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<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes</div>
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<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Lodger</div>
<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes</div>
<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December, 1999 [eBook #2014]<br />
[Most recently updated: April 22, 2021]</div>
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<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer</div>
<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LODGER ***</div>
<h1>The Lodger</h1>
<h2 class="no-break">by Marie Belloc Lowndes</h2>
<hr />
<h2>Contents</h2>
<table summary="" style="">
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="chapter">
<p class="letter">
“Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into
darkness.”<br />
P<small>SALM</small> lxxxviii. 18
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
<p>
Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning,
carefully-banked-up fire.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
As the shouts came through the closed windows and the thick damask curtains,
Bunting felt a sudden sense of mind hunger fall upon him.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
During the last fortnight four very curious and brutal murders had been
committed in London and within a comparatively small area.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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,
</p>
<p class="center">
“THE AVENGER”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she felt.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Then a boy ran up to him with a sheaf of evening papers, and Bunting, being
sorely tempted—fell. “Give me a <i>Sun</i>,” he said roughly,
“<i>Sun</i> or <i>Echo!</i>”
</p>
<p>
But the boy, scarcely stopping to take breath, shook his head. “Only
penny papers left,” he gasped. “What’ll yer ’ave,
sir?”
</p>
<p>
With an eagerness which was mingled with shame, Bunting drew a penny out of his
pocket and took a paper—it was the <i>Evening Standard</i>—from the
boy’s hand.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
Suddenly the door in front of him opened, and he heard 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.
</p>
<p>
He walked in through the front door of his cheerless house. “I went out
to get a paper,” he said sullenly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“How can we hope to get lodgers if they can’t even see the
card?” he shouted angrily.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She began moving about the room, flicking off an imperceptible touch of dust
here, straightening a piece of furniture there.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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 <i>Evening Standard</i> spread out before him—she sat down in the cold
darkness, and pressed her hands against her temples.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
Without answering his question she went out into the hall.
</p>
<p>
Slowly she opened the front door.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Is it not a fact that you let lodgings?” he asked, and there was
something shrill, unbalanced, hesitating, in his voice.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
Instinctively she stepped a little to one side, and the stranger walked past
her, and so into the hall.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully furnished, and
was very clean.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
A very superior lodging-house this, and evidently a superior lodging-house
keeper.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
How fortunate, how very fortunate it was that Bunting had lit the gas! But for
that circumstance this gentleman would have passed them by.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, thank you, sir!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry you
should have had the trouble.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting felt rather upset. The stranger had still spoken courteously, but
he was evidently very much put out.
</p>
<p>
“I assure you, sir, I never leave my front door open,” she answered
hastily. “You needn’t be at all afraid of that!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Who’s that?” he said, putting out a hand and clutching her
arm. “Whatever was that?”
</p>
<p>
“Only my husband, sir. He went out to buy a paper a few minutes ago, and
the cold just caught him, I suppose.”
</p>
<p>
“Your husband—?” he looked at her intently, suspiciously.
“What—what, may I ask, is your husband’s occupation?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
And then she turned and led the way up the steep, narrow staircase.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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—”
</p>
<p>
“—Bunting,” she said softly. “Bunting, sir.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Will you just look at the bedroom, sir?”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“About terms, sir?” she said a little timidly, returning to the
subject which meant so much, so very much to her.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’d be very glad only to have
you to wait on, sir.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
He waited a moment, and then said again, rather urgently, “I suppose you
have a key to this door, Mrs. Bunting?”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>you</i> 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.
</p>
<p>
“I hope I know a gentleman when I see one,” she said, with a break
in her staid voice.
</p>
<p>
“I shall have to see about getting some clothes to-morrow, Mrs.
Bunting.” Again he looked at her appealingly.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“I have a nice sausage,” she said hesitatingly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Is it indeed, sir?” She hesitated a moment, then asked stiffly,
“And will you be requiring any beer, or wine, sir?”
</p>
<p>
A strange, wild look of lowering wrath suddenly filled Mr. Sleuth’s pale
face.
</p>
<p>
“Certainly not. I thought I had made that quite clear, Mrs. Bunting. I
had hoped to hear that you were an abstainer—”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I’ll bring you up some hot water in a minute, sir, and some clean
towels,” she said, going to the door.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And then in a moment his wife’s hand shot out, and the ten sovereigns
fell in a little clinking heap on the table.
</p>
<p>
“Look there!” she whispered, with an excited, tearful quiver in her
voice. “Look there, Bunting!”
</p>
<p>
And Bunting did look there, but with a troubled, frowning gaze.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Yet he hadn’t the heart to reproach her.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“No, never!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
Bunting patted her back timidly. “Ellen?” he said, much moved by
her agitation, “Ellen? Don’t take on so, my dear—”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“He is a gentleman,” said Mrs. Bunting rather fiercely.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, one can see that with half an eye,” Bunting agreed.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“Sleuth,” echoed Bunting, staring at her. “What a queer name!
How d’you spell it—S-l-u-t-h?”
</p>
<p>
“No,” she shot out, “S-l-e—u—t—h.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh,” he said doubtfully.
</p>
<p>
“He said, ‘Think of a hound and you’ll never forget my
name,’” and Mrs. Bunting smiled.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And then each went about his and her business—Bunting out into the
drenching fog, his wife down to her cold kitchen.
</p>
<p>
The lodger’s tray was soon ready; everything upon it nicely and daintily
arranged. Mrs. Bunting knew how to wait upon a gentleman.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Her silence seemed to distress Mr. Sleuth. After what seemed a long pause, he
spoke again.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Thank you—thank you very much.”
</p>
<p>
Mr. Sleuth appeared greatly relieved.
</p>
<p>
“And I have brought you up my Bible, sir. I understood you wanted the
loan of it?”
</p>
<p>
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—”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting remembered all the circumstances as if they had only occurred
yesterday, and yet she had not thought of them for years.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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:
</p>
<p>
“A strange woman is a narrow gate. She also lieth in wait as for a prey,
and increaseth the transgressors among men.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
It made the listener feel quite queer. But at last she summoned up courage,
knocked, and walked in.
</p>
<p>
“I’d better clear away, sir, had I not?” she said. And Mr.
Sleuth nodded.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Treading softly, so that Bunting should not hear her, she carried them down,
two by two, and stood them behind her bed.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting woke up the next morning feeling happier than she had felt for a
very, very long time.
</p>
<p>
For just one moment she could not think why she felt so different—and
then she suddenly remembered.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
As Mrs. Bunting came in, he looked up, and she was troubled to see how tired
and worn he seemed.
</p>
<p>
“You did not happen,” he asked, “to have a Concordance, Mrs.
Bunting?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs. Bunting hurried out to purchase
the things of which he was in urgent need.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting. She didn’t want to think of anything
painful or disagreeable on such a day as this.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“No!” said Bunting incredulously. “You don’t mean there
was a policeman there, within a few yards?”
</p>
<p>
That fact hadn’t been recorded in his newspaper.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Have you seen the bits of grey paper on which the monster writes his
name?” inquired Bunting eagerly.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
His round, fat face was full of questioning eagerness. He put his elbows on the
table, and stared across expectantly at the young man.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I have,” said Joe briefly.
</p>
<p>
“A funny kind of visiting card, eh!” Bunting laughed; the notion
struck him as downright comic.
</p>
<p>
But Mrs. Bunting coloured. “It isn’t a thing to make a joke
about,” she said reprovingly.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
And then he jumped up. “That reminds me that I oughtn’t to be
wasting my time in pleasant company—”
</p>
<p>
“Won’t you stay and have a bit of dinner?” said Mrs. Bunting
solicitously.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
When he reached the door he turned round, and with elaborate carelessness he
inquired, “Any chance of Miss Daisy coming to London again soon?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Indeed? Well, so long!”
</p>
<p>
After his wife had let their friend out, Bunting said cheerfully, “Joe
seems to like our Daisy, eh, Ellen?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Joe Chandler’s too sensible a young chap to be thinking of girls
yet awhile,” she said tartly.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But odd he certainly was.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But long before twelve a loud ring suddenly clanged through the quiet house.
She knew it for the front door bell.
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting frowned. No doubt the ring betokened one of those tiresome people
who come round for old bottles and such-like fal-lals.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
He was breathing a little hard, as if he had walked over-quickly through the
moist, foggy air.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, you know why, Mrs. Bunting—”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Wouldn’t you like me just to make you a cup of tea?” she
said solicitously.
</p>
<p>
“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—?”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Goodness, no! Whatever made you think that? But—but, Mrs. Bunting,
there’s been another of them!”
</p>
<p>
His voice dropped almost to a whisper. He was staring at her with unhappy, it
seemed to her terror-filled, eyes.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
As she spoke she was pouring boiling water into a little teapot.
</p>
<p>
But Chandler said nothing, and she turned and glanced at him. “Why, you
do look bad!” she exclaimed.
