“All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go. One can’t always do just
what one wants to do—not in this world, at any rate!”
Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular, though
both her husband and her stepdaughter were in the room. She was
standing by the table, staring straight before her, and as she spoke
she avoided looking at either Bunting or Daisy. There was in her voice
a tone of cross decision, of thin finality, with which they were both
acquainted, and to which each listener knew the other would have to
bow.
There was silence for a moment, then Daisy broke out passionately, “I
don’t see why I should go if I don’t want to!” she cried. “You’ll allow
I’ve been useful to you, Ellen? ’Tisn’t even as if you was quite well.”
“I am quite well—perfectly well!” snapped out Mrs. Bunting, and she
turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her stepdaughter.
“’Tain’t often I has a chance of being with you and father.” There were
tears in Daisy’s voice, and Bunting glanced deprecatingly at his wife.
An invitation had come to Daisy—an invitation from her own dead
mother’s sister, who was housekeeper in a big house in Belgrave Square.
“The family” had gone away for the Christmas holidays, and Aunt
Margaret—Daisy was her godchild—had begged that her niece might come
and spend two or three days with her.
But the girl had already had more than one taste of what life was like
in the great gloomy basement of 100 Belgrave Square. Aunt Margaret was
one of those old-fashioned servants for whom the modern employer is
always sighing. While “the family” were away it was her joy—she
regarded it as a privilege—to wash sixty-seven pieces of very valuable
china contained in two cabinets in the drawing-room; she also slept in
every bed by turns, to keep them all well aired. These were the two
duties with which she intended her young niece to assist her, and
Daisy’s soul sickened at the prospect.
But the matter had to be settled at once. The letter had come an hour
ago, containing a stamped telegraph form, and Aunt Margaret was not one
to be trifled with.
Since breakfast the three had talked of nothing else, and from the very
first Mrs. Bunting had said that Daisy ought to go—that there was no
doubt about it, that it did not admit of discussion. But discuss it
they all did, and for once Bunting stood up to his wife. But that, as
was natural, only made his Ellen harder and more set on her own view.
“What the child says is true,” he observed. “It isn’t as if you was
quite well. You’ve been took bad twice in the last few days—you can’t
deny of it, Ellen. Why shouldn’t I just take a bus and go over and see
Margaret? I’d tell her just how it is. She’d understand, bless you!”
“I won’t have you doing nothing of the sort!” cried Mrs. Bunting,
speaking almost as passionately as her stepdaughter had done. “Haven’t
I a right to be ill, haven’t I a right to be took bad, aye, and to feel
all right again—same as other people?”
Daisy turned round and clasped her hands. “Oh, Ellen!” she cried; “do
say that you can’t spare me! I don’t want to go across to that horrid
old dungeon of a place.”
“Do as you like,” said Mrs. Bunting sullenly. “I’m fair tired of you
both! There’ll come a day, Daisy, when you’ll know, like me, that money
is the main thing that matters in this world; and when your Aunt
Margaret’s left her savings to somebody else just because you wouldn’t
spend a few days with her this Christmas, then you’ll know what it’s
like to go without—you’ll know what a fool you were, and that nothing
can’t alter it any more!”
And then, with victory actually in her grasp, poor Daisy saw it
snatched from her.
“Ellen is right,” Bunting said heavily. “Money does matter—a terrible
deal—though I never thought to hear Ellen say ’twas the only thing that
mattered. But ’twould be foolish—very, very foolish, my girl, to offend
your Aunt Margaret. It’ll only be two days after all—two days isn’t a
very long time.”
But Daisy did not hear her father’s last words. She had already rushed
from the room, and gone down to the kitchen to hide her childish tears
of disappointment—the childish tears which came because she was
beginning to be a woman, with a woman’s natural instinct for building
her own human nest.
Aunt Margaret was not one to tolerate the comings of any strange young
man, and she had a peculiar dislike to the police.
“Who’d ever have thought she’d have minded as much as that!” Bunting
looked across at Ellen deprecatingly; already his heart was misgiving
him.
“It’s plain enough why she’s become so fond of us all of a sudden,”
said Mrs. Bunting sarcastically. And as her husband stared at her
uncomprehendingly, she added, in a tantalising tone, “as plain as the
nose on your face, my man.”
“What d’you mean?” he said. “I daresay I’m a bit slow, Ellen, but I
really don’t know what you’d be at?”
“Don’t you remember telling me before Daisy came here that Joe Chandler
had become sweet on her last summer? I thought it only foolishness
then, but I’ve come round to your view—that’s all.”
