that dread news--which yet was no news.
+
+"Yes?" said Daisy, rather defiantly. "What is it, Ellen?"
+
+"Maybe you'll be surprised to hear that Joe did come in this morning.
+He knew all about that affair then, but he particular asked that
+you shouldn't be told anything about it."
+
+"Never!" cried Daisy, much mortified.
+
+"Yes," went on her stepmother ruthlessly. "You just ask your father
+over there if it isn't true."
+
+"'Tain't a healthy thing to speak overmuch about such happenings,"
+said Bunting heavily.
+
+"If I was Joe," went on Mrs. Bunting, quickly pursuing her advantage,
+"I shouldn't want to talk about such horrid things when I comes in
+to have a quiet chat with friends. But the minute he comes in that
+poor young chap is set upon--mostly, I admit, by your father," she
+looked at her husband severely. "But you does your share, too,
+Daisy! You asks him this, you asks him that--he's fair puzzled
+sometimes. It don't do to be so inquisitive."
+
+******
+
+And perhaps because of this little sermon on Mrs. Bunting's part
+when young Chandler did come in again that evening, very little was
+said of the new Avenger murder.
+
+Bunting made no reference to it at all, and though Daisy said a
+word, it was but a word. And Joe Chandler thought he had never
+spent a pleasanter evening in his life--for it was he and Daisy
+who talked all the time, their elders remaining for the most part
+silent.
+
+Daisy told of all that she had done with Aunt Margaret. She
+described the long, dull hours and the queer jobs her aunt set her
+to do--the washing up of all the fine drawing-room china in a big
+basin lined with flannel, and how terrified she (Daisy) had been
+lest there should come even one teeny little chip to any of it.
+Then she went on to relate some of the funny things Aunt Margaret
+had told her about "the family."
+
+There came a really comic tale, which hugely interested and delighted
+Chandler. This was of how Aunt Margaret's lady had been taken in by
+an impostor--an impostor who had come up, just as she was stepping
+out of her carriage, and pretended to have a fit on the doorstep.
+Aunt Margaret's lady, being a soft one, had insisted on the man
+coming into the hall, where he had been given all kinds of
+restoratives. When the man had at last gone off, it was found that
+he had "wolfed" young master's best walking-stick, one with a fine
+tortoise-shell top to it. Thus had Aunt Margaret proved to her lady
+that the man had been shamming, and her lady had been very angry--
+near had a fit herself!
+
+"There's a lot of that about," said Chandler, laughing.
+"Incorrigible rogues and vagabonds--that's what those sort of people
+are!"
+
+And then he, in his turn, told an elaborate tale of an exceptionally
+clever swindler whom he himself had brought to book. He was very
+proud of that job, it had formed a white stone in his career as a
+detective. And even Mrs. Bunting was quite interested to hear about
+it.
+
+Chandler was still sitting there when Mr. Sleuth's bell rang. For
+awhile no one stirred; then Bunting looked questioningly at his wife.
+
+"Did you hear that?" he said. "I think, Ellen, that was the lodger's
+bell."
+
+She got up, without alacrity, and went upstairs.
+
+"I rang," said Mr. Sleuth weakly, "to tell you I don't require any
+supper to-night, Mrs. Bunting. Only a glass of milk, with a lump
+of sugar in it. That is all I require--nothing more. I feel very
+very far from well"--and he had a hunted, plaintive expression on
+his face. "And then I thought your husband would like his paper
+back again, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+Mrs. Bunting, looking at him fixedly, with a sad intensity of gaze
+of which she was quite unconscious, answered, "Oh, no, sir!
+Bunting don't require that paper now. He read it all through."
+Something impelled her to add, ruthlessly, "He's got another paper
+by now, sir. You may have heard them come shouting outside. Would
+you like me to bring you up that other paper, sir?"
+
+And Mr. Sleuth shook his head. "No," he said querulously. "I much
+regret now having asked for the one paper I did read, for it
+disturbed me, Mrs. Bunting. There was nothing of any value in it--
+there never is in any public print. I gave up reading newspapers
+years ago, and I much regret that I broke though my rule to-day."
+
+As if to indicate to her that he did not wish for any more
+conversation, the lodger then did what he had never done before in
+his landlady's presence. He went over to the fireplace and
+deliberately turned his back on her.
+
+She went down and brought up the glass of milk and the lump of
+sugar he had asked for.
+
+Now he was in his usual place, sitting at the table, studying the
+Book.
+
+When Mrs. Bunting went back to the others they were chatting
+merrily. She did not notice that the merriment was confined to the
+two young people.
+
+"Well?" said Daisy pertly. "How about the lodger, Ellen? Is he
+all right?"
+
+"Yes," she said stiffly. "Of course he is!"
+
+"He must feel pretty dull sitting up there all by himself--awful
+lonely-like, I call it," said the girl.
+
+But her, stepmother remained silent.
+
+"Whatever does he do with himself all day?" persisted Daisy.
+
+"Just now he's reading the Bible," Mrs. Bunting answered, shortly
+and dryly.
+
+"Well, I never! That's a funny thing for a gentleman to do!"
+
+And Joe, alone of her three listeners, laughed--a long hearty peal
+of amusement.
+
+"There's nothing to laugh at," said Mrs. Bunting sharply. "I should
+feel ashamed of being caught laughing at anything connected with the
+Bible."
+
+And poor Joe became suddenly quite serious. This was the first time
+that Mrs. Bunting had ever spoken really nastily to him, and he
+answered very humbly, "I beg pardon. I know I oughtn't to have
+laughed at anything to do with the Bible, but you see, Miss Daisy
+said it so funny-like, and, by all accounts, your lodger must be a
+queer card, Mrs. Bunting."
+
+"He's no queerer than many people I could mention," she said quickly;
+and with these enigmatic words she got up, and left the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Each hour of the days that followed held for Bunting its full meed
+of aching fear and suspense.
+
+The unhappy man was ever debating within himself what course he
+should pursue, and, according to his mood and to the state of his
+mind at any particular moment, he would waver between various
+widely-differing lines of action.
+
+He told himself again and again, and with fretful unease, that the
+most awful thing about it all was that he wasn't sure. If only he
+could have been sure, he might have made up his mind exactly what
+it was he ought to do.