</p>
<p>
And, indeed, the young fellow did look bad—very bad indeed.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
He began gulping down the hot tea before it was well made.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Then it <i>is</i> true,” she cried eagerly. “It <i>is</i> The
Avenger’s bit of paper! Bunting always said it was. He never believed in
that practical joker.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“No, never!” she said. “D’you think that a Bobby might
do a thing like that?”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” she said absently. “Yes, I do think so.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Have a bit of something now?” she said suddenly.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, no, I couldn’t eat anything,” he said hastily. “I
don’t feel as if I could ever eat anything any more.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“I expect you’re right,” he said. “And I’ve a
goodish heavy day in front of me. Been up since four, too—”
</p>
<p>
“Four?” she said. “Was it then they found—” she
hesitated a moment, and then said, “it?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“What was he like?” she asked curiously.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“A bag?” repeated Mrs. Bunting, in a low voice. “Whatever
sort of bag might it have been, Joe?”
</p>
<p>
There had come across her—just right in her middle, like—such a
strange sensation, a curious kind of tremor, or fluttering.
</p>
<p>
She was at a loss to account for it.
</p>
<p>
“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.’”
</p>
<p>
“With a bag?” repeated Mrs. Bunting absently. “How very
strange and peculiar—”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Won’t you wait a bit longer for Bunting?” she said
hesitatingly.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, you’ve had enough to unman you, Joe.”
</p>
<p>
“Aye, that I have,” he said heavily.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“No; he did not. And that isn’t the sort of thing I should have
cared to ask him.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
<p>
Mr. Sleuth’s bell rang again.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Wait a minute!” he called out. “I’ll help you,
Ellen,” and he came out and took the tray from her.
</p>
<p>
She said nothing, and together they proceeded up to the drawing-room floor
landing.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And then at once there came over her the queerest feeling of relief, of
lightness of heart.
</p>
<p>
As usual, the lodger was sitting at his old place, reading the Bible.
</p>
<p>
Somehow—she could not have told you why, she would not willingly have
told herself—she had expected to see Mr. Sleuth <i>looking different</i>. 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.
</p>
<p>
“Well, Mrs. Bunting,” he said genially, “I overslept myself
this morning, but I feel all the better for the rest.”
</p>
<p>
“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.’”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir. Bunting helped me up with the tray.”
</p>
<p>
“I’m afraid I give you a good deal of trouble,” he said
hesitatingly.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“I’m glad of that. I am aware that my habits are somewhat
peculiar.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, yes, sir! That’ll do nicely!”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
And just as she murmured the word “do,” there came a loud double
knock on the front door.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Bunting!” she called out sharply. “Here’s a letter for
you.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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. . .
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
To-day, perhaps because she was not feeling quite herself, the past rose before
her very vividly, and a lump came into her throat.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
He handed it across to her, and she read it slowly to herself.
</p>
<p class="letter">
“D<small>EAR</small> F<small>ATHER</small> (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,
</p>
<p class="right">
“D<small>AISY</small>.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
And with that ungraciously worded permission Bunting had to content himself.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
But the chiffonnier refused to give up its secret.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
Chandler nodded. “Yes. And I think there’s a very good chance of
his being caught too—”
</p>
<p>
“I suppose there’ll be a lot on the watch to-night, eh?”
</p>
<p>
“I should think there will be! How many of our men d’you think
there’ll be on night duty to-night, Mr. Bunting?”
</p>
<p>
Bunting shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said helplessly.
</p>
<p>
“I mean extra,” suggested Chandler, in an encouraging voice.
</p>
<p>
“A thousand?” ventured Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“Five thousand, Mr. Bunting.”
</p>
<p>
“Never!” exclaimed Bunting, amazed.
</p>
<p>
And even Mrs. Bunting echoed “Never!” incredulously.
</p>
<p>
“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:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“‘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.’
</p>
<p>
“What d’you think of that? That’s not a pleasant thing for a
gentleman as is doing his best to read, eh?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, it does seem queer that the police can’t catch him, now
doesn’t it?” said Bunting argumentatively.
</p>
<p>
“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:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“‘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.’”
</p>
<p>
“Whatever does that mean?” said Bunting. “Your hands
aren’t tied, and your eyes aren’t bandaged, Joe?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting spoke: “What was that word,
Joe—‘perpetrators’? I mean that first bit you read
out.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” he said, turning to her eagerly.
</p>
<p>
“Then do they think there’s more than one of them?” she said,
and a look of relief came over her thin face.
</p>
<p>
“There’s some of our chaps thinks it’s a gang,” said
Chandler. “They say it can’t be the work of one man.”
</p>
<p>
“What do <i>you</i> think, Joe?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, Mrs. Bunting, I don’t know what to think. I’m fair
puzzled.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
He crept along the passage and let himself out very, very quietly.
</p>
<p>
But though she tried to keep awake, Mrs. Bunting did not hear him come in
again, for she soon fell into a heavy sleep.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Yes, there was the heading she sought:
</p>
<p class="center">
“T<small>HE</small> A<small>VENGER</small> M<small>URDERS</small>”
</p>
<p>
But, oh, how glad she was to see the words that followed:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“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.”
</p>
<p>
And then, a little lower down:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“Last night!” thought Mrs. Bunting, startled; and then she realised
that “last night,” in this connection, meant the night before last.
</p>
<p>
She began the sentence again:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Anything the matter?” Bunting murmured, and stirred uneasily.
“Anything the matter, Ellen?”
</p>
<p>
She answered in a whisper, a whisper thrilling with a strange gladness,
“No, nothing, Bunting—nothing the matter! Go to sleep again, my
dear.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
<p>
Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate.
</p>
<p>
It brought Daisy—pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy—a sight
to gladden any father’s heart.
</p>
<p>
“Old Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad,” she
cried out joyously.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“What’s that?” exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. “Why,
whatever’s that?”
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“What? Another woman murdered last night?”
</p>
<p>
Bunting felt tremendously thrilled. What had the five thousand constables been
about to let such a dreadful thing happen?
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“Have they caught him?” asked Bunting perfunctorily.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer—two news vendors trying to
outshout each other.
</p>
<p>
“’Orrible discovery near King’s Cross!” they yelled
exultingly. “The Avenger again!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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 <i>do</i> look bad!” and his wife’s
muffled answer, “Open the window—do.”
</p>
<p>
“’Orrible discovery near King’s Cross—a clue at
last!” yelled the newspaper-boys triumphantly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Why, father, whatever’s the matter with her?”
</p>
<p>
Daisy looked quite scared.
</p>
<p>
“She’s in ’sterics—that’s what it is,” he
said shortly. “I’ll just get the water-jug. Wait a minute!”
</p>
<p>
Bunting felt very put out. Ellen was ridiculous—that’s what she
was, to be so easily upset.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Very well, sir.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Bunting began to walk up and down the room. His wife gave him a furtive glance;
she wondered what he was thinking about.
</p>
<p>
“Didn’t you get a paper?” she said at last.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
Again she glanced at him quickly, furtively, but he seemed just as
usual—he evidently meant just what he said and no more.
</p>
<p>
“I thought they was shouting something in the street—I mean just
before I was took bad.”
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
“Don’t you know what it was they were calling out?” he asked
slowly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” she said dully. “I heard a word here and there.
There’s been another murder, hasn’t there?”
</p>
<p>
“Two other murders,” he said soberly.
</p>
<p>
“Two? That’s worse news!” She turned so pale—a sallow
greenish-white—that Bunting thought she was again going queer.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“But I wants to talk about them,” cried Mrs. Bunting hysterically.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Tell me about it,” she commanded, in a low voice.
“Can’t you see I’m waiting to hear? Be quick now,
Bunting!”
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“Well?”
</p>
<p>
“What I said just now. There’s two of ’em this time, and
they’d both been drinking heavily, poor creatures.”
</p>
<p>
“Was it where the others was done?” she asked looking at her
husband fearfully.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Then the five thousand constables weren’t no use?” said Mrs.
Bunting slowly.
</p>
<p>
She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was standing more upright.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“A clue, Bunting?” Mrs. Bunting spoke in a soft, weak, die-away
voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the edge of the table.
</p>
<p>
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:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“‘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—’”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
and then Bunting dropped the paper and rushed round the table.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
And Daisy, hurrying in, showed an amount of sense and resource which even at
this anxious moment roused her fond father’s admiration.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“But everything’s all right now,” said Bunting eagerly,
“all right, thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
She walked across to a chair and sat down on it. “I’m just a little
tottery still,” she muttered.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“She was a freak, was your last mistress, Ellen,” began Bunting
aggressively.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I think the child grows prettier every minute,” said Bunting
fondly.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I hope you’re feeling a little better, sir,” Mrs. Bunting
had forced herself to say when she first took in his tray.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, no, sir, I don’t think that. We’re generally reckoned
very quiet indeed, sir.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
It must have been about four o’clock when there came a ring at the front
door.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Whoever can that be?” said Bunting, looking up. “It’s
too early for Joe Chandler, surely.”
