Bunting began moving about the room restlessly. He would go to the
window; stand there awhile staring out at the people hurrying past;
then, coming back to the fireplace, sit down.
But he could not stay long quiet. After a glance at his paper, up he
would rise from his chair, and go to the window again.
“I wish you’d stay still,” his wife said at last. And then, a few
minutes later, “Hadn’t you better put your hat and coat on and go out?”
she exclaimed.
And Bunting, with a rather shamed expression, did put on his hat and
coat and go out.
As he did so he told himself that, after all, he was but human; it was
natural that he should be thrilled and excited by the dreadful,
extraordinary thing which had just happened close by. Ellen wasn’t
reasonable about such things. How queer and disagreeable she had been
that very morning—angry with him because he had gone out to hear what
all the row was about, and even more angry when he had come back and
said nothing, because he thought it would annoy her to hear about it!
Meanwhile, Mrs. Bunting forced herself to go down again into the
kitchen, and as she went through into the low, whitewashed place, a
tremor of fear, of quick terror, came over her. She turned and did what
she had never in her life done before, and what she had never heard of
anyone else doing in a kitchen. She bolted the door.
But, having done this, finding herself at last alone, shut off from
everybody, she was still beset by a strange, uncanny dread. She felt as
if she were locked in with an invisible presence, which mocked and
jeered, reproached and threatened her, by turns.
Why had she allowed, nay encouraged, Daisy to go away for two days?
Daisy, at any rate, was company—kind, young, unsuspecting company. With
Daisy she could be her old sharp self. It was such a comfort to be with
someone to whom she not only need, but ought to, say nothing. When with
Bunting she was pursued by a sick feeling of guilt, of shame. She was
the man’s wedded wife—in his stolid way he was very kind to her, and
yet she was keeping from him something he certainly had a right to
know.
Not for worlds, however, would she have told Bunting of her dreadful
suspicion—nay, of her almost certainty.
At last she went across to the door and unlocked it. Then she went
upstairs and turned out her bedroom. That made her feel a little
better.
She longed for Bunting to return, and yet in a way she was relieved by
his absence. She would have liked to feel him near by, and yet she
welcomed anything that took her husband out of the house.
And as Mrs. Bunting swept and dusted, trying to put her whole mind into
what she was doing, she was asking herself all the time what was going
on upstairs.
What a good rest the lodger was having! But there, that was only
natural. Mr. Sleuth, as she well knew, had been up a long time last
night, or rather this morning.
Suddenly, the drawing-room bell rang. But Mr. Sleuth’s landlady did not
go up, as she generally did, before getting ready the simple meal which
was the lodger’s luncheon and breakfast combined. Instead, she went
downstairs again and hurriedly prepared the lodger’s food.
Then, very slowly, with her heart beating queerly, she walked up, and
just outside the sitting-room—for she felt sure that Mr. Sleuth had got
up, that he was there already, waiting for her—she rested the tray on
the top of the banisters and listened. For a few moments she heard
nothing; then through the door came the high, quavering voice with
which she had become so familiar:
“‘She saith to him, stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret
is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her
guests are in the depths of hell.’”
There was a long pause. Mrs. Bunting could hear the leaves of her Bible
being turned over, eagerly, busily; and then again Mr. Sleuth broke
out, this time in a softer voice:
“‘She hath cast down many wounded from her; yea, many strong men have
been slain by her.’” And in a softer, lower, plaintive tone came the
words: “‘I applied my heart to know, and to search, and to seek out
wisdom and the reason of things; and to know the wickedness of folly,
even of foolishness and madness.’”
And as she stood there listening, a feeling of keen distress, of
spiritual oppression, came over Mrs. Bunting. For the first time in her
life she visioned the infinite mystery, the sadness and strangeness, of
human life.
Poor Mr. Sleuth—poor unhappy, distraught Mr. Sleuth! An overwhelming
pity blotted out for a moment the fear, aye, and the loathing, she had
been feeling for her lodger.
She knocked at the door, and then she took up her tray.
