The Lodger (31 page)

  "Been here?" cried her husband. "Then why on earth
didn't he go and fetch Daisy, if he'd time to come here?"

  "He was on the way to his job," his wife answered.
"You run along, child, downstairs. Now that you are here you can
make yourself useful."

  And Daisy reluctantly obeyed. She wondered what it
was her stepmother didn't want her to hear.

  "I've something to tell you, Bunting."

  "Yes?" He looked across uneasily. "Yes, Ellen?"

  "There's been another o' those murders. But the
police don't want anyone to know about it - not yet. That's why Joe
couldn't go over and fetch Daisy. They're all on duty again."

  Bunting put out his hand and clutched hold of the
edge of the mantelpiece. He had gone very red, but his wife was far
too much concerned with her own feelings and sensations to notice
it.

  There was a long silence between them. Then he
spoke, making a great effort to appear unconcerned.

  "And where did it happen?" he asked. "Close to the
other one?"

  She hesitated, then: "I don't know. He didn't say.
But hush!" she added quickly. "Here's Daisy! Don't let's talk of
that horror in front of her-like. Besides, I promised Chandler I'd
be mum."

  And he acquiesced.

  "You can be laying the cloth, child, while I go up
and clear away the lodger's breakfast." Without waiting for an
answer, she hurried upstairs.

  Mr. Sleuth had left the greater part of the nice
lemon sole untouched. "I don't feel well to-day," he said
fretfully. "And, Mrs. Bunting? I should be much obliged if your
husband would lend me that paper I saw in his hand. I do not often
care to look at the public prints, but I should like to do so
now.

  She flew downstairs. "Bunting," she said a little
breathlessly, "the lodger would like you just to lend him the
Sun."

  Bunting handed it over to her. "I've read it
through," he observed. "You can tell him that I don't want it back
again."

  On her way up she glanced down at the pink sheet.
Occupying a third of the space was an irregular drawing, and under
it was written, in rather large characters:

  "We are glad to be able to present our readers with
an authentic reproduction of the footprint of the half-worn rubber
sole which was almost certainly worn by The Avenger when he
committed his double murder ten days ago."

  She went into the sitting-room. To her relief it was
empty.

  "Kindly put the paper down on the table," came Mr.
Sleuth's muffled voice from the upper landing.

  She did so. "Yes, sir. And Bunting don't want the
paper back again, sir. He says he's read it." And then she hurried
out of the room.

  
A
ll afternoon it
went on snowing; and the three of them sat there, listening and
waiting - Bunting and his wife hardly knew for what; Daisy for the
knock which would herald Joe Chandler.

  And about four there came the now familiar
sound.

  Mrs. Bunting hurried out into the passage, and as
she opened the front door she whispered, "We haven't said anything
to Daisy yet. Young girls can't keep secrets."

  Chandler nodded comprehendingly. He now looked the
low character he had assumed to the life, for he was blue with
cold, disheartened, and tired out.

  Daisy gave a little cry of shocked surprise, of
amusement, of welcome, when she saw how cleverly he was
disguised.

  "I never!" she exclaimed. "What a difference it do
make, to be sure! Why, you looks quite horrid, Mr. Chandler."

  And, somehow, that little speech of hers amused her
father so much that he quite cheered up. Bunting had been very dull
and quiet all that afternoon.

  "It won't take me ten minutes to make myself
respectable again," said the young man rather ruefully.

  His host and hostess, looking at him eagerly,
furtively, both came to the conclusion that he had been
unsuccessful - that he had failed, that is, in getting any
information worth having. And though, in a sense, they all had a
pleasant tea together, there was an air of constraint, even of
discomfort, over the little party.

  Bunting felt it hard that he couldn't ask the
questions that were trembling on his lips; he would have felt it
hard any time during the last month to refrain from knowing
anything Joe could tell him, but now it seemed almost intolerable
to be in this queer kind of half suspense. There was one important
fact he longed to know, and at last came his opportunity of doing
so, for Joe Chandler rose to leave, and this time it was Bunting
who followed him out into the hall.

  "Where did it happen?" he whispered. "Just tell me
that, Joe?"

  "Primrose Hill," said the other briefly. "You'll
know all about it in a minute or two, for it'll be all in the last
editions of the evening papers. That's what's been arranged."

  "No arrest I suppose?"

  Chandler shook his head despondently. "No," he said,
"I'm inclined to think the Yard was on a wrong tack altogether this
time. But one can only do one's best. I don't know if Mrs. Bunting
told you I'd got to question a barmaid about a man who was in her
place just before closing-time. Well, she's said all she knew, and
it's as clear as daylight to me that the eccentric old gent she
talks about was only a harmless luny. He gave her a sovereign just
because she told him she was a teetotaller!" He laughed
ruefully.

  Even Bunting was diverted at the notion. "Well,
that's a queer thing for a barmaid to be!" he exclaimed. "She's
niece to the people what keeps the public," explained Chandler; and
then he went out of the front door with a cheerful "So long!"

  When Bunting went back into the sitting-room Daisy
had disappeared. She had gone downstairs with the tray. "Where's my
girl?" he said irritably.

  "She's just taken the tray downstairs."

  He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and
called out sharply, "Daisy! Daisy, child! Are you down there?"

  "Yes, father," came her eager, happy voice.