</p>
<p>
“I’ll go,” said his wife, hurriedly jumping up from her
chair. “I’ll go! We don’t want no strangers in here.”
</p>
<p>
And as she stepped down the short bit of passage she said to herself, “A
clue? What clue?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
And Chandler came in, a rather sheepish look on his good-looking, fair young
face.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But Chandler paid no heed to her remarks. “Has Miss Daisy arrived?”
he asked, in a lower voice.
</p>
<p>
She nodded. And then he went through into the room where the father and
daughter were sitting.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“No?” cried Bunting excitedly. “You don’t say so!
Whatever sort of a thing is it? And are they sure ’tis his?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, ’tain’t sure, but it seems to be likely.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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:
</p>
<p class="center">
“WANTED
</p>
<p class="letter">
“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.”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting walked forward. She gave a long, fluttering sigh of unutterable
relief.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Five hundred pounds!” cried Daisy and her father simultaneously.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Just hand that bit of paper over, will you?” said Bunting.
“I’d like to con it over to myself.”
</p>
<p>
Chandler threw over the bit of flimsy.
</p>
<p>
A moment later Bunting looked up and handed it back. “Well, it’s
clear enough, isn’t it?”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
Daisy’s voice rang out in merry, pealing laughter. She greatly
appreciated Mr. Chandler’s witticism.
</p>
<p>
“Why on earth didn’t the people who saw him try and catch
him?” asked Bunting suddenly.
</p>
<p>
And Mrs. Bunting broke in, in a lower voice, “Yes, Joe—that seems
odd, don’t it?”
</p>
<p>
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 <i>think</i> 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.’”
</p>
<p>
“Then The Avenger may be quite a different sort of man?” said
Bunting slowly, disappointedly.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“You was saying, Joe, that they found a weapon?” observed Bunting
insinuatingly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“Whatever for?” asked Daisy.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“What’ll happen then?” said Mrs. Bunting, coming nearer.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I’d give anything to see that knife!” exclaimed Daisy,
clasping her hands together.
</p>
<p>
“You cruel, bloodthirsty, girl!” cried her stepmother passionately.
</p>
<p>
They all looked round at her, surprised.
</p>
<p>
“Come, come, Ellen!” said Bunting reprovingly.
</p>
<p>
“Well, it <i>is</i> a horrible idea!” said his wife sullenly. “To go
and sell a fellow-being for five hundred pounds.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
Chandler looked at her soothingly. “Well, the day may come when you <i>will</i>
see it,” he said slowly.
</p>
<p>
A great idea had come into his mind.
</p>
<p>
“No! What makes you think that?”
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>should</i> lead
to the conviction of The Avenger—well, then, that knife ’ull be
there, and you’ll see it!”
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
And then even Mrs. Bunting, as well as Bunting and Chandler, laughed aloud.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“But our museum’s the one that would interest Miss Daisy,”
broke in Chandler eagerly. “It’s a regular Chamber of
’Orrors!”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Well, I suppose I <i>could</i>—” Joe smiled. “Anyway I can
certainly get leave to take a friend there.” He looked meaningly at
Daisy, and Daisy looked eagerly at him.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, of course I do!”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
“And as for knives—!” a look of real horror, of startled
fear, crept over her pale face.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
With a touch of personal pride in the vast building, Joe Chandler marched his
friends down a wide, airy corridor.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“Poor devil!” said Bunting under his breath, and a cloud even came
over Daisy’s bright eager face.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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. . .
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
It was really rather disappointing.
</p>
<p>
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, <i>real</i>-looking faces.
</p>
<p>
“Whatever’s those?” asked Bunting in a low voice.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“All hanged!” said the guardian of the Black Museum briefly.
“Casts taken after death.”
</p>
<p>
Bunting smiled nervously. “They don’t look dead somehow. They looks
more as if they were listening,” he said.
</p>
<p>
“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—?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“They looks foolish-like, rather than terrified, or—or hurt,”
said Bunting wonderingly.
</p>
<p>
He was extraordinarily moved and fascinated by those dumb, staring faces.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I suppose he would,” said Bunting slowly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“There now! Who’d ever think of that?” said Bunting. “I
should say that man ’ud got something on his conscience, wouldn’t
you?”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
He smiled at Joe’s visitors, as if to say good-bye, but it seemed that he
could not tear himself away after all.
</p>
<p>
“Look here,” he said to Bunting. “In this here little case
are the tools of Charles Peace. I expect you’ve heard of him.”
</p>
<p>
“I should think I have!” cried Bunting eagerly.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“The daring of that!” cried Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“Put on a false finger,” suggested Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
There were five small phials, filled with varying quantities of cloudy liquids.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Did you ever hear what a certain Mrs. Pearce did?” asked Chandler,
becoming suddenly serious.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” said Daisy falteringly. She was beginning to feel oppressed,
frightened. She no longer wondered that the Indian gentleman had been taken
queer.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“I considers your museum’s a very horrid place!” said Daisy
pettishly, turning away.
</p>
<p>
She longed to be out in the passage again, away from this brightly lighted,
cheerful-looking, sinister room.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I suppose a good many murderers get off?” he said musingly.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“And what d’you think about what’s going on now—I mean
about those Avenger murders?”
</p>
<p>
Bunting lowered his voice, but Daisy and Chandler were already moving towards
the door.
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>is</i> a madman—one
of the cunning, quiet sort. Have you heard about the letter?” his voice
dropped lower.
</p>
<p>
“No,” said Bunting, staring eagerly at him. “What letter
d’you mean?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“And where was it posted?” asked Bunting. “That might be a
bit of a clue, you know.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“What? Close to us?” said Bunting. “Goodness!
dreadful!”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Then you think that woman as says she saw him did see him?” asked
Bunting hesitatingly.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“No, indeed,” said Bunting quickly. “I give you my word,
I’ve hardly thought of anything else for the last month.”
</p>
<p>
Daisy had disappeared, and when her father joined her in the passage she was
listening, with downcast eyes, to what Joe Chandler was saying.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“Yes?” said Daisy a little breathlessly. “There’s
father close to us, Mr. Chandler. Tell me quick; what is it?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, I take it, by what you said just now, that you’ve never
walked out with any young fellow?”
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
And Joe Chandler smiled, well pleased.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But now, with regard to Mr. Sleuth, she was ready, aye, eager, to do herself
what she had once so scorned others for doing.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
From the chest of drawers she now turned her attention to the dressing-table.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She stooped down and touched the stuff. It showed red, bright red, on her
finger.
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting grew chalky white, then recovered herself quickly. In fact the
colour rushed into her face, and she grew hot all over.
</p>
<p>
It was only a bottle of red ink she had upset—that was all! How could she
have thought it was anything else?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Again she opened the drawer of the old-fashioned wardrobe and lifted up the few
pieces of underclothing Mr. Sleuth now possessed.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
At last she went downstairs to await Mr. Sleuth’s return.
</p>
<p>
When she heard the key turn in the door, she came out into the passage.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Of course I had no idea, sir, that you kept any ink in there.”
</p>
<p>
She spoke as if she were on the defensive, and the lodger’s brow cleared.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
He shuffled past her, and five minutes later the drawing-room bell did ring.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I’m afraid it will have stained the wood, Mrs. Bunting. Perhaps I
was ill-advised to keep my ink in there.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“A penny for your thoughts!” he said jocularly. But she shook her
head.
</p>
<p>
Daisy slipped out of the room, and, five minutes later, came back dressed up in
a blue-and-white check silk gown.
</p>
<p>
“My!” said her father. “You do look fine, Daisy. I’ve
never seen you wearing that before.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Let me read aloud a bit to you, father,” said Daisy eagerly, and
he handed her the paper.
</p>
<p>
Scarcely had Daisy opened her lips when a loud ring and a knock echoed through
the house.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
<p>
It was only Joe. Somehow, even Bunting called him “Joe” now, and no
longer “Chandler,” as he had mostly used to do.
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way. She wasn’t
going to have any strangers pushing in past her.
</p>
<p>
To her sharpened, suffering senses her house had become a citadel which must be
defended; aye, even if the besiegers were a mighty horde <i>with right on their
side</i>. 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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
A glance at his face had shown her that there was no fresh news.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
And if that had been true then, how much truer it was now—after nine
long, empty days had gone by?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Daisy read out:
</p>
<p class="center">
“T<small>HE</small> A<small>VENGER</small>: A—”
</p>
<p>
And then she stopped short, for the next word puzzled her greatly. Bravely,
however, she went on. “A the-o-ry.”
