The Buntings went to bed early that night. But Mrs. Bunting made up her
mind to keep awake. She was set upon knowing at what hour of the night
the lodger would come down into her kitchen to carry through his
experiment, and, above all, she was anxious to know how long he would
stay there.
But she had had a long and a very anxious day, and presently she fell
asleep.
The church clock hard by struck two, and, suddenly Mrs. Bunting awoke.
She felt put out, sharply annoyed with herself. How could she have
dropped off like that? Mr. Sleuth must have been down and up again
hours ago!
Then, gradually, she became aware that there was a faint acrid odour in
the room. Elusive, intangible, it yet seemed to encompass her and the
snoring man by her side, almost as a vapour might have done.
Mrs. Bunting sat up in bed and sniffed; and then, in spite of the cold,
she quietly crept out of her nice, warm bedclothes, and crawled along
to the bottom of the bed. When there, Mr. Sleuth’s landlady did a very
curious thing; she leaned over the brass rail and put her face close to
the hinge of the door giving into the hall. Yes, it was from here that
this strange, horrible odor was coming; the smell must be very strong
in the passage.
As, shivering, she crept back under the bedclothes, she longed to give
her sleeping husband a good shake, and in fancy she heard herself
saying, “Bunting, get up! There’s something strange and dreadful going
on downstairs which we ought to know about.”
But as she lay there, by her husband’s side, listening with painful
intentness for the slightest sound, she knew very well that she would
do nothing of the sort.
What if the lodger did make a certain amount of mess—a certain amount
of smell—in her nice clean kitchen? Was he not—was he not an almost
perfect lodger? If they did anything to upset him, where could they
ever hope to get another like him?
Three o’clock struck before Mrs. Bunting heard slow, heavy steps
creaking up the kitchen stairs. But Mr. Sleuth did not go straight up
to his own quarters, as she had expected him to do. Instead, he went to
the front door, and, opening it, put on the chain. Then he came past
her door, and she thought—but could not be sure—that he sat down on the
stairs.
At the end of ten minutes or so she heard him go down the passage
again. Very softly he closed the front door. By then she had divined
why the lodger had behaved in this funny fashion. He wanted to get the
strong, acrid smell of burning—was it of burning wool?—out of the
house.
But Mrs. Bunting, lying there in the darkness, listening to the lodger
creeping upstairs, felt as if she herself would never get rid of the
horrible odour.
Mrs. Bunting felt herself to be all smell.
At last the unhappy woman fell into a deep, troubled sleep; and then
she dreamed a most terrible and unnatural dream. Hoarse voices seemed
to be shouting in her ear: “The Avenger close here! The Avenger close
here!” “’Orrible murder off the Edgware Road!” “The Avenger at his work
again!”
And even in her dream Mrs. Bunting felt angered—angered and impatient.
She knew so well why she was being disturbed by this horrid nightmare!
It was because of Bunting—Bunting, who could think and talk of nothing
else than those frightful murders, in which only morbid and
vulgar-minded people took any interest.
Why, even now, in her dream, she could hear her husband speaking to her
about it:
“Ellen”—so she heard Bunting murmur in her ear—“Ellen, my dear, I’m
just going to get up to get a paper. It’s after seven o’clock.”
The shouting—nay, worse, the sound of tramping, hurrying feet smote on
her shrinking ears. Pushing back her hair off her forehead with both
hands, she sat up and listened.
It had been no nightmare, then, but something infinitely worse—reality.
Why couldn’t Bunting have lain quiet abed for awhile longer, and let
his poor wife go on dreaming? The most awful dream would have been
easier to bear than this awakening.
She heard her husband go to the front door, and, as he bought the
paper, exchange a few excited words with the newspaper-seller. Then he
came back. There was a pause, and she heard him lighting the gas-ring
in the sitting-room.