+
+But when telling himself this he was deceiving himself, and he was
+vaguely conscious of the fact; for, from Bunting's point of view,
+almost any alternative would have been preferable to that which to
+some, nay, perhaps to most, householders would have seemed the only
+thing to do, namely, to go to the police. But Londoners of Bunting's
+class have an uneasy fear of the law. To his mind it would be ruin
+for him and for his Ellen to be mixed up publicly in such a terrible
+affair. No one concerned in the business would give them and their
+future a thought, but it would track them to their dying day, and,
+above all, it would make it quite impossible for them ever to get
+again into a good joint situation. It was that for which Bunting,
+in his secret soul, now longed with all his heart.
+
+No, some other way than going to the police must be found--and he
+racked his slow brain to find it.
+
+The worst of it was that every hour that went by made his future
+course more difficult and more delicate, and increased the awful
+weight on his conscience.
+
+If only he really knew! If only he could feel quite sure! And
+then he would tell himself that, after all, he had very little to
+go upon; only suspicion--suspicion, and a secret, horrible
+certainty that his suspicion was justified.
+
+And so at last Bunting began to long for a solution which he knew
+to be indefensible from every point of view; he began to hope, that
+is, in the depths of his heart, that the ledger would again go out
+one evening on his horrible business and be caught--red-handed.
+
+But far from going out on any business, horrible or other, Mr.
+Sleuth now never went out at all. He kept upstairs, and often spent
+quite a considerable part of his day in bed. He still felt, so he
+assured Mrs. Bunting, very far from well. He had never thrown off
+the chill he had caught on that bitter night he and his landlord
+had met on their several ways home.
+
+Joe Chandler, too, had become a terrible complication to Daisy's
+father. The detective spent every waking hour that he was not on
+duty with the Buntings; and Bunting, who at one time had liked him
+so well and so cordially, now became mortally afraid of him.
+
+But though the young man talked of little else than The Avenger,
+and though on one evening he described at immense length the
+eccentric-looking gent who had given the barmaid a sovereign,
+picturing Mr. Sleuth with such awful accuracy that both Bunting and
+Mrs. Bunting secretly and separately turned sick when they listened
+to him, he never showed the slightest interest in their lodger.
+
+At last there came a morning when Bunting and Chandler held a strange
+conversation about The Avenger. The young fellow had come in earlier
+than usual, and just as he arrived Mrs. Bunting and Daisy were
+starting out to do some shopping. The girl would fain have stopped
+behind, but her stepmother had given her a very peculiar, disagreeable
+look, daring her, so to speak, to be so forward, and Daisy had gone
+on with a flushed, angry look on her pretty face.
+
+And then, as young Chandler stepped through into the sitting-room,
+it suddenly struck Bunting that the young man looked unlike himself
+--indeed, to the ex-butler's apprehension there was something almost
+threatening in Chandler's attitude.
+
+"I want a word with you, Mr. Bunting," he began abruptly, falteringly.
+"And I'm glad to have the chance now that Mrs. Bunting and Miss Daisy
+are out."
+
+Bunting braced himself to hear the awful words--the accusation of
+having sheltered a murderer, the monster whom all the world was
+seeking, under his roof. And then he remembered a phrase, a
+horrible legal phrase--"Accessory after the fact." Yes, he had
+been that, there wasn't any doubt about it!
+
+"Yes?" he said. "What is it, Joe?" and then the unfortunate man
+sat down in his chair. "Yes?" he said again uncertainly; for young
+Chandler had now advanced to the table, he was looking at Bunting
+fixedly--the other thought threateningly. "Well, out with it,
+Joe! Don't keep me in suspense."
+
+And then a slight smile broke over the young man's face. "I don't
+think what I've got to say can take you by surprise, Mr. Bunting."
+
+And Bunting wagged his head in a way that might mean anything--yes
+or no, as the case might be.
+
+The two men looked at one another for what seemed a very, very long
+time to the elder of them. And then, making a great effort, Joe
+Chandler brought out the words, "Well, I suppose you know what it
+is I want to talk about. I'm sure Mrs. Bunting would, from a look
+or two she's lately cast on me. It's your daughter--it's Miss
+Daisy."
+
+And then Bunting gave a kind of cry, 'twixt a sob and a laugh.
+"My girl?" he cried. "Good Lord, Joe! Is that all you wants to
+talk about? Why, you fair frightened me--that you did!"
+
+And, indeed, the relief was so great that the room swam round as
+he stared across it at his daughter's lover, that lover who was
+also the embodiment of that now awful thing to him, the law. He
+smiled, rather foolishly, at his visitor; and Chandler felt a sharp
+wave of irritation, of impatience sweep over his good-natured soul.
+Daisy's father was an old stupid--that's what he was.
+
+And then Bunting grew serious. The room ceased to go round. "As
+far as I'm concerned," he said, with a good deal of solemnity, even
+a little dignity, "you have my blessing, Joe. You're a very likely
+young chap, and I had a true respect for your father."
+
+"Yes," said Chandler, "that's very kind of you, Mr. Bunting. But
+how about her--her herself?"
+
+Bunting stared at him. It pleased him to think that Daisy hadn't
+given herself away, as Ellen was always hinting the girl was doing.
+
+"I can't answer for Daisy," he said heavily. "You'll have to ask
+her yourself--that's not a job any other man can do for you, my lad."
+
+"I never gets a chance. I never sees her, not by our two selves,"
+said Chandler, with some heat. "You don't seem to understand, Mr.
+Bunting, that I never do see Miss Daisy alone," he repeated. "I
+hear now that she's going away Monday, and I've only once had the
+chance of a walk with her. Mrs. Bunting's very particular, not to
+say pernickety in her ideas, Mr. Bunting--"
+
+"That's a fault on the right side, that is--with a young girl,"
+said Bunting thoughtfully.
+
+And Chandler nodded. He quite agreed that as regarded other young
+chaps Mrs. Bunting could not be too particular.
+
+"She's been brought up like a lady, my Daisy has," went on Bunting,
+with some pride. "That Old Aunt of hers hardly lets her out of her
+sight."