</p>
<p>
“Go in—do!” whispered Mrs. Bunting to her visitor. “Why
should we stay out here in the cold? It’s ridiculous.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t want to interrupt Miss Daisy,” whispered Chandler
back, rather hoarsely.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="center">
“T<small>HE</small> A<small>VENGER</small>: A T<small>HE-O-RY</small>”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
began Daisy again, clearing her throat.
</p>
<p class="letter">
“D<small>EAR</small> S<small>IR</small>—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.<br/>
“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.<br/>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
Again Daisy hesitated, and then with an effort she brought out the word
“Gab-o-ri-you,” said she.
</p>
<p>
“What a funny name!” said Bunting wonderingly.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“Then this Gaboriyou has come over to study these Avenger murders, I take
it?” said Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, no,” Joe spoke with confidence. “Whoever’s written
that silly letter just signed that name for fun.”
</p>
<p>
“It is a silly letter,” Mrs. Bunting had broken in resentfully.
“I wonder a respectable paper prints such rubbish.”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Of course he’s somewhere,” said Mrs. Bunting scornfully.
</p>
<p>
She had just heard Mr. Sleuth moving overhead. ’Twould soon be time for
the lodger’s supper.
</p>
<p>
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—”
</p>
<p>
“I expect Joe has something to tell us new to-night,” said Bunting
cheerfully. “Well, Joe, is there anything new?”
</p>
<p>
“I say, father, just listen to this!” Daisy broke in excitedly. She
read out:
</p>
<p class="center">
“B<small>LOODHOUNDS TO BE</small> S<small>ERIOUSLY</small>
C<small>ONSIDERED</small>”
</p>
<p>
“Bloodhounds?” repeated Mrs. Bunting, and there was terror in her
tone. “Why bloodhounds? That do seem to me a most horrible idea!”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Hark to this,” she said:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But Daisy, like most people who believe themselves blessed with the possession
of an accomplishment, had no mind to leave off reading just yet.
</p>
<p>
“Here’s another notion!” she exclaimed. “Another
letter, father!”
</p>
<p class="center">
“P<small>ARDON TO</small> A<small>CCOMPLICES</small>.
</p>
<p class="letter">
“D<small>EAR</small> S<small>IR</small>—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—”
</p>
<p>
“Now I wonder what ‘nomad’ can be?” Daisy interrupted
herself, and looked round at her little audience.
</p>
<p>
“I’ve always declared the fellow had all his senses about
him,” observed Bunting confidently.
</p>
<p>
Daisy went on, quite satisfied:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“—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.”
</p>
<p>
“There’s something worth listening to in that letter,” said
Joe, leaning forward.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, Mr. Chandler?” she said interrogatively.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t think I’d like to give anybody up for a
reward,” said Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic way.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
And then Daisy broke in coquettishly: “If I’d done anything I
wouldn’t mind going for help to Mr. Chandler,” she said.
</p>
<p>
And Joe, with eyes kindling, cried, “No. And if you did you needn’t
be afraid I’d give you up, Miss Daisy!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Why, Ellen, don’t you feel well?” asked Bunting quickly.
</p>
<p>
“Just a spasm, a sharp stitch in my side, like,” answered the poor
woman heavily. “It’s over now. Don’t mind me.”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“Hanging’d be too good for that chap,” said Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Never knew so quiet and well-behaved a gentleman,” said Bunting.
“He turned our luck, did Mr. Sleuth.”
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
Both men laughed. Ellen? No, the idea was too funny.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“I am quite well—perfectly well!” snapped out Mrs. Bunting,
and she turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her stepdaughter.
</p>
<p>
“’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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
And then, with victory actually in her grasp, poor Daisy saw it snatched from
her.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Aunt Margaret was not one to tolerate the comings of any strange young man, and
she had a peculiar dislike to the police.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“And do you think Daisy likes him?” There was an unwonted tone of
excitement, of tenderness, in Bunting’s voice.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“For the matter of that, there’s no reason why Joe Chandler
shouldn’t go over and see her there,” said Bunting hesitatingly.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
She glanced at the clock, 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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“One ’ud think it was catching!” she said, but there was a
lilt in her voice.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
But once she was out, walking along the damp, uneven pavement, Mr. Sleuth
revenged himself for his landlady’s temporary forgetfulness.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She started violently and looked round, dazed, as the young person muttered a
word of apology;—then she again fell into deep thought.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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 . . .
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She wondered why.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
Why, to take only one little fact—Joe Chandler had never shown the
slightest curiosity about their lodger. . . .
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting pulled herself together with a start, and hurried quickly on.
Bunting would begin to wonder what had happened to her.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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 <i>real</i> danger that
anything would happen,—Mrs. Bunting felt sure of that.
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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 <i>had</i> happened last night—something which made it worth
while for the newspaper-sellers to come crying down the Marylebone Road.
</p>
<p>
“Well?” she said a little breathlessly. “Well, Joe? I suppose
you’ve brought us news? I suppose there’s been another?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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, <i>you’ll</i> be glad when its all over, my lad.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“As it was rather late, I didn’t wait for you to ring, sir,”
she said.
</p>
<p>
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.’”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir?” she said, and a queer, cold feeling stole over her
heart. “Yes, sir?”
</p>
<p>
“‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh—the flesh is
weak,’” said Mr. Sleuth, with a heavy sigh.
</p>
<p>
“You studies too hard, and too long—that’s what’s
ailing you, sir,” said Mr. Sleuth’s landlady suddenly.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
<p>
Daisy’s father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door,
watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“She’s safer than she would be, with you or me. She couldn’t
have a smarter young fellow to look after her.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“D’you really mean that, Ellen?” Bunting looked upset.
“I understood Joe to say he liked my company.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
But that, naturally, had only increased Daisy’s desire to view Mr.
Sleuth.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
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. . . .
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“No,” he said absently. “No, it isn’t, Mrs.
Bunting.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
She pulled herself together. “No one spies upon you, sir,” she
said, with considerable dignity. “I’ve done my best to satisfy
you—”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Very good, sir.” And then Mrs. Bunting left the lodger.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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 <i>somewhere</i> 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.
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
If only he would! If only he would!
</p>
<p>
As she stood in the hall, cooling her hot forehead, all these thoughts, these
hopes and fears, jostled at lightning speed through her brain.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
At last, after having passed her handkerchief over her forehead, she went into
the room where Bunting was sitting smoking his pipe.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
She wandered over to the window, and pulled the curtain back. “Quite a
lot of people have come out, anyway,” she observed.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“No,” she said dully. “I’m quite content to stay at
home.”
</p>
<p>
She was listening—listening for the sounds which would betoken that the
lodger was coming downstairs.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“’Tisn’t the first time Mr. Sleuth’s been out in a
fog,” said Mrs. Bunting sombrely.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting nodded.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
He waited a moment, and she felt forced to answer him.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
She hoped with all her soul that Mr. Sleuth would be in very soon—that he
would be daunted by the now increasing gloom.
</p>
<p>
Somehow she did not feel she could sit still for very long. She got up, and
went over to the farthest window.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She went into her bedroom and came back with a bit of plain sewing.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
It was funny how quiet the house was without either Daisy, or—or the
lodger, in it.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“You needn’t feel so nervous about him; Mr. Sleuth can look out for
himself all right.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Well, it’s none of your business, Bunting, now, is it?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>Lloyd’s</i>—shocking, they were, and all brought about by
the fog! And then, that horrid monster ’ull soon be at his work
again—”
</p>
<p>
“Monster?” repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Her mind swung round, consciously, deliberately, away from Mr. Sleuth.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Putting her candle down on the well-scrubbed wooden table, she turned up the
gas-jet, and blew out the candle.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Shuffling, hesitating steps were creaking down the house.
</p>
<p>
She looked up and listened.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Sleuth was evidently about to do what he had never yet done. He was coming
down into the kitchen.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Then she turned and faced the door.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
When he saw the kitchen all lighted up, and the woman standing in it, the
lodger looked inexplicably taken aback, almost aghast.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir? What can I do for you, sir? I hope you didn’t ring,
sir?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, certainly, sir; but you will find it very cold down here.”
</p>
<p>
“It seems most pleasantly warm,” he observed, his voice full of
relief, “warm and cosy, after my cold room upstairs.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
Mr. Sleuth frowned. He stood there, a strange-looking figure, his candle still
alight, just inside the kitchen door.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Perhaps Bunting could put it right for you, sir. For the matter of that,
I could ask him to go up now.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Once there, the lodger courteously bade his landlady good-night, and proceeded
upstairs to his own apartments.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But she had had a long and a very anxious day, and presently she fell asleep.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting felt herself to be all smell.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Why, even now, in her dream, she could hear her husband speaking to her about
it:
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
It had been no nightmare, then, but something infinitely worse—reality.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
When, at last, he came in with the little tray, Bunting found his wife lying
with her face to the wall.
</p>
<p>
“Here’s your tea, Ellen,” he said, and there was a thrill of
eager, nay happy, excitement in his voice.
</p>
<p>
She turned herself round and sat up. “Well?” she asked.
