The Lodger (8 page)

  Somehow - she could not have told you why, she would
not willingly have told herself - she had expected to see Mr.
Sleuth looking different. But no, he appeared to be exactly the
same - in fact, as he glanced up at her a pleasanter smile than
usual lighted up his thin, pallid face.

  "Well, Mrs. Bunting," he said genially, "I overslept
myself this morning, but I feel all the better for the rest."

  "I'm glad of that, sir," she answered, in a low
voice. "One of the ladies I once lived with used to say, 'Rest is
an old-fashioned remedy, but it's the best remedy of all."

  Mr. Sleuth himself removed the Bible and Cruden's
Concordance off the table out of her way, and then he stood
watching his landlady laying the cloth.

  Suddenly he spoke again. He was not often so
talkative in the morning. "I think, Mrs. Bunting, that there was
someone with you outside the door just now?"

  "Yes, sir. Bunting helped me up with the tray."

  "I'm afraid I give you a good deal of trouble," he
said hesitatingly.

  But she answered quickly, "Oh, no, sir! Not at all,
sir! I was only saying yesterday that we've never had a lodger that
gave us as little trouble as you do, sir."

  "I'm glad of that. I am aware that my habits are
somewhat peculiar."

  He looked at her fixedly, as if expecting her to
give some sort of denial to this observation. But Mrs. Bunting was
an honest and truthful woman. It never occurred to her to question
his statement. Mr. Sleuth's habits were somewhat peculiar. Take
that going out at night, or rather in the early morning, for
instance? So she remained silent.

  After she had laid the lodger's breakfast on the
table she prepared to leave the room. "I suppose I'm not to do your
room till you goes out, sir?"

  And Mr. Sleuth looked up sharply. "No, no!" he said.
"I never want my room done when I am engaged in studying the
Scriptures, Mrs. Bunting. But I am not going out to-day. I shall be
carrying out a somewhat elaborate experiment - upstairs. If I go
out at all" he waited a moment, and again he looked at her fixedly
" - I shall wait till night-time to do so." And then, coming back
to the matter in hand, he added hastily, "Perhaps you could do my
room when I go upstairs, about five o'clock - if that time is
convenient to you, that is?"

  "Oh, yes, sir! That'll do nicely!"

  Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and as she did so she
took herself wordlessly, ruthlessly to task, but she did not face -
even in her inmost heart - the strange tenors and tremors which had
so shaken her. She only repeated to herself again and again, "I've
got upset - that's what I've done," and then she spoke aloud, "I
must get myself a dose at the chemist's next time I'm out. That's
what I must do."

  And just as she murmured the word "do," there came a
loud double knock on the front door.

  It was only the postman's knock, but the postman was
an unfamiliar visitor in that house, and Mrs. Bunting started
violently. She was nervous, that's what was the matter with her, -
so she told herself angrily. No doubt this was a letter for Mr.
Sleuth; the lodger must have relations and acquaintances somewhere
in the world. All gentlefolk have. But when she picked the small
envelope off the hall floor, she saw it was a letter from Daisy,
her husband's daughter.

  "Bunting!" she called out sharply. "Here's a letter
for you."

  She opened the door of their sitting-room and looked
in. Yes, there was her husband, sitting back comfortably in his
easy chair, reading a paper. And as she saw his broad, rather
rounded back, Mrs. Bunting felt a sudden thrill of sharp
irritation. There he was, doing nothing - in fact, doing worse than
nothing - wasting his time reading all about those horrid
crimes.

  She sighed - a long, unconscious sigh. Bunting was
getting into idle ways, bad ways for a man of his years. But how
could she prevent it? He had been such an active, conscientious
sort of man when they had first made acquaintance.. .

  She also could remember, even more clearly than
Bunting did himself, that first meeting of theirs in the
dining-room of No. 90 Cumberland Terrace. As she had stood there,
pouring out her mistress's glass of port wine, she had not been too
much absorbed in her task to have a good out-of-her-eye look at the
spruce, nice, respectable-looking fellow who was standing over by
the window. How superior he had appeared even then to the man she
already hoped he would succeed as butler!

  To-day, perhaps because she was not feeling quite
herself, the past rose before her very vividly, and a lump came
into her throat.

  Putting the letter addressed to her husband on the
table, she closed the door softly, and went down into the kitchen;
there were various little things to put away and clean up, as well
as their dinner to cook. And all the time she was down there she
fixed her mind obstinately, determinedly on Bunting and on the
problem of Bunting. She wondered what she'd better do to get him
into good ways again.

  Thanks to Mr. Sleuth, their outlook was now
moderately bright. A week ago everything had seemed utterly
hopeless. It seemed as if nothing could save them from disaster.
But everything was now changed!