“Come in, Mrs. Bunting.” Mr. Sleuth’s voice sounded feebler, more
toneless than usual.
She turned the handle of the door and walked in. The lodger was not
sitting in his usual place; he had taken the little round table on
which his candle generally rested when he read in bed, out of his
bedroom, and placed it over by the drawing-room window. On it were
placed, open, the Bible and the Concordance. But as his landlady came
in, Mr. Sleuth hastily closed the Bible, and began staring dreamily out
of the window, down at the sordid, hurrying crowd of men and women
which now swept along the Marylebone Road.
“There seem a great many people out today,” he observed, without
looking round.
“Yes, sir, there do.”
Mrs. Bunting began busying herself with laying the cloth and putting
out the breakfast-lunch, and as she did so she was seized with a
mortal, instinctive terror of the man sitting there.
At last Mr. Sleuth got up and turned round. She forced herself to look
at him. How tired, how worn, he looked, and—how strange!
Walking towards the table on which lay his meal, he rubbed his hands
together with a nervous gesture—it was a gesture he only made when
something had pleased, nay, satisfied him. Mrs. Bunting, looking at
him, remembered that he had rubbed his hands together thus when he had
first seen the room upstairs, and realised that it contained a large
gas-stove and a convenient sink.
What Mr. Sleuth was doing now also reminded her in an odd way of a play
she had once seen—a play to which a young man had taken her when she
was a girl, unnumbered years ago, and which had thrilled and fascinated
her. “Out, out, damned spot!” that was what the tall, fierce, beautiful
lady who had played the part of a queen had said, twisting her hands
together just as the lodger was doing now.
“It’s a fine day,” said Mr. Sleuth, sitting down and unfolding his
napkin. “The fog has cleared. I do not know if you will agree with me,
Mrs. Bunting, but I always feel brighter when the sun is shining, as it
is now, at any rate, trying to shine.” He looked at her inquiringly,
but Mrs. Bunting could not speak. She only nodded. However, that did
not affect Mr. Sleuth adversely.
He had acquired a great liking and respect for this well-balanced,
taciturn woman. She was the first woman for whom he had experienced any
such feeling for many years past.
He looked down at the still covered dish, and shook his head. “I don’t
feel as if I could eat very much to-day,” he said plaintively. And then
he suddenly took a half-sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket.
Already Mrs. Bunting had noticed that it was not the same waistcoat Mr.
Sleuth had been wearing the day before.
“Mrs. Bunting, may I ask you to come here?”
And after a moment of hesitation his landlady obeyed him.
“Will you please accept this little gift for the use you kindly allowed
me to make of your kitchen last night?” he said quietly. “I tried to
make as little mess as I could, Mrs. Bunting, but—well, the truth is I
was carrying out a very elaborate experiment.”
Mrs. Bunting held out her hand, she hesitated, and then she took the
coin. The fingers which for a moment brushed lightly against her palm
were icy cold—cold and clammy. Mr. Sleuth was evidently not well.
As she walked down the stairs, the winter sun, a scarlet ball hanging
in the smoky sky, glinted in on Mr. Sleuth’s landlady, and threw
blood-red gleams, or so it seemed to her, on to the piece of gold she
was holding in her hand.
The day went by, as other days had gone by in that quiet household,
but, of course, there was far greater animation outside the little
house than was usually the case.
Perhaps because the sun was shining for the first time for some days,
the whole of London seemed to be making holiday in that part of the
town.
When Bunting at last came back, his wife listened silently while he
told her of the extraordinary excitement reigning everywhere. And then,
after he had been talking a long while, she suddenly shot a strange
look at him.
“I suppose you went to see the place?” she said.
And guiltily he acknowledged that he had done so.
“Well?”
“Well, there wasn’t anything much to see—not now. But, oh, Ellen, the
daring of him! Why, Ellen, if the poor soul had had time to cry
out—which they don’t believe she had—it’s impossible someone wouldn’t
’a heard her. They say that if he goes on doing it like that—in the
afternoon, like—he never _will_ be caught. He must have just got mixed
up with all the other people within ten seconds of what he’d done!”