  "Better come up out of that cold kitchen."

  He turned and came back to his wife. "Ellen, is the
lodger in? I haven't heard him moving about. Now mind what I says,
please! I don't want Daisy to be mixed up with him."

  "Mr. Sleuth don't seem very well to-day," answered
Mrs. Bunting quietly. "'Tain't likely I should let Daisy have
anything to do with him. Why, she's never even seen him. 'Tain't
likely I should allow her to begin waiting on him now."

  But though she was surprised and a little irritated
by the tone in which Bunting had spoken, no glimmer of the truth
illumined her mind. So accustomed had she become to bearing alone
the burden of her awful secret, that it would have required far
more than a cross word or two, far more than the fact that Bunting
looked ill and tired, for her to have come to suspect that her
secret was now shared by another, and that other her husband.

  Again and again the poor soul had agonised and
trembled at the thought of her house being invaded by the police,
but that was only because she had always credited the police with
supernatural powers of detection. That they should come to know the
awful fact she kept hidden in her breast would have seemed to her,
on the whole, a natural thing, but that Bunting should even dimly
suspect it appeared beyond the range of possibility.

  And yet even Daisy noticed a change in her father.
He sat cowering over the fire - saying nothing, doing nothing.

  "Why, father, ain't you well?" the girl asked more
than once.

  And, looking up, he would answer, "Yes, I'm well
enough, nay girl, but I feels cold. It's awful cold. I never did
feel anything like the cold we've got just now."

  At eight the now familiar shouts and cries began
again outside.

  "The Avenger again!" "Another horrible crime!"
"Extra speshul edition!" - such were the shouts, the exultant
yells, hurled through the clear, cold air. They fell, like bombs
into the quiet room.

  Both Bunting and his wife remained silent, but
Daisy's cheeks grew pink with excitement, and her eye sparkled.

  "Hark, father! Hark, Ellen! D'you hear that?" she
exclaimed childishly, and even clapped her hands. "I do wish Mr.
Chandler had been here. He would 'a been startled!"

  "Don't, Daisy!" and Bunting frowned.

  Then, getting up, he stretched himself. "It's fair
getting on my mind," he said, "these horrible things happening. I'd
like to get right away from London, just as far as I could - that I
would!"

  "Up to John-o'-Groat's?" said Daisy, laughing. And
then, "Why, father, ain't you going out to get a paper?"

  "Yes, I suppose I must."

  Slowly he went out of the room, and, lingering a
moment in the hall, he put on his greatcoat and hat. Then he opened
the front door, and walked down the flagged path. Opening the iron
gate, he stepped out on the pavement, then crossed the road to
where the newspaper-boys now stood.

  The boy nearest to him only had the Sun - a late
edition of the paper he had already read. It annoyed Bunting to
give a penny for a ha'penny rag of which he already knew the main
contents. But there was nothing else to do.

  Standing under a lamp-post, he opened out the
newspaper. It was bitingly cold; that, perhaps, was why his hand
shook as he looked down at the big headlines. For Bunting had been
very unfair to the enterprise of the editor of his favourite
evening paper. This special edition was full of new matter - new
matter concerning The Avenger.

  First, in huge type right across the page, was the
brief statement that The Avenger had now committed his ninth crime,
and that he had chosen quite a new locality, namely, the lonely
stretch of rising ground known to Londoners as Primrose Hill.

  "The police." so Bunting read, "are very reserved as
to the circumstances which led to the finding of the body of The
Avenger's latest victim. But we have reason to believe that they
possess several really important clues, and that one of them is
concerned with the half-worn rubber sole of which we are the first
to reproduce an outline to-day. (See over page.)"

  And Bunting, turning the sheet round about, saw the
irregular outline he had already seen in the early edition of the
Sun, that purporting to be a facsimile of the imprint left by The
Avenger's rubber sole.

  He stared down at the rough outline which took up so
much of the space which should have been devoted to reading matter
with a queer, sinking feeling of terrified alarm. Again and again
criminals had been tracked by the marks their boots or shoes had
made at or near the scenes of their misdoings.

  Practically the only job Bunting did in his own
house of a menial kind was the cleaning of the boots and shoes. He
had already visualised early this very afternoon the little row
with which he dealt each morning - first came his wife's strong,
serviceable boots, then his own two pairs, a good deal patched and
mended, and next to his own Mr. Sleuth's strong, hardly worn, and
expensive buttoned boots. Of late a dear little coquettish
high-heeled pair of outdoor shoes with thin, paperlike soles,
bought by Daisy for her trip to London, had ended the row. The girl
had worn these thin shoes persistently, in defiance of Ellen's
reproof and advice, and he, Bunting, had only once had to clean her
more sensible country pair, and that only because the others had
become wet though the day he and she had accompanied young Chandler
to Scotland Yard.

  Slowly he returned across the road. Somehow the
thought of going in again, of hearing his wife's sarcastic
comments, of parrying Daisy's eager questions, had become
intolerable. So he walked slowly, trying to put off the evil moment
when he would have to tell them what was in his paper.

  The lamp under which he had stood reading was not
exactly opposite the house. It was rather to the right of it. And
when, having crossed over the roadway, he walked along the pavement
towards his own gate, he heard odd, shuffling sounds coming from
the inner side of the low wall which shut off his little courtyard
from the pavement.