“There he is at last, and I’m glad of it, Ellen. ’Tain’t a night you
would wish a dog to be out in.”
Bunting’s voice was full of relief, but he did not turn round and look
at his wife as he spoke; instead, he continued to read the evening
paper he held in his hand.
He was still close to the fire, sitting back comfortably in his nice
arm-chair. He looked very well—well and ruddy. Mrs. Bunting stared
across at him with a touch of sharp envy, nay, more, of resentment. And
this was very curious, for she was, in her own dry way, very fond of
Bunting.
“You needn’t feel so nervous about him; Mr. Sleuth can look out for
himself all right.”
Bunting laid the paper he had been reading down on his knee. “I can’t
think why he wanted to go out in such weather,” he said impatiently.
“Well, it’s none of your business, Bunting, now, is it?”
“No, that’s true enough. Still, ’twould be a very bad thing for us if
anything happened to him. This lodger’s the first bit of luck we’ve had
for a terrible long time, Ellen.”
Mrs. Bunting moved a little impatiently in her high chair. She remained
silent for a moment. What Bunting had said was too obvious to be worth
answering. Also she was listening, following in imagination her
lodger’s quick, singularly quiet progress—“stealthy” she called it to
herself—through the fog-filled, lamp-lit hall. Yes, now he was going up
the staircase. What was that Bunting was saying?
“It isn’t safe for decent folk to be out in such weather—no, that it
ain’t, not unless they have something to do that won’t wait till
to-morrow.” The speaker was looking straight into his wife’s narrow,
colourless face. Bunting was an obstinate man, and liked to prove
himself right. “I’ve a good mind to speak to him about it, that I have!
He ought to be told that it isn’t safe—not for the sort of man he is—to
be wandering about the streets at night. I read you out the accidents
in _Lloyd’s_—shocking, they were, and all brought about by the fog! And
then, that horrid monster ’ull soon be at his work again—”
“Monster?” repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.
She was trying to hear the lodger’s footsteps overhead. She was very
curious to know whether he had gone into his nice sitting-room, or
straight upstairs, to that cold experiment-room, as he now always
called it.
But her husband went on as if he had not heard her, and she gave up
trying to listen to what was going on above.
“It wouldn’t be very pleasant to run up against such a party as that in
the fog, eh, Ellen?” He spoke as if the notion had a certain pleasant
thrill in it after all.
“What stuff you do talk!” said Mrs. Bunting sharply. And then she got
up. Her husband’s remarks had disturbed her. Why couldn’t they talk of
something pleasant when they did have a quiet bit of time together?
Bunting looked down again at his paper, and she moved quietly about the
room. Very soon it would be time for supper, and to-night she was going
to cook her husband a nice piece of toasted cheese. That fortunate man,
as she was fond of telling him, with mingled contempt and envy, had the
digestion of an ostrich, and yet he was rather fanciful, as gentlemen’s
servants who have lived in good places often are.
Yes, Bunting was very lucky in the matter of his digestion. Mrs.
Bunting prided herself on having a nice mind, and she would never have
allowed an unrefined word—such a word as “stomach,” for instance, to
say nothing of an even plainer term—to pass her lips, except, of
course, to a doctor in a sick-room.
Mr. Sleuth’s landlady did not go down at once into her cold kitchen;
instead, with a sudden furtive movement, she opened the door leading
into her bedroom, and then, closing the door quietly, stepped back into
the darkness, and stood motionless, listening.
At first she heard nothing, but gradually there stole on her listening
ears the sound of someone moving softly about in the room just
overhead, that is, in Mr. Sleuth’s bedroom. But, try as she might, it
was impossible for her to guess what the lodger was doing.
At last she heard him open the door leading out on the little landing.
She could hear the stairs creaking. That meant, no doubt, that Mr.
Sleuth would pass the rest of the evening in the cheerless room above.
He hadn’t spent any time up there for quite a long while—in fact, not
for nearly ten days. ’Twas odd he chose to-night, when it was so foggy,
to carry out an experiment.
She groped her way to a chair and sat down. She felt very
tired—strangely tired, as if she had gone through some great physical
exertion.
Yes, it was true that Mr. Sleuth had brought her and Bunting luck, and
it was wrong, very wrong, of her ever to forget that.