+
+"I was coming to the old aunt," said Chandler heavily. "Mrs.
+Bunting she talks as if your daughter was going to stay with that
+old woman the whole of her natural life--now is that right? That's
+what I wants to ask you, Mr. Bunting,--is that right?"
+
+"I'll say a word to Ellen, don't you fear," said Bunting abstractedly.
+
+His mind had wandered off, away from Daisy and this nice young chap,
+to his now constant anxious preoccupation. "You come along
+to-morrow," he said, "and I'll see you gets your walk with Daisy.
+It's only right you and she should have a chance of seeing one
+another without old folk being by; else how's the girl to tell
+whether she likes you or not! For the matter of that, you hardly
+knows her, Joe--" He looked at the young man consideringly.
+
+Chandler shook his head impatiently. "I knows her quite as well as
+I wants to know her," he said. "I made up my mind the very first
+time I see'd her, Mr. Bunting."
+
+"No! Did you really?" said Bunting. "Well, come to think of it,
+I did so with her mother; aye, and years after, with Ellen, too.
+But I hope you'll never want no second, Chandler,"
+
+"God forbid!" said the young man under his breath. And then he
+asked, rather longingly, "D'you think they'll be out long now, Mr.
+Bunting?"
+
+And Bunting woke up to a due sense of hospitality. "Sit down, sit
+down; do!" he said hastily. "I don't believe they'll be very long.
+They've only got a little bit of shopping to do."
+
+And then, in a changed, in a ringing, nervous tone, he asked, "And
+how about your job, Joe? Nothing new, I take it? I suppose you're
+all just waiting for the next time?"
+
+"Aye--that's about the figure of it." Chandler's voice had also
+changed; it was now sombre, menacing. "We're fair tired of it--
+beginning to wonder when it'll end, that we are!"
+
+"Do you ever try and make to yourself a picture of what the master's
+like?" asked Bunting. Somehow, he felt he must ask that.
+
+"Yes," said Joe slowly. "I've a sort of notion--a savage,
+fierce-looking devil, the chap must be. It's that description that
+was circulated put us wrong. I don't believe it was the man that
+knocked up against that woman in the fog--no, not one bit I don't.
+But I wavers, I can't quite make up my mind. Sometimes I think it's
+a sailor--the foreigner they talks about, that goes away for eight
+or nine days in between, to Holland maybe, or to France. Then,
+again, I says to myself that it's a butcher, a man from the Central
+Market. Whoever it is, it's someone used to killing, that's flat."
+
+"Then it don't seem to you possible--?" (Bunting got up and walked
+over to the window.) "You don't take any stock, I suppose, in that
+idea some of the papers put out, that the man is"--then he
+hesitated and brought out, with a gasp--"a gentleman?"
+
+Chandler looked at him, surprised. "No," he said deliberately.
+"I've made up my mind that's quite a wrong tack, though I knows that
+some of our fellows--big pots, too--are quite sure that the fellow
+what gave the girl the sovereign is the man we're looking for. You
+see, Mr. Bunting, if that's the fact--well, it stands to reason the
+fellow's an escaped lunatic; and if he's an escaped lunatic he's got
+a keeper, and they'd be raising a hue and cry after him; now,
+wouldn't they?"
+
+"You don't think," went on Bunting, lowering his voice, "that he
+could be just staying somewhere, lodging like?"
+
+"D'you mean that The Avenger may be a toff, staying in some
+West-end hotel, Mr. Bunting? Well, things almost as funny as that
+'ud be have come to pass." He smiled as if the notion was a funny
+one.
+
+"Yes, something o' that sort," muttered Bunting.
+
+"Well, if your idea's correct, Mr. Bunting--"
+
+"I never said 'twas my idea," said Bunting, all in a hurry.
+
+"Well, if that idea's correct then, 'twill make our task more
+difficult than ever. Why, 'twould be looking for a needle in a
+field of hay, Mr. Bunting! But there! I don't think it's
+anything quite so unlikely as that--not myself I don't." He
+hesitated. "There's some of us"--he lowered his voice--"that
+hopes he'll betake himself off--The Avenger, I mean--to another
+big city, to Manchester or to Edinburgh. There'd be plenty of
+work for him to do there," and Chandler chuckled at his own grim
+joke.
+
+And then, to both men's secret relief, for Bunting was now
+mortally afraid of this discussion concerning The Avenger and
+his doings, they heard Mrs. Bunting's key in the lock.
+
+Daisy blushed rosy-red with pleasure when she saw that young
+Chandler was still there. She had feared that when they got home
+he would be gone, the more so that Ellen, just as if she was doing
+it on purpose, had lingered aggravatingly long over each small
+purchase.
+
+"Here's Joe come to ask if he can take Daisy out for a walk,"
+blurted out Bunting.
+
+"My mother says as how she'd like you to come to tea, over at
+Richmond," said Chandler awkwardly, "I just come in to see whether
+we could fix it up, Miss Daisy." And Daisy looked imploringly at
+her stepmother.
+
+"D'you mean now--this minute?" asked Mrs. Bunting tartly.
+
+"No, o' course not"--Bunting broke in hastily. "How you do go on,
+Ellen!"
+
+"What day did your mother mention would be convenient to her?"
+asked Mrs. Bunting, looking at the young man satirically.
+
+Chandler hesitated. His mother had not mentioned any special day
+--in fact, his mother had shown a surprising lack of anxiety to
+see Daisy at all. But he had talked her round.
+
+"How about Saturday?" suggested Bunting. "That's Daisy's' birthday.
+'Twould be a birthday treat for her to go to Richmond, and she's
+going back to Old Aunt on Monday."
+
+"I can't go Saturday," said Chandler disconsolately. "I'm on duty
+Saturday."
+
+"Well, then, let it be Sunday," said Bunting firmly. And his wife
+looked at him surprised; he seldom asserted himself so much in her
+presence.
+
+"What do you say, Miss Daisy?" said Chandler.
+
+"Sunday would be very nice," said Daisy demurely. And then, as the
+young man took up his hat, and as her stepmother did not stir, Daisy
+ventured to go out into the hall with him for a minute.
