The Lodger (10 page)

  "Was it where the others was done?" she asked
looking at her husband fearfully.

  "No," he said awkwardly. "No, it wasn't, Ellen. It
was a good bit farther West - in fact, not so very far from here.
Near King's Cross - that's how the cabman knew about it, you see.
They seems to have been done in a passage which isn't used no
more." And then, as he thought his wife's eyes were beginning to
look rather funny, he added hastily. "There, that's enough for the
present! We shall soon be hearing a lot more about it from Joe
Chandler. He's pretty sure to come in some time to-day."

  "Then the five thousand constables weren't no use?"
said Mrs. Bunting slowly.

  She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was
standing more upright.

  "No use at all," said Bunting briefly. "He is artful
and no mistake about it. But wait a minute - " he turned and took
up the paper which he had laid aside, on a chair. "Yes they says
here that they has a clue."

  "A clue, Bunting?" Mrs. Bunting spoke in a soft,
weak, die-away voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the
edge of the table.

  But her husband was not noticing her now. He was
holding the paper close up to his eyes, and he read from it, in a
tone of considerable satisfaction:

  "'It is gratifying to be able to state that the
police at last believe they are in possession of a clue which will
lead to the arrest of the - '" and then Bunting dropped the paper
and rushed round the table.

  His wife, with a curious sighing moan, had slipped
down on to the floor, taking with her the tablecloth as she went.
She lay there in what appeared to be a dead faint. And Bunting,
scared out of his wits, opened the door and screamed out, "Daisy!
Daisy! Come up, child. Ellen's took bad again."

  And Daisy, hurrying in, showed an amount of sense
and resource which even at this anxious moment roused her fond
father's admiration.

  "Get a wet sponge, Dad - quick!" she cried, "a
sponge, - and, if you've got such a thing, a drop o' brandy. I'll
see after her!" And then, after he had got the little medicine
flask, "I can't think what's wrong with Ellen," said Daisy
wonderingly. "She seemed quite all right when I first came in. She
was listening, interested-like, to what I was telling her, and
then, suddenly - well, you saw how she was took, father? 'Taint
like Ellen this, is now?"

  "No," he whispered. "No, 'taint. But you see, child,
we've been going through a pretty bad time - worse nor I should
ever have let you know of, my dear. Ellen's just feeling it now -
that's what it is. She didn't say nothing, for Ellen's a good
plucked one, but it's told on her - it's told on her!"

  And then Mrs. Bunting, sitting up, slowly opened her
eyes, and instinctively put her hand up to her head to see if her
hair was all right.

  She hadn't really been quite "off." It would have
been better for her if she had. She had simply had an awful feeling
that she couldn't stand up - more, that she must fall down.
Bunting's words touched a most unwonted chord in the poor woman's
heart, and the eyes which she opened were full of tears. She had
not thought her husband knew how she had suffered during those
weeks of starving and waiting.

  But she had a morbid dislike of any betrayal of
sentiment. To her such betrayal betokened "foolishness," and so all
she said was, "There's no need to make a fuss! I only turned over a
little queer. I never was right off, Daisy."

  Pettishly she pushed away the glass in which Bunting
had hurriedly poured a little brandy. "I wouldn't touch such stuff
- no, not if I was dying!" she exclaimed.

  Putting out a languid hand, she pulled herself up,
with the help of the table, on to her feet. "Go down again to the
kitchen, child"; but there was a sob, a kind of tremor in her
voice.

  "You haven't been eating properly, Ellen - that's
what's the matter with you," said Bunting suddenly. "Now I come to
think of it, you haven't eat half enough these last two days. I
always did say - in old days many a time I telled you - that a
woman couldn't live on air. But there, you never believed me!"

  Daisy stood looking from one to the other, a shadow
over her bright, pretty face. "I'd no idea you'd had such a bad
time, father," she said feelingly. "Why didn't you let me know
about it? I might have got something out of Old Aunt."

  "We didn't want anything of that sort," said her
stepmother hastily. "But of course - well, I expect I'm still
feeling the worry now. I don't seem able to forget it. Those days
of waiting, of - of - " she restrained herself; another moment and
the word "starving" would have left her lips.

  "But everything's all right now," said Bunting
eagerly, all right, thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is."

  "Yes," repeated his wife, in a low, strange tone of
voice. "Yes, we're all right now, and as you say, Bunting, it's all
along of Mr. Sleuth."

  She walked across to a chair and sat down on it.
"I'm just a little tottery still," she muttered.

  And Daisy, looking at her, turned to her father and
said in a whisper, but not so low but that Mrs. Bunting heard her,
"Don't you think Ellen ought to see a doctor, father? He might give
her something that would pull her round."

  "I won't see no doctor!" said Mrs. Bunting with
sudden emphasis. "I saw enough of doctors in my last place.
Thirty-eight doctors in ten months did my poor missis have. Just
determined on having 'em she was! Did they save her? No! She died
just the same! Maybe a bit sooner."

  "She was a freak, was your last mistress, Ellen,"
began Bunting aggressively.

  Ellen had insisted on staying on in that place till
her poor mistress died. They might have been married some months
before they were married but for that fact. Bunting had always
resented it.

  His wife smile wanly. "We won't have no words about
that," she said, and again she spoke in a softer, kindlier tone
than usual. "Daisy? If you won't go down to the kitchen again, then
I must" - she turned to her stepdaughter, and the girl flew out of
the room.