Bunting nodded his head slowly. Yes, Joe had got into the way of coming
very often, and there had been the expedition to that gruesome Scotland
Yard museum, but somehow he, Bunting, had been so interested in the
Avenger murders that he hadn’t thought of Joe in any other
connection—not this time, at any rate.
“And do you think Daisy likes him?” There was an unwonted tone of
excitement, of tenderness, in Bunting’s voice.
His wife looked over at him; and a thin smile, not an unkindly smile by
any means, lit up her pale face. “I’ve never been one to prophesy,” she
answered deliberately. “But this I don’t mind telling you,
Bunting—Daisy’ll have plenty o’ time to get tired of Joe Chandler
before they two are dead. Mark my words!”
“Well, she might do worse,” said Bunting ruminatingly. “He’s as steady
as God makes them, and he’s already earning thirty-two shillings a
week. But I wonder how Old Aunt’d like the notion? I don’t see her
parting with Daisy before she must.”
“I wouldn’t let no old aunt interfere with me about such a thing as
that!” cried Mrs. Bunting. “No, not for millions of gold!” And Bunting
looked at her in silent wonder. Ellen was singing a very different tune
now to what she’d sung a few minutes ago, when she was so keen about
the girl going to Belgrave Square.
“If she still seems upset while she’s having her dinner,” said his wife
suddenly, “well, you just wait till I’ve gone out for something, and
then you just say to her, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’—just
that, and nothing more! She’ll take it from you. And I shouldn’t be
surprised if it comforted her quite a lot.”
“For the matter of that, there’s no reason why Joe Chandler shouldn’t
go over and see her there,” said Bunting hesitatingly.
“Oh, yes, there is,” said Mrs. Bunting, smiling shrewdly. “Plenty of
reason. Daisy’ll be a very foolish girl if she allows her aunt to know
any of her secrets. I’ve only seen that woman once, but I know exactly
the sort Margaret is. She’s just waiting for Old Aunt to drop off and
then she’ll want to have Daisy herself—to wait on her, like. She’d turn
quite nasty if she thought there was a young fellow what stood in her
way.”
She glanced at the 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.
“I’ve time to go out with that telegram,” she said briskly—somehow she
felt better, different to what she had done the last few days—“and then
it’ll be done. It’s no good having more words about it, and I expect we
should have plenty more words if I wait till the child comes upstairs
again.”
She did not speak unkindly, and Bunting looked at her rather
wonderingly. Ellen very seldom spoke of Daisy as “the child”—in fact,
he could only remember her having done so once before, and that was a
long time ago. They had been talking over their future life together,
and she had said, very solemnly, “Bunting, I promise I will do my
duty—as much as lies in my power, that is—by the child.”
But Ellen had not had much opportunity of doing her duty by Daisy. As
not infrequently happens with the duties that we are willing to do,
that particular duty had been taken over by someone else who had no
mind to let it go.
“What shall I do if Mr. Sleuth rings?” asked Bunting, rather nervously.
It was the first time since the lodger had come to them that Ellen had
offered to go out in the morning.
She hesitated. In her anxiety to have the matter of Daisy settled, she
had forgotten Mr. Sleuth. Strange that she should have done so—strange,
and, to herself, very comfortable and pleasant.
“Oh, well, you can just go up and knock at the door and say I’ll be
back in a few minutes—that I had to go out with a message. He’s quite a
reasonable gentleman.” She went into the back room to put on her bonnet
and thick jacket for it was very cold—getting colder every minute.
As she stood, buttoning her gloves—she wouldn’t have gone out untidy
for the world—Bunting suddenly came across to her. “Give us a kiss, old
girl,” he said. And his wife turned up her face.
“One ’ud think it was catching!” she said, but there was a lilt in her
voice.
“So it is,” Bunting briefly answered. “Didn’t that old cook get married
just after us? She’d never ’a thought of it if it hadn’t been for you!”
But once she was out, walking along the damp, uneven pavement, Mr.
Sleuth revenged himself for his landlady’s temporary forgetfulness.
During the last two days the lodger had been queer, odder than usual,
unlike himself, or, rather, very much as he had been some ten days ago,
just before that double murder had taken place.
The night before, while Daisy was telling all about the dreadful place
to which Joe Chandler had taken her and her father, Mrs. Bunting had
heard Mr. Sleuth moving about overhead, restlessly walking up and down
his sitting-room. And later, when she took up his supper, she had
listened a moment outside the door, while he read aloud some of the
texts his soul delighted in—terrible texts telling of the grim joys
attendant on revenge.