As she sat there she also reminded herself, and not for the first time,
what the lodger’s departure would mean. It would almost certainly mean
ruin; just as his staying meant all sorts of good things, of which
physical comfort was the least. If Mr. Sleuth stayed on with them, as
he showed every intention of doing, it meant respectability, and, above
all, security.
Mrs. Bunting thought of Mr. Sleuth’s money. He never received a letter,
and yet he must have some kind of income—so much was clear. She
supposed he went and drew his money, in sovereigns, out of a bank as he
required it.
Her mind swung round, consciously, deliberately, away from Mr. Sleuth.
The Avenger? What a strange name! Again she assured herself that there
would come a time when The Avenger, whoever he was, must feel satiated;
when he would feel himself to be, so to speak, avenged.
To go back to Mr. Sleuth; it was lucky that the lodger seemed so
pleased, not only with the rooms, but with his landlord and
landlady—indeed, there was no real reason why Mr. Sleuth should ever
wish to leave such nice lodgings.
Mrs. Bunting suddenly stood up. She made a strong effort, and shook off
her awful sense of apprehension and unease. Feeling for the handle of
the door giving into the passage she turned it, and then, with light,
firm steps, she went down into the kitchen.
When they had first taken the house, the basement had been made by her
care, if not into a pleasant, then, at any rate, into a very clean
place. She had had it whitewashed, and against the still white walls
the gas stove loomed up, a great square of black iron and bright steel.
It was a large gas-stove, the kind for which one pays four shillings a
quarter rent to the gas company, and here, in the kitchen, there was no
foolish shilling-in-the-slot arrangement. Mrs. Bunting was too shrewd a
woman to have anything to do with that kind of business. There was a
proper gas-meter, and she paid for what she consumed after she had
consumed it.
Putting her candle down on the well-scrubbed wooden table, she turned
up the gas-jet, and blew out the candle.
Then, lighting one of the gas-rings, she put a frying-pan on the stove,
and once more her mind reverted, as if in spite of herself, to Mr.
Sleuth. Never had there been a more confiding or trusting gentleman
than the lodger, and yet in some ways he was so secret, so—so peculiar.
She thought of the bag—that bag which had rumbled about so queerly in
the chiffonnier. Something seemed to tell her that tonight the lodger
had taken that bag out with him.
And then she thrust away the thought of the bag almost violently from
her mind, and went back to the more agreeable thought of Mr. Sleuth’s
income, and of how little trouble he gave. Of course, the lodger was
eccentric, otherwise he wouldn’t be their lodger at all—he would be
living in quite a different sort of way with some of his relations, or
with a friend in his own class.
While these thoughts galloped disconnectedly through her mind, Mrs.
Bunting went on with her cooking, preparing the cheese, cutting it up
into little shreds, carefully measuring out the butter, doing
everything, as was always her way, with a certain delicate and cleanly
precision.
And then, while in the middle of toasting the bread on which was to be
poured the melted cheese, she suddenly heard sounds which startled her,
made her feel uncomfortable.
Shuffling, hesitating steps were creaking down the house.
She looked up and listened.
Surely the lodger was not going out again into the cold and foggy
night—going out, as he had done the other evening, for a second time?
But no; the sounds she heard, the sounds of now familiar footsteps, did
not continue down the passage leading to the front door.
Instead—Why, what was this she heard now? She began to listen so
intently that the bread she was holding at the end of the toasting-fork
grew quite black. With a start she became aware that this was so, and
she frowned, vexed with herself. That came of not attending to one’s
work.
Mr. Sleuth was evidently about to do what he had never yet done. He was
coming down into the kitchen.
Nearer and nearer came the thudding sounds, treading heavily on the
kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Bunting’s heart began to beat as if in
response. She put out the flame of the gas-ring, unheedful of the fact
that the cheese would stiffen and spoil in the cold air.
Then she turned and faced the door.
There came a fumbling at the handle, and a moment later the door
opened, and revealed, as she had at once known and feared it would do,
the lodger.
Mr. Sleuth looked even odder than usual. He was clad in a plaid
dressing-gown, which she had never seen him wear before, though she
knew that he had purchased it not long after his arrival. In his hand
was a lighted candle.
When he saw the kitchen all lighted up, and the woman standing in it,
the lodger looked inexplicably taken aback, almost aghast.
“Yes, sir? What can I do for you, sir? I hope you didn’t ring, sir?”
Mrs. Bunting held her ground in front of the stove. Mr. Sleuth had no
business to come like this into her kitchen, and she intended to let
him know that such was her view.