+
+Chandler shut the door behind them, and so was spared the hearing
+of Mrs. Bunting's whispered remark: "When I was a young woman folk
+didn't gallivant about on Sunday; those who was courting used to
+go to church together, decent-like--"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Daisy's eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully. Her father gave
+her what he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth
+birthday--a watch. It was a pretty little silver watch, which
+Bunting had bought secondhand on the last day he had been happy--
+it seemed a long, long time ago now.
+
+Mrs. Bunting thought a silver watch a very extravagant present but
+she was far too wretched, far too absorbed in her own thoughts, to
+trouble much about it. Besides, in such matters she had generally
+had the good sense not to interfere between her husband and his
+child.
+
+In the middle of the birthday morning Bunting went out to buy
+himself some more tobacco. He had never smoked so much as in the
+last four days, excepting, perhaps, the week that had followed on
+his leaving service. Smoking a pipe had then held all the exquisite
+pleasure which we are told attaches itself to the eating of forbidden
+fruit.
+
+His tobacco had now become his only relaxation; it acted on his
+nerves as an opiate, soothing his fears and helping him to think.
+But he had been overdoing it, and it was that which now made him
+feel so "jumpy," so he assured himself, when he found himself
+starting at any casual sound outside, or even when his wife spoke
+to him suddenly.
+
+Just now Ellen and Daisy were down in the kitchen, and Bunting
+didn't quite like the sensation of knowing that there was only
+one pair of stairs between Mr. Sleuth and himself. So he quietly
+slipped out of the house without telling Ellen that he was going
+out.
+
+In the last four days Bunting had avoided his usual haunts; above
+all, he had avoided even passing the time of day to his
+acquaintances and neighbours. He feared, with a great fear, that
+they would talk to him of a subject which, because it filled his
+mind to the exclusion of all else, might make him betray the
+knowledge--no, not knowledge, rather the--the suspicion--that
+dwelt within him.
+
+But to-day the unfortunate man had a curious, instinctive longing
+for human companionship--companionship, that is, other than that
+of his wife and of his daughter.
+
+This longing for a change of company finally led him into a small,
+populous thoroughfare hard by the Edgeware Road. There were more
+people there than usual just now, for the housewives of the
+neighbourhood were doing their Saturday marketing for Sunday. The
+ex-butler turned into a small old-fashioned shop where he generally
+bought his tobacco.
+
+Bunting passed the time of day with the tobacconist, and the two
+fell into desultory talk, but to his customer's relief and surprise
+the man made no allusion to the subject of which all the
+neighbourhood must still be talking.
+
+And then, quite suddenly, while still standing by the counter, and
+before he had paid for the packet of tobacco he held in his hand,
+Bunting, through the open door, saw with horrified surprise that
+Ellen, his wife, was standing, alone, outside a greengrocer's shop
+just opposite.
+
+Muttering a word of apology, he rushed out of the shop and across
+the road.
+
+"Ellen!" he gasped hoarsely, "you've never gone and left my little
+girl alone in the house with the lodger?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting's face went yellow with fear. "I thought you was
+indoors," she cried. "You was indoors! Whatever made you come out
+for, without first making sure I'd stay in?"
+
+Bunting made no answer; but, as they stared at each other in
+exasperated silence, each now knew that the other knew.
+
+They turned and scurried down the crowded street. "Don't run," he
+said suddenly; "we shall get there just as quickly if we walk fast.
+People are noticing you, Ellen. Don't run."
+
+He spoke breathlessly, but it was breathlessness induced by fear
+and by excitement, not by the quick pace at which they were walking.
+
+At last they reached their own gate, and Bunting pushed past in
+front of his wife.
+
+After all, Daisy was his child; Ellen couldn't know how he was
+feeling.
+
+He seemed to take the path in one leap, then fumbled for a moment
+with his latchkey.
+
+Opening wide the door, "Daisy!" he called out, in a wailing voice,
+"Daisy, my dear! where are you?"
+
+"Here I am, father. What is it?"
+
+"She's all right." Bunting turned a grey face to his wife. "She's
+all right, Ellen."
+
+He waited a moment, leaning against the wall of the passage. "It
+did give me a turn," he said, and then, warningly, "Don't frighten
+the girl, Ellen."
+
+Daisy was standing before the fire in their sitting room, admiring
+herself in the glass.
+
+"Oh, father," she exclaimed, without turning round, "I've seen the
+lodger! He's quite a nice gentleman, though, to be sure, he does
+look a cure. He rang his bell, but I didn't like to go up; and so
+he came down to ask Ellen for something. We had quite a nice
+little chat--that we had. I told him it was my birthday, and he
+asked me and Ellen to go to Madame Tussaud's with him this
+afternoon." She laughed, a little self-consciously. "Of course,
+I could see he was 'centric, and then at first he spoke so funnily.
+'And who be you?' he says, threatening-like. And I says to him,
+'I'm Mr. Bunting's daughter, sir.' 'Then you're a very fortunate
+girl '--that's what he says, Ellen--'to 'ave such a nice
+step-mother as you've got. That's why,' he says, 'you look such
+a good, innocent girl.' And then he quoted a bit of the Prayer
+Book. 'Keep innocency,' he says, wagging his head at me. Lor'!
+It made me feel as if I was with Old Aunt again."
+
+"I won't have you going out with the lodger--that's flat."
+
+Bunting spoke in a muffled, angry tone. He was wiping his forehead
+with one hand, while with the other he mechanically squeezed the
+little packet of tobacco, for which, as he now remembered, he had
+forgotten to pay.
+
+Daisy pouted. "Oh, father, I think you might let me have a treat
+on my birthday! I told him that Saturday wasn't a very good day--
+at least, so I'd heard--for Madame Tussaud's. Then he said we
+could go early, while the fine folk are still having their dinners."
+She turned to her stepmother, then giggled happily. "He particularly
+said you was to come, too. The lodger has a wonderful fancy for you,
+Ellen; if I was father, I'd feel quite jealous!"
+
+Her last words were cut across by a tap-tap on the door.
+
+Bunting and his wife looked at each other apprehensively. Was it
+possible that, in their agitation, they had left the front door
+open, and that someone, some merciless myrmidon of the law, had
+crept in behind them?