Mrs. Bunting was so absorbed in her thoughts, so possessed with the
curious personality of her lodger, that she did not look where she was
going, and suddenly a young woman bumped up against her.
She started violently and looked round, dazed, as the young person
muttered a word of apology;—then she again fell into deep thought.
It was a good thing Daisy was going away for a few days; it made the
problem of Mr. Sleuth and his queer ways less disturbing. She, Ellen,
was sorry she had spoken so sharp-like to the girl, but after all it
wasn’t wonderful that she had been snappy. This last night she had
hardly slept at all. Instead, she had lain awake listening—and there is
nothing so tiring as to lie awake listening for a sound that never
comes.
The house had remained so still you could have heard a pin drop. Mr.
Sleuth, lying snug in his nice warm bed upstairs, had not stirred. Had
he stirred his landlady was bound to have heard him, for his bed was,
as we know, just above hers. No, during those long hours of darkness
Daisy’s light, regular breathing was all that had fallen on Mrs.
Bunting’s ears.
And then her mind switched off Mr. Sleuth. She made a determined effort
to expel him, to toss him, as it were, out of her thoughts.
It seemed strange that The Avenger had stayed his hand, for, as Joe had
said only last evening, it was full time that he should again turn that
awful, mysterious searchlight of his on himself. Mrs. Bunting always
visioned The Avenger as a black shadow in the centre a bright blinding
light—but the shadow had no form or definite substance. Sometimes he
looked like one thing, sometimes like another . . .
Mrs. Bunting had now come to the corner which led up the street where
there was a Post Office. But instead of turning sharp to the left she
stopped short for a minute.
There had suddenly come over her a feeling of horrible self-rebuke and
even self-loathing. It was dreadful that she, of all women, should have
longed to hear that another murder had been committed last night!
Yet such was the shameful fact. She had listened all through breakfast
hoping to hear the dread news being shouted outside; yes, and more or
less during the long discussion which had followed on the receipt of
Margaret’s letter she had been hoping—hoping against hope—that those
dreadful triumphant shouts of the newspaper-sellers still might come
echoing down the Marylebone Road. And yet hypocrite that she was, she
had reproved Bunting when he had expressed, not disappointment
exactly—but, well, surprise, that nothing had happened last night.
Now her mind switched off to Joe Chandler. Strange to think how afraid
she had been of that young man! She was no longer afraid of him, or
hardly at all. He was dotty—that’s what was the matter with him, dotty
with love for rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed little Daisy. Anything might now
go on, right under Joe Chandler’s very nose—but, bless you, he’d never
see it! Last summer, when this affair, this nonsense of young Chandler
and Daisy had begun, she had had very little patience with it all. In
fact, the memory of the way Joe had gone on then, the tiresome way he
would be always dropping in, had been one reason (though not the most
important reason of all) why she had felt so terribly put about at the
idea of the girl coming again. But now? Well, now she had become quite
tolerant, quite kindly—at any rate as far as Joe Chandler was
concerned.
She wondered why.
Still, ’twouldn’t do Joe a bit of harm not to see the girl for a couple
of days. In fact ’twould be a very good thing, for then he’d think of
Daisy—think of her to the exclusion of all else. Absence does make the
heart grow fonder—at first, at any rate. Mrs. Bunting was well aware of
that. During the long course of hers and Bunting’s mild courting,
they’d been separated for about three months, and it was that three
months which had made up her mind for her. She had got so used to
Bunting that she couldn’t do without him, and she had felt—oddest fact
of all—acutely, miserably jealous. But she hadn’t let him know that—no
fear!
Of course, Joe mustn’t neglect his job—that would never do. But what a
good thing it was, after all, that he wasn’t like some of those
detective chaps that are written about in stories—the sort of chaps
that know everything, see everything, guess everything—even where there
isn’t anything to see, or know, or guess!
Why, to take only one little fact—Joe Chandler had never shown the
slightest curiosity about their lodger. . . .
Mrs. Bunting pulled herself together with a start, and hurried quickly
on. Bunting would begin to wonder what had happened to her.
She went into the Post Office and handed the form to the young woman
without a word. Margaret, a sensible woman, who was accustomed to
manage other people’s affairs, had even written out the words: “Will be
with you to tea.—DAISY.”
It was a comfort to have the thing settled once for all. If anything
horrible was going to happen in the next two or three days—it was just
as well Daisy shouldn’t be at home. Not that there was any _real_
danger that anything would happen,—Mrs. Bunting felt sure of that.
