It was a very cold night—so cold, so windy, so snow-laden was the
atmosphere, that everyone who could do so stayed indoors.
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!
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!
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.
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.
Whew! it was cold; and he had stupidly forgotten his gloves.
He put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, and began walking
more quickly.
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.
Well! This was a funny time o’ night to be taking a stroll for
pleasure, like!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
“Mr. Sleuth, sir? Mr. Sleuth!”
The lodger stopped and turned round.
He had been walking so quickly, and he was in so poor a physical
condition, that the sweat was pouring down his face.
“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.”
“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 _is_ cold, sir!”
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.
“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.”
“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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
Bunting thrust his left hand into his pocket; it was with the other
that he placed the key in the lock of the door.
The two men passed into the hall together.
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.
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!”
And then the lodger spoke. His voice was harsh and grating, though not
loud.
“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.”
“No, sir, no. I didn’t notice nothing. I scarcely touched you, sir.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Whatever are you doing? What on earth are you doing?” came a voice
from the bed, and Bunting started guiltily.
“I’m just washing my hands.”
“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!”
“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?”
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.
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.
Once more his wife spoke, and he gave so great a start that it shook
the bed.
“I suppose that you don’t know that you’ve left the light burning in
the hall, wasting our good money?” she observed tartly.
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.
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.
The next morning Mr. Sleuth’s landlord awoke with a start; he felt
curiously heavy about the limbs, and tired about the eyes.
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.
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.
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.