+
+Both felt a curious thrill of satisfaction when they saw that it
+was only Mr. Sleuth--Mr. Sleuth dressed for going out; the tall
+hat he had worn when he had first come to them was in his hand, but
+he was wearing a coat instead of his Inverness cape.
+
+"I heard you come in"--he addressed Mrs. Bunting in his high,
+whistling, hesitating voice--"and so I've come down to ask you if
+you and Miss Bunting will come to Madame Tussaud's now. I have
+never seen those famous waxworks, though I've heard of the place
+all my life."
+
+As Bunting forced himself to look fixedly at his lodger, a sudden
+doubt bringing with it a sense of immeasurable relief, came to
+Mr. Sleuth's landlord.
+
+Surely it was inconceivable that this gentle, mild-mannered
+gentleman could be the monster of cruelty and cunning that Bunting
+had now for the terrible space of four days believed him to be!
+
+He tried to catch his wife's eye, but Mrs. Bunting was looking away,
+staring into vacancy. She still, of course, wore the bonnet and
+cloak in which she had just been out to do her marketing. Daisy
+was already putting on her hat and coat.
+
+"Well?" said Mr. Sleuth. Then Mrs. Bunting turned, and it seemed
+to his landlady that he was looking at her threateningly. "Well?"
+
+"Yes, sir. We'll come in a minute," she said dully.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Madame Tussaud's had hitherto held pleasant memories for Mrs. Bunting.
+In the days when she and Bunting were courting they often spent there
+part of their afternoon-out.
+
+The butler had an acquaintance, a man named Hopkins, who was one of
+the waxworks staff, and this man had sometimes given him passes for
+"self and lady." But this was the first time Mrs. Bunting had been
+inside the place since she had come to live almost next door, as it
+were, to the big building.
+
+They walked in silence to the familiar entrance, and then, after
+the ill-assorted trio had gone up the great staircase and into the
+first gallery, Mr. Sleuth suddenly stopped short. The presence of
+those curious, still, waxen figures which suggest so strangely death
+in life, seemed to surprise and affright him.
+
+Daisy took quick advantage of the lodger's hesitation and unease.
+
+"Oh, Ellen," she cried, "do let us begin by going into the Chamber
+of Horrors! I've never been in there. Old Aunt made father promise
+he wouldn't take me the only time I've ever been here. But now that
+I'm eighteen I can do just as I like; besides, Old Aunt will never
+know."
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked down at her, and a smile passed for a moment over
+his worn, gaunt face.
+
+"Yes," he said, "let us go into the Chamber of Horrors; that's a
+good idea, Miss Bunting. I've always wanted to see the Chamber of
+Horrors."
+
+They turned into the great room in which the Napoleonic relics were
+then kept, and which led into the curious, vault-like chamber where
+waxen effigies of dead criminals stand grouped in wooden docks.
+
+Mrs. Bunting was at once disturbed and relieved to see her husband's
+old acquaintance, Mr. Hopkins, in charge of the turnstile admitting
+the public to the Chamber of Horrors.
+
+"Well, you are a stranger," the man observed genially. "I do believe
+that this is the very first time I've seen you in here, Mrs. Bunting,
+since you was married!"
+
+"Yes," she said, "that is so. And this is my husband's daughter,
+Daisy; I expect you've heard of her, Mr. Hopkins. And this"--she
+hesitated a moment--"is our lodger, Mr. Sleuth."
+
+But Mr. Sleuth frowned and shuffled away. Daisy, leaving her
+stepmother's side, joined him.
+
+Two, as all the world knows, is company, three is none. Mrs.
+Bunting put down three sixpences.
+
+"Wait a minute," said Hopkins; "you can't go into the Chamber of
+Horrors just yet. But you won't have to wait more than four or
+five minutes, Mrs. Bunting. It's this way, you see; our boss is
+in there, showing a party round." He lowered his voice. "It's
+Sir John Burney--I suppose you know who Sir John Burney is?"
+
+"No," she answered indifferently, "I don't know that I ever heard
+of him."
+
+She felt slightly--oh, very sightly--uneasy about Daisy. She
+would have liked her stepdaughter to keep well within sight and
+sound, but Mr. Sleuth was now taking the girl down to the other
+end of the room.
+
+"Well, I hope you never will know him--not in any personal sense,
+Mrs. Bunting." The man chuckled. "He's the Commissioner of Police
+--the new one--that's what Sir John Burney is. One of the
+gentlemen he's showing round our place is the Paris Police boss--
+whose job is on all fours, so to speak, with Sir John's. The
+Frenchy has brought his daughter with him, and there are several
+other ladies. Ladies always likes horrors, Mrs. Bunting; that's
+our experience here. 'Oh, take me to the Chamber of Horrors '--
+that's what they say the minute they gets into this here building!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked at him thoughtfully. It occurred to Mr. Hopkins
+that she was very wan and tired; she used to look better in the old
+days, when she was still in service, before Bunting married her.
+
+"Yes," she said; "that's just what my stepdaughter said just now.
+'Oh, take me to the Chamber of Horrors'--that's exactly what she
+did say when we got upstairs."
+
+******
+
+A group of people, all talking and laughing together; were advancing,
+from within the wooden barrier, toward the turnstile.
+
+Mrs. Bunting stared at them nervously. She wondered which of them
+was the gentleman with whom Mr. Hopkins had hoped she would never be
+brought into personal contact; she thought she could pick him out
+among the others. He was a tall, powerful, handsome gentleman, with
+a military appearance.
+
+Just now he was smiling down into the face of a young lady.
+"Monsieur Barberoux is quite right," he was saying in a loud,
+cheerful voice, "our English law is too kind to the criminal,
+especially to the murderer. If we conducted our trials in the
+French fashion, the place we have just left would be very much
+fuller than it is to-day. A man of whose guilt we are absolutely
+assured is oftener than not acquitted, and then the public taunt
+us with 'another undiscovered crime!"'
+
+"D'you mean, Sir John, that murderers sometimes escape scot-free?
+Take the man who has been committing all these awful murders this
+last month? I suppose there's no doubt he'll be hanged--if he's
+ever caught, that is!"