“Well? Why don’t you tell me about it?”
</p>
<p>
“I thought you was asleep,” he stammered out. “I thought,
Ellen, you never heard nothing.”
</p>
<p>
“How could I have slept through all that din? Of course I heard. Why
don’t you tell me?”
</p>
<p>
“I’ve hardly had time to glance at the paper myself,” he said
slowly.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>has</i> come our way!”
</p>
<p>
“You just go and get me that paper,” she commanded. “I wants
to see for myself.”
</p>
<p>
Bunting went into the next room; then he came back and handed her silently the
odd-looking, thin little sheet.
</p>
<p>
“Why, whatever’s this?” she asked. “This ain’t
our paper!”
</p>
<p>
“’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:— </p>
<p class="letter">
“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.<br/>
“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.<br/>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
At last, when she had quite finished, she looked up defiantly.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
And Bunting went off into the next room.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And then Mrs. Bunting sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful turgid flood.
If Joe <i>did</i> come in, she must nerve herself to hear all that—that talk
there’d be about The Avenger between him and Bunting.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” he said kindly; “that’s quite right, Ellen. I
think you’ve done quite right, my dear.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I’m afraid you’re ill, Ellen?” Bunting asked
solicitously.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
And Bunting, with a rather shamed expression, did put on his hat and coat and
go out.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Not for worlds, however, would she have told Bunting of her dreadful
suspicion—nay, of her almost certainty.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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:
</p>
<p>
“‘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.’”
</p>
<p>
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:
</p>
<p>
“‘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.’”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She knocked at the door, and then she took up her tray.
</p>
<p>
“Come in, Mrs. Bunting.” Mr. Sleuth’s voice sounded feebler,
more toneless than usual.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“There seem a great many people out today,” he observed, without
looking round.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir, there do.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Already Mrs. Bunting had noticed that it was not the same waistcoat Mr. Sleuth
had been wearing the day before.
</p>
<p>
“Mrs. Bunting, may I ask you to come here?”
</p>
<p>
And after a moment of hesitation his landlady obeyed him.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I suppose you went to see the place?” she said.
</p>
<p>
And guiltily he acknowledged that he had done so.
</p>
<p>
“Well?”
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>will</i> be caught. He must
have just got mixed up with all the other people within ten seconds of what
he’d done!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And then something happened which broke with dramatic suddenness the quietude
of the day.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. “Why, whoever can that be?” she
said.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
And then she left the room, but not before there had come another loud double
knock.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
“There now, Mrs. Bunting! I never thought I’d take you in as well
as all that!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“What’s all this about?” Bunting came out
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But, once there, poor Mrs. Bunting went on worse than ever; she threw her black
apron over her face, and began to sob hysterically.
</p>
<p>
“I made sure she’d know who I was when I spoke,” went on the
young fellow apologetically. “But, there now, I <i>have</i> upset her. I <i>am</i>
sorry!”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
Joe Chandler was looking longingly at what remains of the meal were still on
the table.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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 <i>you</i> very much.”
</p>
<p>
They both looked at him—Mrs. Bunting suddenly calm, though her breast
still heaved from time to time.
</p>
<p>
“Our Boss has resigned!” said Joe Chandler slowly, impressively.
</p>
<p>
“No! Not the Commissioner o’ Police?” exclaimed Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“What d’you mean?” questioned Mrs. Bunting. She really wanted
to know.
</p>
<p>
“Well, the <i>Courier</i> 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.”
</p>
<p>
“I’d like to see them dare come into my house!” said Mrs.
Bunting angrily.
</p>
<p>
“It’s all along of them blarsted papers that The Avenger went to
work a different way this time,” said Chandler slowly.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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:
</p>
<p class="center">
“‘A<small>N EX</small>-L<small>ORD</small> M<small>AYOR OF</small>
L<small>ONDON ON</small> T<small>HE</small> A<small>VENGER</small>
</p>
<p class="letter">
“‘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, <i>especially when it be remembered that he chooses the quietest
hour in the twenty-four to commit his crimes</i>.<br/>
“‘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.’
</p>
<p>
“I’d like to gag that ex-Lord Mayor!” concluded Joe Chandler
wrathfully.
</p>
<p>
Just then the lodger’s bell rang.
</p>
<p>
“Let me go up, my dear,” said Bunting.
</p>
<p>
His wife still looked pale and shaken by the fright she had had.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“You did ring, sir?” she said, in her quiet, respectful way.
</p>
<p>
And Mr. Sleuth looked up.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, no, Mrs. Bunting. I would really prefer you did nothing of the kind.
It was just a passing annoyance—nothing more!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I thought maybe you’d like to have supper a little earlier
to-night, sir?”
</p>
<p>
“Just when you like, Mrs. Bunting—just when it’s convenient.
I do not wish to put you out in any way.”
</p>
<p>
She felt herself dismissed, and going out quietly, closed the door.
</p>
<p>
As she did so, she heard the front door banging to. She sighed—Joe
Chandler was really a very noisy young fellow.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“No fear of that!” Bunting chuckled. And then a new thought struck
him. “Ain’t you afraid of waking the lodger?” he called out.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
All the time she was engaged in doing the hall, Mrs. Bunting left the
sitting-room door wide open.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
There came a sudden silence, and he was startled to see that Ellen was
standing in the doorway, staring at him, doing nothing.
</p>
<p>
“Come in,” he said, “do! Ain’t you finished yet?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
He spoke authoritatively, and his wife, for a wonder, obeyed him.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Then she sat down.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
And again she got up and meekly obeyed him, walking across the room with
languid steps.
</p>
<p>
He watched her, anxiously, uncomfortably.
</p>
<p>
She took up the newspaper he had just laid down, and Bunting took two steps
towards her.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“There’s nothing to be proud of in such a job,” said his wife
listlessly.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting now spoke in what her husband sometimes secretly described to
himself as “Ellen’s snarling voice.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And as he went downstairs he pondered uneasily over his wife’s changed
ways and manner.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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. . . .
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
The column ended up with the words:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Wouldn’t you like me to go with you?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
“No, that I wouldn’t. In fact I wouldn’t go at all you was to
go with me.”
</p>
<p>
“All right,” he said vexedly. “Please yourself, my dear; you
know best.”
</p>
<p>
“I should think I did know best where my own health is concerned.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Well, I’ve never said you was never right, have I? At any rate,
I’m going.”
</p>
<p>
“Have you a pain anywhere?” He stared at her with a look of real
solicitude on his fat, phlegmatic face.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“Well, you had no chance he should—you knew who it was,” she
said slowly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Those big black moustaches,” he went on complainingly, “and
that black wig—why, ’twas too ridic’lous—that’s
what I call it!”
</p>
<p>
“Not to anyone who didn’t know Joe,” she said sharply.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“What are you smiling at?” said his wife sharply.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Inquest? What inquest?” He looked at her puzzled.
</p>
<p>
“Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by
King’s Cross.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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
<i>would</i> be upset if there came a ring at the door.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I won’t leave the house, don’t you be afraid,
Ellen—not while you’re out.”
</p>
<p>
“Not even if I’m out a good while, Bunting.”
</p>
<p>
“No fear. Of course, you’ll be a long time if it’s your idea
to see that doctor at Ealing?”
</p>
<p>
He looked at her questioningly, and Mrs. Bunting nodded. Somehow nodding
didn’t seem as bad as speaking a lie.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She visualised the country inn where the inquest on that poor, unfortunate
creature had been held.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
As she came back to the sitting-room, her extreme pallor struck her husband.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“There you go! Breaking your solemn promise to me the very first
minute!” But somehow she did not speak unkindly, only fretfully and
sadly.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Two words,
</p>
<p class="center">
T<small>HE</small> A<small>VENGER</small>,
</p>
<p class="noindent">
stared up at her in varying type.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Slowly she turned, at last, into the Underground station.
</p>
<p class="p2">
And now a piece of extraordinary good fortune befell Mrs. Bunting.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Ah!” he said reflectively. “A—a relative connected
with one of the two victims’ husbands, I presume?”
</p>
<p>
And Mrs. Bunting bent her head.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, no!” There was a world of horror, of fear in the
speaker’s voice.
</p>
<p>
And the inspector felt concerned and sorry. “Hadn’t seen her for
quite a long time, I suppose?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Will he be there?”
</p>
<p>
She looked at him dumbly; not in the least knowing to whom he was alluding.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“It always is so,” breathed out Mrs. Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“Aye.” He waited a moment. “D’you know anyone about the
court?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
She shook her head.
</p>
<p>
“Well, don’t you worry. I’ll take you in along o’ me.
You’d never get in by yourself.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“’Tisn’t far—not three minutes,” he said
suddenly. “Am I walking too quick for you, ma’am?”