“No, I—I didn’t ring,” he stammered awkwardly. “The truth is, I didn’t
know you were here, Mrs. Bunting. Please excuse my costume. My
gas-stove has gone wrong, or, rather, that shilling-in-the-slot
arrangement has done so. So I came down to see if you had a gas-stove.
I am going to ask you to allow me to use it to-night for an important
experiment I wish to make.”
Mrs. Bunting’s heart was beating quickly—quickly. She felt horribly
troubled, unnaturally so. Why couldn’t Mr. Sleuth’s experiment wait
till the morning? She stared at him dubiously, but there was that in
his face that made her at once afraid and pitiful. It was a wild,
eager, imploring look.
“Oh, certainly, sir; but you will find it very cold down here.”
“It seems most pleasantly warm,” he observed, his voice full of relief,
“warm and cosy, after my cold room upstairs.”
Warm and cosy? Mrs. Bunting stared at him in amazement. Nay, even that
cheerless room at the top of the house must be far warmer and more cosy
than this cold underground kitchen could possibly be.
“I’ll make you a fire, sir. We never use the grate, but it’s in perfect
order, for the first thing I did after I came into the house was to
have the chimney swept. It was terribly dirty. It might have set the
house on fire.” Mrs. Bunting’s housewifely instincts were roused. “For
the matter of that, you ought to have a fire in your bedroom this cold
night.”
“By no means—I would prefer not. I certainly do not want a fire there.
I dislike an open fire, Mrs. Bunting. I thought I had told you as
much.”
Mr. Sleuth frowned. He stood there, a strange-looking figure, his
candle still alight, just inside the kitchen door.
“I shan’t be very long, sir. Just about a quarter of an hour. You could
come down then. I’ll have everything quite tidy for you. Is there
anything I can do to help you?”
“I do not require the use of your kitchen yet—thank you all the same,
Mrs. Bunting. I shall come down later—altogether later—after you and
your husband have gone to bed. But I should be much obliged if you
would see that the gas people come to-morrow and put my stove in order.
It might be done while I am out. That the shilling-in-the-slot machine
should go wrong is very unpleasant. It has upset me greatly.”
“Perhaps Bunting could put it right for you, sir. For the matter of
that, I could ask him to go up now.”
“No, no, I don’t want anything of that sort done to-night. Besides, he
couldn’t put it right. I am something of an expert, Mrs. Bunting, and I
have done all I could. The cause of the trouble is quite simple. The
machine is choked up with shillings; a very foolish plan, so I always
felt it to be.”
Mr. Sleuth spoke pettishly, with far more heat than he was wont to
speak, but Mrs. Bunting sympathised with him in this matter. She had
always suspected that those slot machines were as dishonest as if they
were human. It was dreadful, the way they swallowed up the shillings!
She had had one once, so she knew.
And as if he were divining her thoughts, Mr. Sleuth walked forward and
stared at the stove. “Then you haven’t got a slot machine?” he said
wonderingly. “I’m very glad of that, for I expect my experiment will
take some time. But, of course, I shall pay you something for the use
of the stove, Mrs. Bunting.”
“Oh, no, sir, I wouldn’t think of charging you anything for that. We
don’t use our stove very much, you know, sir. I’m never in the kitchen
a minute longer than I can help this cold weather.”
Mrs. Bunting was beginning to feel better. When she was actually in Mr.
Sleuth’s presence her morbid fears would be lulled, perhaps because his
manner almost invariably was gentle and very quiet. But still there
came over her an eerie feeling, as, with him preceding her, they made a
slow progress to the ground floor.
Once there, the lodger courteously bade his landlady good-night, and
proceeded upstairs to his own apartments.
Mrs. Bunting returned to the kitchen. Again she lighted the stove; but
she felt unnerved, afraid of she knew not what. As she was cooking the
cheese, she tried to concentrate her mind on what she was doing, and on
the whole she succeeded. But another part of her mind seemed to be
working independently, asking her insistent questions.
The place seemed to her alive with alien presences, and once she caught
herself listening—which was absurd, for, of course, she could not hope
to hear what Mr. Sleuth was doing two, if not three, flights upstairs.
She wondered in what the lodger’s experiments consisted. It was odd
that she had never been able to discover what it was he really did with
that big gas-stove. All she knew was that he used a very high degree of
heat.