During the afternoon Bunting bought papers recklessly—in fact, he must
have spent the best part of six-pence. But in spite of all the supposed
and suggested clues, there was nothing—nothing at all new to read,
less, in fact than ever before.
The police, it was clear, were quite at a loss, and Mrs. Bunting began
to feel curiously better, less tired, less ill, less—less terrified
than she had felt through the morning.
And then something happened which broke with dramatic suddenness the
quietude of the day.
They had had their tea, and Bunting was reading the last of the papers
he had run out to buy, when suddenly there came a loud, thundering,
double knock at the door.
Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. “Why, whoever can that be?” she said.
But as Bunting got up she added quickly, “You just sit down again. I’ll
go myself. Sounds like someone after lodgings. I’ll soon send them to
the right-about!”
And then she left the room, but not before there had come another loud
double knock.
Mrs. Bunting opened the front door. In a moment she saw that the person
who stood there was a stranger to her. He was a big, dark man, with
fierce, black moustaches. And somehow—she could not have told you
why—he suggested a policeman to Mrs. Bunting’s mind.
This notion of hers was confirmed by the very first words he uttered.
For, “I’m here to execute a warrant!” he exclaimed in a theatrical,
hollow tone.
With a weak cry of protest Mrs. Bunting suddenly threw out her arms as
if to bar the way; she turned deadly white—but then, in an instant the
supposed stranger’s laugh rang out, with loud, jovial, familiar sound!
“There now, Mrs. Bunting! I never thought I’d take you in as well as
all that!”
It was Joe Chandler—Joe Chandler dressed up, as she knew he sometimes,
not very often, did dress up in the course of his work.
Mrs. Bunting began laughing—laughing helplessly, hysterically, just as
she had done on the morning of Daisy’s arrival, when the
newspaper-sellers had come shouting down the Marylebone Road.
“What’s all this about?” Bunting came out
Young Chandler ruefully shut the front door. “I didn’t mean to upset
her like this,” he said, looking foolish; “’twas just my silly
nonsense, Mr. Bunting.” And together they helped her into the
sitting-room.
But, once there, poor Mrs. Bunting went on worse than ever; she threw
her black apron over her face, and began to sob hysterically.
“I made sure she’d know who I was when I spoke,” went on the young
fellow apologetically. “But, there now, I _have_ upset her. I _am_
sorry!”
“It don’t matter!” she exclaimed, throwing the apron off her face, but
the tears were still streaming from her eyes as she sobbed and laughed
by turns. “Don’t matter one little bit, Joe! ’Twas stupid of me to be
so taken aback. But, there, that murder that’s happened close by, it’s
just upset me—upset me altogether to-day.”
“Enough to upset anyone—that was,” acknowledged the young man ruefully.
“I’ve only come in for a minute, like. I haven’t no right to come when
I’m on duty like this—”
Joe Chandler was looking longingly at what remains of the meal were
still on the table.
“You can take a minute just to have a bite and a sup,” said Bunting
hospitably; “and then you can tell us any news there is, Joe. We’re
right in the middle of everything now, ain’t we?” He spoke with evident
enjoyment, almost pride, in the gruesome fact.
Joe nodded. Already his mouth was full of bread-and-butter. He waited a
moment, and then: “Well I have got one piece of news—not that I suppose
it’ll interest _you_ very much.”
They both looked at him—Mrs. Bunting suddenly calm, though her breast
still heaved from time to time.
“Our Boss has resigned!” said Joe Chandler slowly, impressively.
“No! Not the Commissioner o’ Police?” exclaimed Bunting.
“Yes, he has. He just can’t bear what’s said about us any longer—and I
don’t wonder! He done his best, and so’s we all. The public have just
gone daft—in the West End, that is, to-day. As for the papers, well,
they’re something cruel—that’s what they are. And the ridiculous ideas
they print! You’d never believe the things they asks us to do—and quite
serious-like.”