By this time she was out in the street again, and she began mentally
counting up the number of murders The Avenger had committed. Nine, or
was it ten? Surely by now The Avenger must be avenged? Surely by now,
if—as that writer in the newspaper had suggested—he was a quiet,
blameless gentleman living in the West End, whatever vengeance he had
to wreak, must be satisfied?
She began hurrying homewards; it wouldn’t do for the lodger to ring
before she had got back. Bunting would never know how to manage Mr.
Sleuth, especially if Mr. Sleuth was in one of his queer moods.
Mrs. Bunting put the key into the front door lock and passed into the
house. Then her heart stood still with fear and terror. There came the
sound of voices—of voices she thought she did not know—in the
sitting-room.
She opened the door, and then drew a long breath. It was only Joe
Chandler—Joe, Daisy, and Bunting, talking together. They stopped rather
guiltily as she came in, but not before she had heard Chandler utter
the words: “That don’t mean nothing! I’ll just run out and send another
saying you won’t come, Miss Daisy.”
And then the strangest smile came over Mrs. Bunting’s face. There had
fallen on her ear the still distant, but unmistakable, shouts which
betokened that something _had_ happened last night—something which made
it worth while for the newspaper-sellers to come crying down the
Marylebone Road.
“Well?” she said a little breathlessly. “Well, Joe? I suppose you’ve
brought us news? I suppose there’s been another?”
He looked at her, surprised. “No, that there hasn’t, Mrs. Bunting—not
as far as I know, that is. Oh, you’re thinking of those newspaper
chaps? They’ve got to cry out something,” he grinned. “You wouldn’t ’a
thought folk was so bloodthirsty. They’re just shouting out that
there’s been an arrest; but we don’t take no stock of that. It’s a
Scotchman what gave himself up last night at Dorking. He’d been
drinking, and was a-pitying of himself. Why, since this business began,
there’s been about twenty arrests, but they’ve all come to nothing.”
“Why, Ellen, you looks quite sad, quite disappointed,” said Bunting
jokingly. “Come to think of it, it’s high time The Avenger was at work
again.” He laughed as he made his grim joke. Then turned to young
Chandler: “Well, _you’ll_ be glad when its all over, my lad.”
“Glad in a way,” said Chandler unwillingly. “But one ’ud have liked to
have caught him. One doesn’t like to know such a creature’s at large,
now, does one?”
Mrs. Bunting had taken off her bonnet and jacket. “I must just go and
see about Mr. Sleuth’s breakfast,” she said in a weary, dispirited
voice, and left them there.
She felt disappointed, and very, very depressed. As to the plot which
had been hatching when she came in, that had no chance of success;
Bunting would never dare let Daisy send out another telegram
contradicting the first. Besides, Daisy’s stepmother shrewdly suspected
that by now the girl herself wouldn’t care to do such a thing. Daisy
had plenty of sense tucked away somewhere in her pretty little head. If
it ever became her fate to live as a married woman in London, it would
be best to stay on the right side of Aunt Margaret.
And when she came into her kitchen the stepmother’s heart became very
soft, for Daisy had got everything beautifully ready. In fact, there
was nothing to do but to boil Mr. Sleuth’s two eggs. Feeling suddenly
more cheerful than she had felt of late, Mrs. Bunting took the tray
upstairs.
“As it was rather late, I didn’t wait for you to ring, sir,” she said.
And the lodger looked up from the table where, as usual, he was
studying with painful, almost agonising intentness, the Book. “Quite
right, Mrs. Bunting—quite right! I have been pondering over the
command, ‘Work while it is yet light.’”
“Yes, sir?” she said, and a queer, cold feeling stole over her heart.
“Yes, sir?”
“‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh—the flesh is weak,’” said Mr.
Sleuth, with a heavy sigh.
“You studies too hard, and too long—that’s what’s ailing you, sir,”
said Mr. Sleuth’s landlady suddenly.
When Mrs. Bunting went down again she found that a great deal had been
settled in her absence; among other things, that Joe Chandler was going
to escort Miss Daisy across to Belgrave Square. He could carry Daisy’s
modest bag, and if they wanted to ride instead of walk, why, they could
take the bus from Baker Street Station to Victoria—that would land them
very near Belgrave Square.
But Daisy seemed quite willing to walk; she hadn’t had a walk, she
declared, for a long, long time—and then she blushed rosy red, and even
her stepmother had to admit to herself that Daisy was very nice
looking, not at all the sort of girl who ought to be allowed to go
about the London streets by herself.