  "I think the child grows prettier every minute,"
said Bunting fondly.

  "Folks are too apt to forget that beauty is but skin
deep," said his wife. She was beginning to feel better. "But still,
I do agree, Bunting, that Daisy's well enough. And she seems more
willing, too."

  "I say, we mustn't forget the lodger's dinner,"
Bunting spoke uneasily. "It's a bit of fish to-day, isn't it?
Hadn't I better just tell Daisy to see to it, and then I can take
it up to him, as you're not feeling quite the thing, Ellen?"

  "I'm quite well enough to take up Mr. Sleuth's
luncheon," she said quickly. It irritated her to hear her husband
speak of the lodger's dinner. They had dinner in the middle of the
day, but Mr. Sleuth had luncheon. However odd he might be, Mrs.
Bunting never forgot her lodger was a gentleman.

  "After all, he likes me to wait on him, doesn't he?
I can manage all right. Don't you worry," she added after a long
pause.

  
P
erhaps because
his luncheon was served to him a good deal later than usual, Mr.
Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs with far
heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice slice of
roast pork downstairs.

  "I hope you're feeling a little better, sir," Mrs.
Bunting had forced herself to say when she first took in his
tray.

  And he had answered plaintively, querulously, "No, I
can't say I feel well to-day, Mrs. Bunting. I am tired - very
tired. And as I lay in bed I seemed to hear so many sounds - so
much crying and shouting. I trust the Marylebone Road is not going
to become a noisy thoroughfare, Mrs. Bunting?"

  "Oh, no, sir, I don't think that. We're generally
reckoned very quiet indeed, sir."

  She waited a moment - try as she would, she could
not allude to what those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened.
"I expect you've got a chill, sir," she said suddenly. "If I was
you, I shouldn't go out this afternoon; I'd just stay quietly
indoors. There's a lot of rough people about - " Perhaps there was
an undercurrent of warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless
voice which penetrated in some way to the brain of the lodger, for
Mr. Sleuth looked up, and an uneasy, watchful look came into his
luminous grey eyes.

  "I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bunting. But I think
I'll take your advice. That is, I will stay quietly at home, I am
never at a loss to know what to do with myself so long as I can
study the Book of Books."

  "Then you're not afraid about your eyes, sir?" said
Mrs. Bunting curiously. Somehow she was beginning to feel better.
It comforted her to be up here, talking to Mr. Sleuth, instead of
thinking about him downstairs. It seemed to banish the terror which
filled her soul - aye, and her body, too - at other times. When she
was with him Mr. Sleuth was so gentle, so reasonable, so - so
grateful.

  Poor kindly, solitary Mr. Sleuth! This kind of
gentleman surely wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone a human being.
Eccentric - so much must be admitted. But Mrs. Bunting had seen a
good deal of eccentric folk, eccentric women rather than eccentric
men, in her long career as useful maid.

  Being at ordinary times an exceptionally sensible,
well-balanced woman, she had never, in old days, allowed her mind
to dwell on certain things she had learnt as to the aberrations of
which human nature is capable - even well-born, well-nurtured,
gentle human nature - as exemplified in some of the households
where she had served. It would, indeed, be unfortunate if she now
became morbid or - or hysterical.

  So it was in a sharp, cheerful voice, almost the
voice in which she had talked during the first few days of Mr.
Sleuth's stay in her house, that she exclaimed, "Well, sir, I'll be
up again to clear away in about half an hour. And if you'll forgive
me for saying so, I hope you will stay in and have a rest to-day.
Nasty, muggy weather - that's what it is! If there's any little
thing you want, me or Bunting can go out and get it."

***

  It must have been about four o'clock when there came
a ring at the front door.

  The three were sitting chatting together, for Daisy
had washed up - she really was saving her stepmother a good bit of
trouble - and the girl was now amusing her elders by a funny
account of Old Aunt's pernickety ways.

  "Whoever can that be?" said Bunting, looking up.
"It's too early for Joe Chandler, surely."

  "I'll go," said his wife, hurriedly jumping up from
her chair. "I'll go! We don't want no strangers in here."

  And as she stepped down the short bit of passage she
said to herself, "A clue? What clue?"

  But when she opened the front door a glad sigh of
relief broke from her. "Why, Joe? We never thought 'twas you! But
you're very welcome, I'm sure. Come in."

  And Chandler came in, a rather sheepish look on his
good-looking, fair young face. "I thought maybe that Mr. Bunting
would like to know - " he began, in a loud, cheerful voice, and
Mrs. Bunting hurriedly checked him. She didn't want the lodger
upstairs to hear what young Chandler might be going to say.

  "Don't talk so loud," she said a little sharply.
"The lodger is not very well to-day. He's had a cold," she added
hastily, "and during the last two or three days he hasn't been able
to go out."

  She wondered at her temerity, her - her hypocrisy,
and that moment, those few words, marked an epoch in Ellen
Bunting's life. It was the first time she had told a bold and
deliberate lie. She was one of those women - there are many, many
such - to whom there is a whole world of difference between the
suppression of the truth and the utterance of an untruth.

  But Chandler paid no heed to her remarks. "Has Miss
Daisy arrived?" he asked, in a lower voice.