</p>
<p>
“No, not at all. I’m a quick walker.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
They walked through into a big room or hall, now full of men talking in subdued
yet eager, animated tones.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Even Mrs. Bunting, sitting here unnoticed, realised the irony of her presence
among them.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Better come along now,” he whispered; “it’ll begin
soon.”
</p>
<p>
She followed him out into a passage, up a row of steep stone steps, and so into
the Coroner’s Court.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
As for the third woman, she was doubtless an acquaintance, a boon companion of
the dead.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
He looked consideringly down into the well of the court. “Now let me see
what I can do for you—”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Gentlemen, the Coroner.”
</p>
<p>
The jury stood up, shuffling their feet, and then sat down again; over the
spectators there fell a sudden silence.
</p>
<p>
And then what immediately followed recalled to Mrs. Bunting, for the first
time, that informal little country inquest of long ago.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences ’twixt the coroner and
his officer.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
He spoke very clearly, warming to his work as he went on.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
And yet, at the very end of his long peroration, the coroner did throw out a
hint which might mean anything—or nothing.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
The woman began twisting and untwisting the corner of a coloured handkerchief
she held in her hand.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“It was just a black ’at” said the witness at last, in a
husky, rather anxious tone.
</p>
<p>
“Yes—just a black hat. And a coat—were you able to see what
sort of a coat he was wearing?”
</p>
<p>
“’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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Yes?” the coroner turned to him.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>Evening Sun</i>.
Just put in what ’e liked in ’is paper, ’e did—not what
I said at all!”
</p>
<p>
At this there was some laughter, quickly suppressed.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“He looked up at you?” repeated the coroner. “You said
nothing of that in your examination.”
</p>
<p>
“I said nothink because I was scared—nigh scared to death!”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
But the coroner was speaking casually, his hand straying over his desk; not a
creature in that court now believed the woman’s story.
</p>
<p>
“Dark!” she answered dramatically. “Dark, almost black! If
you can take my meaning, with a sort of nigger look.”
</p>
<p>
And then there was a titter. Even the jury smiled. And sharply the coroner bade
Lizzie Cole stand down.
</p>
<p>
Far more credence was given to the evidence of the next witness.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
This witness spoke quietly, confidently, and her account of the newspaper
parcel the man was carrying was perfectly clear and positive.
</p>
<p>
“It was a neat parcel,” she said, “done up with
string.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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>I</i> came.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Looking rather annoyed, the coroner opened the envelope. He glanced down the
sheet of notepaper it contained. Then he looked up.
</p>
<p>
“Mr.—” then he glanced down again.
“Mr.—ah—Mr.—is it Cannot?” he said doubtfully,
“may come forward.”
</p>
<p>
There ran a titter though the spectators, and the coroner frowned.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“You will now take the oath,” said the coroner sharply. He already
regretted having allowed this absurd person to have his say.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Cannot took the oath with a gravity and decorum which had been lacking in
most of those who had preceded him.
</p>
<p>
“I will address myself to the jury,” he began.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“The Avenger,” put in Mr. Cannot promptly.
</p>
<p>
“The perpetrator of these crimes. You further declare that you met him on
the very night he committed the murder we are now investigating?”
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
Again a titter ran through the court. Even the jury broke into broad smiles.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting’s hand shot up to her breast. A feeling of deadly fear took
possession of her.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
And then a member of the general public gave a loud guffaw.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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— </p>
<p>
“Well? Well, Mr. Cannot? Was that all? Did you see this person go off in
the direction of—of King’s Cross, for instance?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
Mr. Cannot bowed, a funny, little, old-fashioned bow, and again some of those
present tittered rather foolishly.
</p>
<p>
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:
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Again the last witness put up his hand to command attention. And then silence
did fall on the court.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. Her friend, the inspector, was bending over
her.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
She rose, and, pulling her veil down over her pale face, followed him
obediently.
</p>
<p>
Down the stone staircase they went, and through the big, now empty, room
downstairs.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t know how to thank you!” There were tears in her
eyes. She was trembling with excitement and emotion. “You <i>have</i> been good
to me.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, that’s nothing,” he said a little awkwardly. “I
expect you went though a pretty bad time, didn’t you?”
</p>
<p>
“Will they be having that old gentleman again?” she spoke in a
whisper, and looked up at him with a pleading, agonised look.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“Then you don’t think there was anything in what he said?”
she ventured.
</p>
<p>
“In what that old gent said? Goodness—no!” he laughed
good-naturedly. “But I’ll tell you what I <i>do</i> think. If it
wasn’t for the time that had gone by, I should believe that the second
witness <i>had</i> 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 <i>said</i>
the poor soul was killed.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“I hope they gave you a cup of tea?” he said.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“’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.”
</p>
<p>
And she obeyed him. “Where’s Daisy?” she asked suddenly.
“I thought the girl would be back by the time I got home.”
</p>
<p>
“She ain’t coming home to-day”—there was an odd, sly,
smiling look on Bunting’s face.
</p>
<p>
“Did she send a telegram?” asked Mrs. Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Something else happened?” she said in a startled voice. Getting up
from her chair she came towards her husband: “What happened? Who
came?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I hope you didn’t make yourself too cheap?” said his wife
jealously.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
Husband and wife laughed more merrily than they had done for a long time.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
As she was sipping gratefully her cup of tea, there came a noise outside, the
shouts of newspaper-sellers.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“On to-night?” repeated Mrs. Bunting. “Whatever for?”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“I can’t believe that he’d go out on such a night as
this!”
</p>
<p>
“What <i>do</i> you mean?” said Bunting, staring at her. Ellen had spoken
so oddly, as if to herself, and in so fierce and passionate a tone.
</p>
<p>
“What do I mean?” she repeated—and a great fear clutched at
her heart. What had she said? She had been thinking aloud.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“Let me see,” he said slowly. “I thought that ’twas
from the bedroom window a woman saw him?”
</p>
<p>
“No, no. I mean the <i>other</i> 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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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. .
. .
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She knocked, and then waited a moment.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
There was a pause—she knocked again.
</p>
<p>
“Come in,” said Mr. Sleuth loudly, and she opened the door and
carried in the tray.
</p>
<p>
“You are a little earlier than usual, are you not Mrs. Bunting?” he
said, with a touch of irritation in his voice.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Breakfast? Did you say breakfast, Mrs. Bunting?”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Aren’t you well?” he said slowly. “You don’t
look well, Mrs. Bunting.”
</p>
<p>
“No, sir,” she said. “I’m not well. I went over to see
a doctor this afternoon, to Ealing, sir.”
</p>
<p>
“I hope he did you good, Mrs. Bunting”—the lodger’s
voice had become softer, kinder in quality.
</p>
<p>
“It always does me good to see the doctor,” said Mrs. Bunting
evasively.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“That I’m sure they do, sir”—she spoke heartily,
sincerely. Doctors had always treated her most kindly, and even generously.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“What d’you mean?” he stammered. “Why did you say that,
Mrs. Bunting?”
</p>
<p>
She stared at him, fascinated, affrighted. Again there came an awful
questioning look over his face.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
And then she shut the door, and went downstairs.
</p>
<p class="p2">
Without telling Bunting what she meant to do, she dragged the heavy
washhand-stand away from the chimneypiece, and lighted the fire.
</p>
<p>
Then in some triumph she called Bunting in.
</p>
<p>
“Time for you to dress,” she cried out cheerfully, “and
I’ve got a little bit of fire for you to dress by.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And then, while her husband was dressing, Mrs. Bunting went upstairs and
cleared away Mr. Sleuth’s supper.
</p>
<p>
The lodger said no word while she was so engaged—no word at all.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She looked anxiously, deprecatingly, at his long, bent back.
</p>
<p>
“Good-night, sir,” she said at last.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Sleuth turned round. His face looked sad and worn.
</p>
<p>
“I hope you’ll sleep well, sir.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I wouldn’t go out to-night,” she said deprecatingly.
“’Tisn’t fit for anyone to be out in the bitter cold.”
</p>
<p>
“And yet—and yet”—he looked at her
attentively—“there will probably be many people out in the streets
to-night.”
</p>
<p>
“A many more than usual, I fear, sir.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
The fire was burning brightly and clearly. She told herself that she did not
need any other light to undress by.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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. . . .
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
<p>
It was a very cold night—so cold, so windy, so snow-laden was the
atmosphere, that everyone who could do so stayed indoors.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
Whew! it was cold; and he had stupidly forgotten his gloves.
</p>
<p>
He put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and began walking more
quickly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Well! This was a funny time o’ night to be taking a stroll for pleasure,
like!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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:
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Sleuth, sir? Mr. Sleuth!”
</p>
<p>
The lodger stopped and turned round.
</p>
<p>
He had been walking so quickly, and he was in so poor a physical condition,
that the sweat was pouring down his face.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>is</i> cold, sir!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Bunting thrust his left hand into his pocket; it was with the other that he
placed the key in the lock of the door.
