The Lodger (19 page)

  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.