+
+Her girlish voice rang out, and Mrs. Bunting could hear every word
+that was said.
+
+The whole party gathered round, listening eagerly. "Well, no."
+He spoke very deliberately. "I doubt if that particular murderer
+ever will be hanged."
+
+"You mean that you'll never catch him?" the girl spoke with a touch
+of airy impertinence in her clear voice.
+
+"I think we shall end by catching him--because"--he waited a moment,
+then added in a lower voice--"now don't give me away to a newspaper
+fellow, Miss Rose--because now I think we do know who the murderer
+in question is--"
+
+Several of those standing near by uttered expressions of surprise and
+incredulity.
+
+"Then why don't you catch him?" cried the girl indignantly.
+
+"I didn't say we knew where he was; I only said we knew who he was,
+or, rather, perhaps I ought to say that I personally have a very
+strong suspicion of his identity."
+
+Sir John's French colleague looked up quickly. "De Leipsic and
+Liverpool man?" he said interrogatively.
+
+The other nodded. "Yes, I suppose you've had the case turned up?"
+
+Then, speaking very quickly, as if he wished to dismiss the subject
+from his own mind, and from that of his auditors, he went on:
+
+"Four murders of the kind were committed eight years ago--two in
+Leipsic, the others, just afterwards, in Liverpool,--and there were
+certain peculiarities connected with the crimes which made it clear
+they were committed by the same hand. The perpetrator was caught,
+fortunately for us, red-handed, just as he was leaving the house of
+his last victim, for in Liverpool the murder was committed in a
+house. I myself saw the unhappy man--I say unhappy, for there is
+no doubt at all that he was mad "--he hesitated, and added in a
+lower tone--"suffering from an acute form of religious mania.
+I myself saw him, as I say, at some length. But now comes the really
+interesting point. I have just been informed that a month ago this
+criminal lunatic, as we must of course regard him, made his escape
+from the asylum where he was confined. He arranged the whole
+thing with extraordinary cunning and intelligence, and we should
+probably have caught him long ago, were it not that he managed, when
+on his way out of the place, to annex a considerable sum of money
+in gold, with which the wages of the asylum staff were about to be
+paid. It is owing to that fact that his escape was, very wrongly,
+concealed--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, as if sorry he had said so much, and a moment
+later the party were walking in Indian file through the turnstile,
+Sir John Burney leading the way.
+
+Mrs. Bunting looked straight before her. She felt--so she
+expressed it to her husband later--as if she had been turned to
+stone.
+
+Even had she wished to do so, she had neither the time nor the power
+to warn her lodger of his danger, for Daisy and her companion were
+now coming down the room, bearing straight for the Commissioner of
+Police. In another moment Mrs. Bunting's lodger and Sir John Burney
+were face to face.
+
+Mr. Sleuth swerved to one side; there came a terrible change over
+his pale, narrow face; it became discomposed, livid with rage and
+terror.
+
+But, to Mrs. Bunting's relief--yes, to her inexpressible relief
+--Sir John Burney and his friends swept on. They passed Mr. Sleuth
+and the girl by his side, unaware, or so it seemed to her, that
+there was anyone else in the room but themselves.
+
+"Hurry up, Mrs. Bunting," said the turnstile-keeper; "you and your
+friends will have the place all to yourselves for a bit." From an
+official he had become a man, and it was the man in Mr. Hopkins that
+gallantly addressed pretty Daisy Bunting: "It seems strange that a
+young lady like you should want to go in and see all those 'orrible
+frights," he said jestingly.
+
+"Mrs. Bunting, may I trouble you to come over here for a moment?"
+
+The words were hissed rather than spoken by Mr. Sleuth's lips.
+
+His landlady took a doubtful step towards him.
+
+"A last word with you, Mrs. Bunting." The lodger's face was still
+distorted with fear and passion. "Do not think to escape the
+consequences of your hideous treachery. I trusted you, Mrs. Bunting,
+and you betrayed me! Put I am protected by a higher power, for
+I still have much to do." Then, his voice sinking to a whisper, he
+hissed out "Your end will be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a
+two-edged sword. Your feet shall go down to death, and your steps
+take hold on hell."
+
+Even while Mr. Sleuth was muttering these strange, dreadful words,
+he was looking round, glancing this way and that, seeking a way of
+escape.
+
+At last his eyes became fixed on a small placard placed above a
+curtain. "Emergency Exit" was written there. Mrs. Bunting thought
+he was going to make a dash for the place; but Mr. Sleuth did
+something very different. Leaving his landlady's side, he walked
+over to the turnstile, he fumbled in his pocket for a moment, and
+then touched the man on the arm. "I feel ill," he said, speaking
+very rapidly; "very ill indeed! It is the atmosphere of this place.
+I want you to let me out by the quickest way. It would be a pity
+for me to faint here--especially with ladies about."
+
+His left hand shot out and placed what he had been fumbling for in
+his pocket on the other's bare palm. "I see there's an emergency
+exit over there. Would it be possible for me to get out that way?"
+
+"Well, yes, sir; I think so."
+
+The man hesitated; he felt a slight, a very sight, feeling of
+misgiving. He looked at Daisy, flushed and smiling, happy and
+unconcerned, and then at Mrs. Bunting. She was very pale; but
+surely her lodger's sudden seizure was enough to make her feel
+worried. Hopkins felt the half-sovereign pleasantly tickling his
+palm. The Paris Prefect of Police had given him only half-a-crown
+--mean, shabby foreigner!
+
+"Yes, sir; I can let you out that way," he said at last, "and p'raps
+when you're standing out in the air, on the iron balcony, you'll feel
+better. But then, you know, sir, you'll have to come round to the
+front if you wants to come in again, for those emergency doors only
+open outward."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sleuth hurriedly. "I quite understand! If I
+feel better I'll come in by the front way, and pay another shilling
+--that's only fair."
+
+"You needn't do that if you'll just explain what happened here."
+
+The man went and pulled the curtain aside, and put his shoulder
+against the door. It burst open, and the light, for a moment,
+blinded Mr. Sleuth.
+
+He passed his hand over his eyes. "Thank you," he muttered, "thank
+you. I shall get all right out there."