</p>
<p>
The two men passed into the hall together.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
And then the lodger spoke. His voice was harsh and grating, though not loud.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“No, sir, no. I didn’t notice nothing. I scarcely touched you,
sir.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Whatever are you doing? What on earth are you doing?” came a voice
from the bed, and Bunting started guiltily.
</p>
<p>
“I’m just washing my hands.”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Once more his wife spoke, and he gave so great a start that it shook the bed.
</p>
<p>
“I suppose that you don’t know that you’ve left the light
burning in the hall, wasting our good money?” she observed tartly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
The next morning Mr. Sleuth’s landlord awoke with a start; he felt
curiously heavy about the limbs, and tired about the eyes.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
<p>
Feeling amazingly light-hearted, almost light-headed, Bunting lit the gas-ring
to make his wife her morning cup of tea.
</p>
<p>
While he was doing it, he suddenly heard her call out:
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
She sat up and looked at him, a dazed expression on her face.
</p>
<p>
“What are you grinning at?” she asked suspiciously.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, tell me now,” she said in a low voice.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting made no comment. Instead, she lay back and closed her eyes.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Didn’t I? Well, I expect they’ll be in to dinner.”
</p>
<p>
“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!
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
But Mrs. Bunting made no answer.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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 <i>had</i>
mentioned brushing up against a dead animal.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“I’ll go,” she cried breathlessly. “I’ll go,
Bunting; don’t you trouble.”
</p>
<p>
He stared at her, surprised, and followed her into the hall.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
She walked back into their sitting-room. “There!” she said.
“There it is, Bunting. You just read it.”
</p>
<p class="letter">
“Am on duty this morning. Cannot fetch Miss Daisy as
arranged.—C<small>HANDLER</small>.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“You start about twelve,” said his wife quickly.
</p>
<p>
“That’ll give plenty of time.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Well,” he said. “Well, Mrs. Bunting, I’ve no business
to say anything about it—but I <i>will</i> tell <i>you!</i>”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“But where—and how?” faltered Mrs. Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“What about the clue?” asked Mrs. Bunting, with dry lips.
“You said there was a clue?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“Are you going off to that public-house now?” she asked.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I am. I’ve got a awk’ard job—to try and worm
something out of the barmaid.”
</p>
<p>
“Something out of the barmaid?” repeated Mrs. Bunting nervously.
“Why, whatever for?”
</p>
<p>
He came and stood close to her. “They think ’twas a
gentleman,” he whispered.
</p>
<p>
“A gentleman?”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting stared at Chandler with a scared expression. “Whatever makes
them think such a silly thing as that?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Do,” she said. “Do, Joe. You’ll be welcome,” but
there was no welcome in her tired voice.
</p>
<p>
She let him go alone to the door, and then she went down to her kitchen, and
began cooking Mr. Sleuth’s breakfast.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” she said dully. “It’s awful quiet
to-day—too quiet to my thinking. ’Tain’t natural-like.”
</p>
<p>
The outside gate swung to, making a noisy clatter in the still air.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
And his landlady obeyed him.
</p>
<p>
“It’s only Bunting, sir—Bunting and his daughter.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh! Is that all?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Wordsworth,” he murmured dreamily. “A poet too little read
nowadays, Mrs. Bunting; but one with a beautiful feeling for nature, for youth,
for innocence.”
</p>
<p>
“Indeed, sir?” Mrs. Bunting stepped back a little. “Your
breakfast will be getting cold, sir, if you don’t have it now.”
</p>
<p>
He went back to the table, obediently, and sat down as a child rebuked might
have done.
</p>
<p>
And then his landlady left him.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
But Daisy did not look as pleased as her father thought she ought to do.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“He’s been here,” said Mrs. Bunting slowly.
</p>
<p>
“Been here?” cried her husband. “Then why on earth
didn’t he go and fetch Daisy, if he’d time to come here?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
And Daisy reluctantly obeyed. She wondered what it was her stepmother
didn’t want her to hear.
</p>
<p>
“I’ve something to tell you, Bunting.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes?” He looked across uneasily. “Yes, Ellen?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
There was a long silence between them. Then he spoke, making a great effort to
appear unconcerned.
</p>
<p>
“And where did it happen?” he asked. “Close to the other
one?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
And he acquiesced.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
She flew downstairs. “Bunting,” she said a little breathlessly,
“the lodger would like you just to lend him the Sun.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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:
</p>
<p class="letter">
“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.”
</p>
<p>
She went into the sitting-room. To her relief it was empty.
</p>
<p>
“Kindly put the paper down on the table,” came Mr. Sleuth’s
muffled voice from the upper landing.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And about four there came the now familiar sound.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Daisy gave a little cry of shocked surprise, of amusement, of welcome, when she
saw how cleverly he was disguised.
</p>
<p>
“I never!” she exclaimed. “What a difference it do make, to
be sure! Why, you looks quite horrid, Mr. Chandler.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“It won’t take me ten minutes to make myself respectable
again,” said the young man rather ruefully.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Where did it happen?” he whispered. “Just tell me that,
Joe?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“No arrest I suppose?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“She’s just taken the tray downstairs.”
</p>
<p>
He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called out sharply,
“Daisy! Daisy, child! Are you down there?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, father,” came her eager, happy voice.
</p>
<p>
“Better come up out of that cold kitchen.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And yet even Daisy noticed a change in her father. He sat cowering over the
fire—saying nothing, doing nothing.
</p>
<p>
“Why, father, ain’t you well?” the girl asked more than once.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
At eight the now familiar shouts and cries began again outside.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
Both Bunting and his wife remained silent, but Daisy’s cheeks grew pink
with excitement, and her eye sparkled.
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>would</i> ’a been startled!”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t, Daisy!” and Bunting frowned.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“Up to John-o’-Groat’s?” said Daisy, laughing. And
then, “Why, father, ain’t you going out to get a paper?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I suppose I must.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
The boy nearest to him only had the <i>Sun</i>—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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p class="letter">
“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.)”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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 through the day he and she had accompanied young Chandler to
Scotland Yard.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
But to Bunting’s amazement, and, yes, relief, it was his lodger who
suddenly loomed up in the dim light.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
Bunting spoke at random, his one anxiety being to get away from what was in the
paper, which now lay, neglected, on the table.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“I just stopped for a second to look at it under the lamp,” he
muttered apologetically.
</p>
<p>
“That was a silly thing to do!”
</p>
<p>
“Perhaps it was,” he admitted meekly.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“He didn’t come in for long—not to-day,” said Daisy,
her lip trembling.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Yes?” said Daisy, rather defiantly. “What is it,
Ellen?”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Never!” cried Daisy, much mortified.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” went on her stepmother ruthlessly. “You just ask your
father over there if it isn’t true.”
</p>
<p>
“’Tain’t a healthy thing to speak overmuch about such
happenings,” said Bunting heavily.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
“There’s a lot of that about,” said Chandler, laughing.
“Incorrigible rogues and vagabonds—that’s what those sort of
people are!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Chandler was still sitting there when Mr. Sleuth’s bell rang. For awhile
no one stirred; then Bunting looked questioningly at his wife.
</p>
<p>
“Did you hear that?” he said. “I think, Ellen, that was the
lodger’s bell.”
</p>
<p>
She got up, without alacrity, and went upstairs.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
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 through my rule to-day.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
She went down and brought up the glass of milk and the lump of sugar he had
asked for.
</p>
<p>
Now he was in his usual place, sitting at the table, studying the Book.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Well?” said Daisy pertly. “How about the lodger, Ellen? Is
he all right?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” she said stiffly. “Of course he is!”
</p>
<p>
“He must feel pretty dull sitting up there all by himself—awful
lonely-like, I call it,” said the girl.
</p>
<p>
But her stepmother remained silent.
</p>
<p>
“Whatever does he do with himself all day?” persisted Daisy.
</p>
<p>
“Just now he’s reading the Bible,” Mrs. Bunting answered,
shortly and dryly.
</p>
<p>
“Well, I never! That’s a funny thing for a gentleman to do!”
</p>
<p>
And Joe, alone of her three listeners, laughed—a long hearty peal of
amusement.
</p>
<p>
“There’s nothing to laugh at,” said Mrs. Bunting sharply.
“I should feel ashamed of being caught laughing at anything connected
with the Bible.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
<p>
Each hour of the days that followed held for Bunting its full meed of aching
fear and suspense.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
He told himself again and again, and with fretful unease, that the most awful
thing about it all was that <i>he wasn’t sure</i>. If only he could have been
<i>sure</i>, he might have made up his mind exactly what it was he ought to do.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
No, some other way than going to the police must be found—and he racked
his slow brain to find it.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
And Bunting wagged his head in a way that might mean anything—yes or no,
as the case might be.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” said Chandler, “that’s very kind of you, Mr.
Bunting. But how about her—her herself?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
“That’s a fault on the right side, that is—with a young
girl,” said Bunting thoughtfully.