“What d’you mean?” questioned Mrs. Bunting. She really wanted to know.
“Well, the _Courier_ declares that there ought to be a house-to-house
investigation—all over London. Just think of it! Everybody to let the
police go all over their house, from garret to kitchen, just to see if
The Avenger isn’t concealed there. Dotty, I calls it! Why, ’twould take
us months and months just to do that one job in a town like London.”
“I’d like to see them dare come into my house!” said Mrs. Bunting
angrily.
“It’s all along of them blarsted papers that The Avenger went to work a
different way this time,” said Chandler slowly.
Bunting had pushed a tin of sardines towards his guest, and was eagerly
listening. “How d’you mean?” he asked. “I don’t take your meaning,
Joe.”
“Well, you see, it’s this way. The newspapers was always saying how
extraordinary it was that The Avenger chose such a peculiar time to do
his deeds—I mean, the time when no one’s about the streets. Now,
doesn’t it stand to reason that the fellow, reading all that, and
seeing the sense of it, said to himself, ‘I’ll go on another tack this
time’? Just listen to this!” He pulled a strip of paper, part of a
column cut from a newspaper, out of his pocket:
“‘AN EX-LORD MAYOR OF LONDON ON THE AVENGER
“‘Will the murderer be caught? Yes,’ replied Sir John, ‘he will
certainly be caught—probably when he commits his next crime. A whole
army of bloodhounds, metaphorical and literal, will be on his track the
moment he draws blood again. With the whole community against him, he
cannot escape, _especially when it be remembered that he chooses the
quietest hour in the twenty-four to commit his crimes_.
“‘Londoners are now in such a state of nerves—if I may use the
expression, in such a state of funk—that every passer-by, however
innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his
avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one and
three in the morning.’
“I’d like to gag that ex-Lord Mayor!” concluded Joe Chandler
wrathfully.
Just then the lodger’s bell rang.
“Let me go up, my dear,” said Bunting.
His wife still looked pale and shaken by the fright she had had.
“No, no,” she said hastily. “You stop down here, and talk to Joe. I’ll
look after Mr. Sleuth. He may be wanting his supper just a bit earlier
than usual to-day.”
Slowly, painfully, again feeling as if her legs were made of cotton
wool, she dragged herself up to the first floor, knocked at the door,
and then went in.
“You did ring, sir?” she said, in her quiet, respectful way.
And Mr. Sleuth looked up.
She thought—but, as she reminded herself afterwards, it might have been
just her idea, and nothing else—that for the first time the lodger
looked frightened—frightened and cowed.
“I heard a noise downstairs,” he said fretfully, “and I wanted to know
what it was all about. As I told you, Mrs. Bunting, when I first took
these rooms, quiet is essential to me.”
“It was just a friend of ours, sir. I’m sorry you were disturbed. Would
you like the knocker taken off to-morrow? Bunting’ll be pleased to do
it if you don’t like to hear the sound of the knocks.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t put you to such trouble as that.” Mr. Sleuth looked
quite relieved. “Just a friend of yours, was it, Mrs. Bunting? He made
a great deal of noise.”
“Just a young fellow,” she said apologetically. “The son of one of
Bunting’s old friends. He often comes here, sir; but he never did give
such a great big double knock as that before. I’ll speak to him about
it.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Bunting. I would really prefer you did nothing of the
kind. It was just a passing annoyance—nothing more!”
She waited a moment. How strange that Mr. Sleuth said nothing of the
hoarse cries which had made of the road outside a perfect Bedlam every
hour or two throughout that day. But no, Mr. Sleuth made no allusion to
what might well have disturbed any quiet gentleman at his reading.
“I thought maybe you’d like to have supper a little earlier to-night,
sir?”
“Just when you like, Mrs. Bunting—just when it’s convenient. I do not
wish to put you out in any way.”
She felt herself dismissed, and going out quietly, closed the door.
As she did so, she heard the front door banging to. She sighed—Joe
Chandler was really a very noisy young fellow.