+
+An iron stairway led down into a small stable yard, of which the
+door opened into a side street.
+
+Mr. Sleuth looked round once more; he really did feel very ill--
+ill and dazed. How pleasant it would be to take a flying leap over
+the balcony railing and find rest, eternal rest, below.
+
+But no--he thrust the thought the temptation, from him. Again a
+convulsive look of rage came over his face. He had remembered his
+landlady. How could the woman whom he had treated so generously have
+betrayed him to his arch-enemy?--to the official, that is, who had
+entered into a conspiracy years ago to have him confined--him, an
+absolutely sane man with a great avenging work to do in the world--
+in a lunatic asylum.
+
+He stepped out into the open air, and the curtain, falling-to behind
+him, blotted out the tall, thin figure from the little group of
+people who had watched him disappear.
+
+Even Daisy felt a little scared. "He did look bad, didn't he, now?"
+she turned appealingly to Mr. Hopkins.
+
+"Yes, that he did, poor gentleman--your lodger, too?" he looked
+sympathetically at Mrs. Bunting.
+
+She moistened her lips with her tongue. "Yes," she repeated dully,
+"my lodger."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+In vain Mr. Hopkins invited Mrs. Bunting and her pretty stepdaughter
+to step through into the Chamber of Horrors. "I think we ought to
+go straight home," said Mr. Sleuth's landlady decidedly. And Daisy
+meekly assented. Somehow the girl felt confused, a little scared by
+the lodger's sudden disappearance. Perhaps this unwonted feeling of
+hers was induced by the look of stunned surprise and, yes, pain, on
+her step-mother's face.
+
+Slowly they made their way out of the building, and when they got
+home it was Daisy who described the strange way Mr. Sleuth had been
+taken.
+
+"I don't suppose he'll be long before he comes home," said Bunting
+heavily, and he cast an anxious, furtive look at his wife. She
+looked as if stricken in a vital part; he saw from her face that
+there was something wrong--very wrong indeed.
+
+The hours dragged on. All three felt moody and ill at ease. Daisy
+knew there was no chance that young Chandler would come in to-day.
+
+About six o'clock Mrs. Bunting went upstairs. She lit the gas in
+Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room and looked about her with a fearful glance.
+Somehow everything seemed to speak to her of the lodger, there lay
+her Bible and his Concordance, side by side on the table, exactly
+as he had left them, when he had come downstairs and suggested that
+ill-starred expedition to his landlord's daughter. She took few
+steps forward, listening the while anxiously for the familiar sound
+of the click in the door which would tell her that the lodger had
+come back, and then she went over to the window and looked out.
+
+What a cold night for a man to be wandering about, homeless,
+friendless, and, as she suspected with a pang, with but very little
+money on him!
+
+Turning abruptly, she went into the lodger's bedroom and opened the
+drawer of the looking-glass.
+
+Yes, there lay the much-diminished heap of sovereigns. If only he
+had taken his money out with him! She wondered painfully whether he
+had enough on his person to secure a good night's lodging, and then
+suddenly she remembered that which brought relief to her mind. The
+lodger had given something to that Hopkins fellow--either a sovereign
+or half a sovereign, she wasn't sure which.
+
+The memory of Mr. Sleuth's cruel words to her, of his threat, did
+not disturb her overmuch. It had been a mistake--all a mistake.
+Far from betraying Mr. Sleuth, she had sheltered him--kept his awful
+secret as she could not have kept it had she known, or even dimly
+suspected, the horrible fact with which Sir John Burney's words had
+made her acquainted; namely, that Mr. Sleuth was victim of no
+temporary aberration, but that he was, and had been for years, a
+madman, a homicidal maniac.
+
+In her ears there still rang the Frenchman's half careless yet
+confident question, "De Leipsic and Liverpool man?"
+
+Following a sudden impulse, she went back into the sitting-room,
+and taking a black-headed pin out of her bodice stuck it amid the
+leaves of the Bible. Then she opened the Book, and looked at the
+page the pin had marked:--
+
+"My tabernacle is spoiled and all my cords are broken . . .
+There is none to stretch forth my tent any more and to set up my
+curtains."
+
+At last leaving the Bible open, Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and
+as she opened the door of her sitting-room Daisy came towards her
+stepmother.
+
+"I'll go down and start getting the lodger's supper ready for you,"
+said the girl good-naturedly. "He's certain to come in when he gets
+hungry. But he did look upset, didn't he, Ellen? Right down bad--
+that he did!"
+
+Mrs. Bunting made no answer; she simply stepped aside to allow Daisy
+to go down.
+
+"Mr. Sleuth won't never come back no more," she said sombrely, and
+then she felt both glad and angry at the extraordinary change which
+came over her husband's face. Yet, perversely, that look of relief,
+of right-down joy, chiefly angered her, and tempted her to add,
+"That's to say, I don't suppose he will."
+
+And Bunting's face altered again; the old, anxious, depressed look,
+the look it had worn the last few days, returned.
+
+"What makes you think he mayn't come back?" he muttered.
+
+"Too long to tell you now," she said. "Wait till the child's gone
+to bed."
+
+And Bunting had to restrain his curiosity.
+
+And then, when at last Daisy had gone off to the back room where
+she now slept with her stepmother, Mrs. Bunting beckoned to her
+husband to follow her upstairs.
+
+Before doing so he went down the passage and put the chain on the
+door. And about this they had a few sharp whispered words.
+
+"You're never going to shut him out?" she expostulated angrily,
+beneath her breath.
+
+"I'm not going to leave Daisy down here with that man perhaps
+walking in any minute."
+
+"Mr. Sleuth won't hurt Daisy, bless you! Much more likely to hurt
+me," and she gave a half sob.
+
+Bunting stared at her. "What do you mean?" he said roughly.
+"Come upstairs and tell me what you mean."
+
+And then, in what had been the lodger's sitting-room, Mrs. Bunting
+told her husband exactly what it was that had happened.
+
+He listened in heavy silence.
+
+"So you see," she said at last, "you see, Bunting, that 'twas me
+that was right after all. The lodger was never responsible for
+his actions. I never thought he was, for my part."