</p>
<p>
And Chandler nodded. He quite agreed that as regarded other young chaps Mrs.
Bunting could not be too particular.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“I’ll say a word to Ellen, don’t you fear,” said
Bunting abstractedly.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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
<i>you’ll</i> never want no second, Chandler.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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 <i>the next time?</i>”
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“You don’t think,” went on Bunting, lowering his voice,
“that he could be just staying somewhere, lodging like?”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, something o’ that sort,” muttered Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“Well, if your idea’s correct, Mr. Bunting—”
</p>
<p>
“I never said ’twas my idea,” said Bunting, all in a hurry.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Here’s Joe come to ask if he can take Daisy out for a walk,”
blurted out Bunting.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“D’you mean now—this minute?” asked Mrs. Bunting
tartly.
</p>
<p>
“No, o’ course not”—Bunting broke in hastily.
“How you do go on, Ellen!”
</p>
<p>
“What day did your mother mention would be convenient to her?”
asked Mrs. Bunting, looking at the young man satirically.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“I can’t go Saturday,” said Chandler disconsolately.
“I’m on duty Saturday.”
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“What do you say, Miss Daisy?” said Chandler.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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—”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Muttering a word of apology, he rushed out of the shop and across the road.
</p>
<p>
“Ellen!” he gasped hoarsely, “you’ve never gone and
left my little girl alone in the house with the lodger?”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting’s face went yellow with fear. “I thought you was
indoors,” she cried. “You <i>was</i> indoors! Whatever made you come out
for, without first making sure I’d stay in?”
</p>
<p>
Bunting made no answer; but, as they stared at each other in exasperated
silence, each now knew that the other knew.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
He spoke breathlessly, but it was breathlessness induced by fear and by
excitement, not by the quick pace at which they were walking.
</p>
<p>
At last they reached their own gate, and Bunting pushed past in front of his
wife.
</p>
<p>
After all, Daisy was his child; Ellen couldn’t know how he was feeling.
</p>
<p>
He seemed to take the path in one leap, then fumbled for a moment with his
latchkey.
</p>
<p>
Opening wide the door, “Daisy!” he called out, in a wailing voice,
“Daisy, my dear! where are you?”
</p>
<p>
“Here I am, father. What is it?”
</p>
<p>
“She’s all right.” Bunting turned a grey face to his wife.
“She’s all right, Ellen.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
Daisy was standing before the fire in their sitting room, admiring herself in
the glass.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“I won’t have you going out with the lodger—that’s
flat.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!”
</p>
<p>
Her last words were cut across by a tap-tap on the door.
</p>
<p>
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 <i>someone</i>, some
merciless myrmidon of the law, had crept in behind them?
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Well?” said Mr. Sleuth. Then Mrs. Bunting turned, and it seemed to
his landlady that he was looking at her threateningly. “Well?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir. We’ll come in a minute,” she said dully.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Daisy took quick advantage of the lodger’s hesitation and unease.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
Mr. Sleuth looked down at her, and a smile passed for a moment over his worn,
gaunt face.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Well, you <i>are</i> 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!”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
But Mr. Sleuth frowned and shuffled away. Daisy, leaving her stepmother’s
side, joined him.
</p>
<p>
Two, as all the world knows, is company, three is none. Mrs. Bunting put down
three sixpences.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“No,” she answered indifferently, “I don’t know that I
ever heard of him.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“Well, I hope you never <i>will</i> 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!”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
A group of people, all talking and laughing together; were advancing, from
within the wooden barrier, toward the turnstile.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!’”
</p>
<p>
“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 <i>he’ll</i> be hanged—if he’s ever
caught, that is!”
</p>
<p>
Her girlish voice rang out, and Mrs. Bunting could hear every word that was
said.
</p>
<p>
The whole party gathered round, listening eagerly. “Well, no.” He
spoke very deliberately. “I doubt if that particular murderer ever will
be hanged.”
</p>
<p>
“You mean that you’ll never catch him?” the girl spoke with a
touch of airy impertinence in her clear voice.
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
Several of those standing near by uttered expressions of surprise and
incredulity.
</p>
<p>
“Then why don’t you catch him?” cried the girl indignantly.
</p>
<p>
“I didn’t say we knew <i>where</i> 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.”
</p>
<p>
Sir John’s French colleague looked up quickly. “De Leipsic and
Liverpool man?” he said interrogatively.
</p>
<p>
The other nodded. “Yes, I suppose you’ve had the case turned
up?”
</p>
<p>
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:
</p>
<p>
“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—”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting looked straight before her. She felt—so she expressed it to
her husband later—as if she had been turned to stone.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Sleuth swerved to one side; there came a terrible change over his pale,
narrow face; it became discomposed, livid with rage and terror.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Mrs. Bunting, may I trouble you to come over here for a moment?”
</p>
<p>
The words were hissed rather than spoken by Mr. Sleuth’s lips.
</p>
<p>
His landlady took a doubtful step towards him.
</p>
<p>
“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! But 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.”
</p>
<p>
Even while Mr. Sleuth was muttering these strange, dreadful words, he was
looking round, glancing this way and that, seeking a way of escape.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, yes, sir; I think so.”
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“You needn’t do that if you’ll just explain what happened
here.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
He passed his hand over his eyes. “Thank you,” he muttered,
“thank you. I shall get all right out there.”
</p>
<p>
An iron stairway led down into a small stable yard, of which the door opened
into a side street.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Even Daisy felt a little scared. “He did look bad, didn’t he,
now?” she turned appealingly to Mr. Hopkins.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, that he did, poor gentleman—your lodger, too?” he
looked sympathetically at Mrs. Bunting.
</p>
<p>
She moistened her lips with her tongue. “Yes,” she repeated dully,
“my lodger.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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!
</p>
<p>
Turning abruptly, she went into the lodger’s bedroom and opened the
drawer of the looking-glass.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
In her ears there still rang the Frenchman’s half careless yet confident
question, “De Leipsic and Liverpool man?”
</p>
<p>
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:— </p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“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!”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting made no answer; she simply stepped aside to allow Daisy to go
down.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
And Bunting’s face altered again; the old, anxious, depressed look, the
look it had worn the last few days, returned.
</p>
<p>
“What makes you think he mayn’t come back?” he muttered.
</p>
<p>
“Too long to tell you now,” she said. “Wait till the
child’s gone to bed.”
</p>
<p>
And Bunting had to restrain his curiosity.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
“You’re never going to shut him out?” she expostulated
angrily, beneath her breath.
</p>
<p>
“I’m not going to leave Daisy down here with that man perhaps
walking in any minute.”
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Sleuth won’t hurt Daisy, bless you! Much more likely to hurt
me,” and she gave a half sob.
</p>
<p>
Bunting stared at her. “What do you mean?” he said roughly.
“Come upstairs and tell me what you mean.”
</p>
<p>
And then, in what had been the lodger’s sitting-room, Mrs. Bunting told
her husband exactly what it was that had happened.
</p>
<p>
He listened in heavy silence.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
And Bunting stared at her ruminatingly. “Depends on what you call
responsible—” he began argumentatively.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Bunting shook her head impatiently. “I don’t think we ought to
do nothing,” she said. “Why should we?”
</p>
<p>
And then again he began walking round the room in an aimless fashion that
irritated her.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t you make any mistake—he’ll come back for
that,” said Bunting, with decision.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
And Bunting acquiesced.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Daisy opened her eyes.
</p>
<p>
“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?”
</p>
<p>
“Young people don’t sleep as light as do old folks,” Mrs.
Bunting said sententiously.
</p>
<p>
“Did the lodger come in after all? I suppose he’s upstairs
now?”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
And Daisy smiled, a very happy, confident little smile.
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
“Gone away, has he?” he observed casually. “Well, I hope he
paid up all right?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Mrs. Bunting hastily. “No trouble of
that sort.”
</p>
<p>
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.”
</p>
<p>
“You always said he was ’centric,” said Joe thoughtfully.
</p>
<p>
“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.
</p>
<p>
“Would you like a description of him circulated?” asked Joe
good-naturedly.
</p>
<p>
Mr. and Mrs. Bunting looked at one another.
</p>
<p>
“No, I don’t think so. Not yet awhile at any rate. ’Twould
upset him awfully, you see.”
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Daisy, making no bones about it this time, followed him out into the passage,
and shut the sitting-room door behind her.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
Then she bent down her head. “Father,” she said, “I’ve
a bit of news for you!”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, my dear?”
</p>
<p>
“Father, I’m engaged! Aren’t you surprised?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, what do <i>you</i> think?” said Bunting fondly. Then he turned
round and, catching hold of her head, gave her a good, hearty kiss.
</p>
<p>
“What’ll Old Aunt say, I wonder?” he whispered.
</p>
<p>
“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.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” said Daisy a little wonderingly. “I know you have,
Ellen.”
</p>
<p class="p2">
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
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