Bunting always made his wife a cup of tea in the morning. He had
promised to do this when they first married, and he had never yet
broken his word. It was a very little thing and a very usual thing, no
doubt, for a kind husband to do, but this morning the knowledge that he
was doing it brought tears to Mrs. Bunting’s pale blue eyes. This
morning he seemed to be rather longer than usual over the job.
When, at last, he came in with the little tray, Bunting found his wife
lying with her face to the wall.
“Here’s your tea, Ellen,” he said, and there was a thrill of eager, nay
happy, excitement in his voice.
She turned herself round and sat up. “Well?” she asked. “Well? Why
don’t you tell me about it?”
“I thought you was asleep,” he stammered out. “I thought, Ellen, you
never heard nothing.”
“How could I have slept through all that din? Of course I heard. Why
don’t you tell me?”
“I’ve hardly had time to glance at the paper myself,” he said slowly.
“You was reading it just now,” she said severely, “for I heard the
rustling. You begun reading it before you lit the gas-ring. Don’t tell
me! What was that they was shouting about the Edgware Road?”
“Well,” said Bunting, “as you do know, I may as well tell you. The
Avenger’s moving West—that’s what he’s doing. Last time ’twas King’s
Cross—now ’tis the Edgware Road. I said he’d come our way, and he _has_
come our way!”
“You just go and get me that paper,” she commanded. “I wants to see for
myself.”
Bunting went into the next room; then he came back and handed her
silently the odd-looking, thin little sheet.
“Why, whatever’s this?” she asked. “This ain’t our paper!”
“’Course not,” he answered, a trifle crossly. “It’s a special early
edition of the Sun, just because of The Avenger. Here’s the bit about
it”—he showed her the exact spot. But she would have found it, even by
the comparatively bad light of the gas-jet now flaring over the
dressing-table, for the news was printed in large, clear characters:—
“Once more the murder fiend who chooses to call himself The Avenger has
escaped detection. While the whole attention of the police, and of the
great army of amateur detectives who are taking an interest in this
strange series of atrocious crimes, were concentrating their attention
round the East End and King’s Cross, he moved swiftly and silently
Westward. And, choosing a time when the Edgware Road is at its busiest
and most thronged, did another human being to death with lightning-like
quickness and savagery.
“Within fifty yards of the deserted warehouse yard where he had
lured his victim to destruction were passing up and down scores of
happy, busy people, intent on their Christmas shopping. Into that
cheerful throng he must have plunged within a moment of committing
his atrocious crime. And it was only owing to the merest accident
that the body was discovered as soon as it was—that is, just after
midnight.
“Dr. Dowtray, who was called to the spot at once, is of opinion
that the woman had been dead at least three hours, if not four. It
was at first thought—we were going to say, hoped—that this murder
had nothing to do with the series which is now puzzling and
horrifying the whole of the civilised world. But no—pinned on the
edge of the dead woman’s dress was the usual now familiar
triangular piece of grey paper—the grimmest visiting card ever
designed by the wit of man! And this time The Avenger has surpassed
himself as regards his audacity and daring—so cold in its maniacal
fanaticism and abhorrent wickedness.”
All the time that Mrs. Bunting was reading with slow, painful
intentness, her husband was looking at her, longing, yet afraid, to
burst out with a new idea which he was burning to confide even to his
Ellen’s unsympathetic ears.
At last, when she had quite finished, she looked up defiantly.
“Haven’t you anything better to do than to stare at me like that?” she
said irritably. “Murder or no murder, I’ve got to get up! Go away—do!”
And Bunting went off into the next room.
After he had gone, his wife lay back and closed her eyes. She tried to
think of nothing. Nay, more—so strong, so determined was her will that
for a few moments she actually did think of nothing. She felt terribly
tired and weak, brain and body both quiescent, as does a person who is
recovering from a long, wearing illness.
Presently detached, puerile thoughts drifted across the surface of her
mind like little clouds across a summer sky. She wondered if those
horrid newspaper men were allowed to shout in Belgrave Square; she
wondered if, in that case, Margaret, who was so unlike her
brother-in-law, would get up and buy a paper. But no. Margaret was not
one to leave her nice warm bed for such a silly reason as that.