+
+And Bunting stared at her ruminatingly. "Depends on what you call
+responsible--" he began argumentatively.
+
+But she would have none of that. "I heard the gentleman say myself
+that he was a lunatic," she said fiercely. And then, dropping, her
+voice, "A religious maniac--that's what he called him."
+
+"Well, he never seemed so to me," said Bunting stoutly. "He simply
+seemed to me 'centric--that's all he did. Not a bit madder than
+many I could tell you of." He was walking round the room restlessly,
+but he stopped short at last. "And what d'you think we ought to do
+now?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting shook her head impatiently. "I don't think we ought
+to do nothing," she said. "Why should we?"
+
+And then again he began walking round the room in an aimless fashion
+that irritated her.
+
+"If only I could put out a bit of supper for him somewhere where he
+would get it! And his money, too? I hate to feel it's in there."
+
+"Don't you make any mistake--he'll come back for that," said Bunting,
+with decision.
+
+But Mrs. Bunting shook her head. She knew better. "Now," she said,
+"you go off up to bed. It's no use us sitting up any longer."
+
+And Bunting acquiesced.
+
+She ran down and got him a bedroom candle--there was no gas in the
+little back bedroom upstairs. And then she watched him go slowly up.
+
+Suddenly he turned and came down again. "Ellen," he said, in an
+urgent whisper, "if I was you I'd take the chain off the door, and
+I'd lock myself in--that's what I'm going to do. Then he can sneak
+in and take his dirty money away."
+
+Mrs. Bunting neither nodded nor shook her head. Slowly she went
+downstairs, and there she carried out half of Bunting's advice.
+She took, that is, the chain off the front door. But she did not
+go to bed, neither did she lock herself in. She sat up all night,
+waiting. At half-past seven she made herself a cup of tea, and
+then she went into her bedroom.
+
+Daisy opened her eyes.
+
+"Why, Ellen," she said, "I suppose I was that tired, and slept so
+sound, that I never heard you come to bed or get up--funny,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Young people don't sleep as light as do old folks," Mrs. Bunting
+said sententiously.
+
+"Did the lodger come in after all? I suppose he's upstairs now?"
+
+Mrs. Bunting shook her head. "It looks as if 'twould be a fine
+day for you down at Richmond," she observed in a kindly tone.
+
+And Daisy smiled, a very happy, confident little smile.
+
+******
+
+That evening Mrs. Bunting forced herself to tell young Chandler
+that their lodger had, so to speak, disappeared. She and Bunting
+had thought carefully over what they would say, and so well did
+they carry out their programme, or, what is more likely, so full
+was young Chandler of the long happy day he and Daisy had spent
+together, that he took their news very calmly.
+
+"Gone away, has he?" he observed casually. "Well, I hope he paid
+up all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," said Mrs. Bunting hastily. "No trouble of that sort."
+
+And Bunting said shamefacedly, "Aye, aye, the lodger was quite an
+honest gentleman, Joe. But I feel worried, about him. He was such
+a poor, gentle chap--not the sort o' man one likes to think of as
+wandering about by himself."
+
+"You always said he was 'centric," said Joe thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, he was that," said Bunting slowly. "Regular right-down queer.
+Leetle touched, you know, under the thatch," and, as he tapped his
+head significantly, both young people burst out laughing.
+
+"Would you like a description of him circulated?" asked Joe
+good-naturedly.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bunting looked at one another.
+
+"No, I don't think so. Not yet awhile at any rate. 'Twould upset
+him awfully, you see."
+
+And Joe acquiesced. "You'd be surprised at the number o' people
+who disappears and are never heard of again" he said cheerfully.
+And then he got up, very reluctantly.
+
+Daisy, making no bones about it this time, followed him out into
+the passage, and shut the sitting-room door behind her.
+
+When she came back she walked over to where her father was sitting
+in his easy chair, and standing behind him she put her arms round
+his neck.
+
+Then she bent down her head. "Father," she said, "I've a bit of
+news for you!"
+
+"Yes, my dear?"
+
+"Father, I'm engaged! Aren't you surprised?"
+
+"Well, what do you think?" said Bunting fondly. Then he turned
+round and, catching hold of her head, gave her a good, hearty kiss.
+
+"What'll Old Aunt say, I wonder?" he whispered.
+
+"Don't you worry about Old Aunt," exclaimed his wife suddenly.
+"I'll manage Old Aunt! I'll go down and see her. She and I have
+always got on pretty comfortable together, as you knows well, Daisy."
+
+"Yes," said Daisy a little wonderingly. "I know you have, Ellen."
+
+******
+
+Mr. Sleuth never came back, and at last after many days and many
+nights had gone by, Mrs. Bunting left off listening for the click
+of the lock which she at once hoped and feared would herald her
+lodger's return.
+
+As suddenly and as mysteriously as they had begun the "Avenger"
+murders stopped, but there came a morning in the early spring when
+a gardener, working in the Regent's Park, found a newspaper in which
+was wrapped, together with a half-worn pair of rubber-soled shoes,
+a long, peculiarly shaped knife. The fact, though of considerable
+interest to the police, was not chronicled in any newspaper, but
+about the same time a picturesque little paragraph went the round
+of the press concerning a small boxful of sovereigns which had been
+anonymously forwarded to the Governors of the Foundling Hospital.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Bunting had been as good as her word about "Old Aunt,"
+and that lady had received the wonderful news concerning Daisy in a
+more philosophical spirit than her great-niece had expected her to
+do. She only observed that it was odd to reflect that if gentlefolks
+leave a house in charge of the police a burglary is pretty sure to
+follow--a remark which Daisy resented much more than did her Joe.
+
+
+Mr. Bunting and his Ellen are now in the service of an old
+lady, by whom they are feared as well as respected, and whom they
+make very comfortable.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LODGER ***
+
+This file should be named tldgr11.txt or tldgr11.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, tldgr12.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, tldgr11a.txt
+
+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.net/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.net),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS," WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.net
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.net/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     http://www.gutenberg.net/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     http://www.gutenberg.net/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
diff --git a/old/tldgr11.zip b/old/tldgr11.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5647045
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/tldgr11.zip