Was it to-morrow Daisy was coming back? Yes—to-morrow, not to-day.
Well, that was a comfort, at any rate. What amusing things Daisy would
be able to tell about her visit to Margaret! The girl had an excellent
gift of mimicry. And Margaret, with her precise, funny ways, her
perpetual talk about “the family,” lent herself to the cruel gift.
And then Mrs. Bunting’s mind—her poor, weak, tired mind—wandered off to
young Chandler. A funny thing love was, when you came to think of
it—which she, Ellen Bunting, didn’t often do. There was Joe, a likely
young fellow, seeing a lot of young women, and pretty young women,
too,—quite as pretty as Daisy, and ten times more artful—and yet there!
He passed them all by, had done so ever since last summer, though you
might be sure that they, artful minxes, by no manner of means passed
him by,—without giving them a thought! As Daisy wasn’t here, he would
probably keep away to-day. There was comfort in that thought, too.
And then Mrs. Bunting sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful turgid
flood. If Joe _did_ come in, she must nerve herself to hear all
that—that talk there’d be about The Avenger between him and Bunting.
Slowly she dragged herself out of bed, feeling exactly as if she had
just recovered from an illness which had left her very weak, very, very
tired in body and soul.
She stood for a moment listening—listening, and shivering, for it was
very cold. Considering how early it still was, there seemed a lot of
coming and going in the Marylebone Road. She could hear the
unaccustomed sounds through her closed door and the tightly fastened
windows of the sitting-room. There must be a regular crowd of men and
women, on foot and in cabs, hurrying to the scene of The Avenger’s last
extraordinary crime.
She heard the sudden thud made by their usual morning paper falling
from the letter-box on to the floor of the hall, and a moment later
came the sound of Bunting quickly, quietly going out and getting it.
She visualised him coming back, and sitting down with a sigh of
satisfaction by the newly-lit fire.
Languidly she began dressing herself to the accompaniment of distant
tramping and of noise of passing traffic, which increased in volume and
in sound as the moments slipped by.
When Mrs. Bunting went down into her kitchen everything looked just as
she had left it, and there was no trace of the acrid smell she had
expected to find there. Instead, the cavernous, whitewashed room was
full of fog, but she noticed that, though the shutters were bolted and
barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had been widely
opened to the air. She had left them shut.
Making a “spill” out of a twist of newspaper—she had been taught the
art as a girl by one of her old mistresses—she stooped and flung open
the oven-door of her gas-stove. Yes, it was as she had expected, a
fierce heat had been generated there since she had last used the oven,
and through to the stone floor below had fallen a mass of black, gluey
soot.
Mrs. Bunting took the ham and eggs that she had bought the previous day
for her own and Bunting’s breakfast upstairs, and broiled them over the
gas-ring in their sitting-room. Her husband watched her in surprised
silence. She had never done such a thing before.
“I couldn’t stay down there,” she said; “it was so cold and foggy. I
thought I’d make breakfast up here, just for to-day.”
“Yes,” he said kindly; “that’s quite right, Ellen. I think you’ve done
quite right, my dear.”
But, when it came to the point, his wife could not eat any of the nice
breakfast she had got ready; she only had another cup of tea.
“I’m afraid you’re ill, Ellen?” Bunting asked solicitously.
“No,” she said shortly; “I’m not ill at all. Don’t be silly! The
thought of that horrible thing happening so close by has upset me, and
put me off my food. Just hark to them now!”
Through their closed windows penetrated the sound of scurrying feet and
loud, ribald laughter. What a crowd; nay, what a mob, must be hastening
busily to and from the spot where there was now nothing to be seen!
Mrs. Bunting made her husband lock the front gate. “I don’t want any of
those ghouls in here!” she exclaimed angrily. And then, “What a lot of
idle people there are in the world!” she said.