  Perhaps it would be well for her to go and see the
new proprietor of that registry office, in Baker Street, which had
lately changed hands. It would be a good thing for Bunting to get
even an occasional job - for the matter of that he could now take
up a fairly regular thing in the way of waiting. Mrs. Bunting knew
that it isn't easy to get a man out of idle ways once he has
acquired those ways.

  When, at last, she went upstairs again she felt a
little ashamed of what she had been thinking, for Bunting had laid
the cloth, and laid it very nicely, too, and brought up the two
chairs to the table.

  "Ellen?" he cried eagerly, "here's news! Daisy's
coming to-morrow! There's scarlet fever in their house. Old Aunt
thinks she'd better come away for a few days. So, you see, she'll
be here for her birthday. Eighteen, that's what she be on the
nineteenth! It do make me feel old - that it do!"

  Mrs. Bunting put down the tray. "I can't have the
girl here just now," she said shortly. "I've just as much to do as
I can manage. The lodger gives me more trouble than you seem to
think for."

  "Rubbish!" he said sharply. "I'll help you with the
lodger. It's your own fault you haven't had help with him before.
Of course, Daisy must come here. Whatever other place could the
girl go to?"

  Bunting felt pugnacious - so cheerful as to be
almost light-hearted. But as he looked across at his wife his
feeling of satisfaction vanished. Ellen's face was pinched and
drawn to-day; she looked ill - ill and horribly tired. It was very
aggravating of her to go and behave like this - just when they were
beginning to get on nicely again.

  "For the matter of that," he said suddenly,
"Daisy'll be able to help you with the work, Ellen, and she'll
brisk us both up a bit."

  Mrs. Bunting made no answer. She sat down heavily at
the table. And then she said languidly, "You might as well show me
the girl's letter."

  He handed it across to her, and she read it slowly
to herself.

  "DEAR FATHER (it ran) - I hope this finds you as
well at it leaves me. Mrs. Puddle's youngest has got scarlet fever,
and Aunt thinks I had better come away at once, just to stay with
you for a few days. Please tell Ellen I won't give her no trouble.
I'll start at ten if I don't hear nothing. - Your loving
daughter,

  "Yes, I suppose Daisy will have to come here," Mrs.
Bunting slowly. "It'll do her good to have a bit of work to do for
once in her life."

  And with that ungraciously worded permission Bunting
had to content himself.

***

  Quietly the rest of that eventful day sped by. When
dusk fell Mr. Sleuth's landlady heard him go upstairs to the top
floor. She remembered that this was the signal for her to go and do
his room.

  He was a tidy man, was the lodger; he did not throw
his things about as so many gentlemen do, leaving them all over the
place. No, he kept everything scrupulously tidy. His clothes, and
the various articles Mrs. Bunting had bought for him during the
first two days he had been there, were carefully arranged in the
chest of drawers. He had lately purchased a pair of boots. Those he
had arrived in were peculiar-looking footgear, buff leather shoes
with rubber soles, and he had told his landlady on that very first
day that he never wished them to go down to be cleaned.

  A funny idea - a funny habit that, of going out for
a walk after midnight in weather so cold and foggy that all other
folk were glad to be at home, snug in bed. But then Mr. Sleuth
himself admitted that he was a funny sort of gentleman.

  After she had done his bedroom the landlady went
into the sitting-room and gave it a good dusting. This room was not
kept quite as nice as she would have liked it to be. Mrs. Bunting
longed to give the drawing-room something of a good turn out; but
Mr. Sleuth disliked her to be moving about in it when he himself
was in his bedroom; and when up he sat there almost all the time.
Delighted as he had seemed to be with the top room, he only used it
when making his mysterious experiments, and never during the
day-time.

  And now, this afternoon, she looked at the rosewood
chiffonnier with longing eyes - she even gave that pretty little
piece of furniture a slight shake. If only the doors would fly
open, as the locked doors of old cupboards sometimes do, even after
they have been securely fastened, how pleased she would be, how
much more comfortable somehow she would feel!

  But the chiffonnier refused to give up its
secret.

***

  About eight o'clock on that same evening Joe
Chandler came in, just for a few minutes' chat. He had recovered
from his agitation of the morning, but he was full of eager
excitement, and Mrs. Bunting listened in silence, intensely
interested in spite of herself, while he and Bunting talked.

  "Yes," he said, "I'm as right as a trivet now! I've
had a good rest - laid down all this afternoon. You see, the Yard
thinks there's going to be something on to-night. He's always done
them in pairs."

  "So he has," exclaimed Hunting wonderingly. "So he
has! Now, I never thought o' that. Then you think, Joe, that the
monster'll be on the job again to-night?"

  Chandler nodded. "Yes. And I think there's a very
good chance of his being caught too - "

  "I suppose there'll be a lot on the watch to-night,
eh?"

  "I should think there will be! How many of our men
d'you think there'll be on night duty to-night, Mr. Bunting?"

  Bunting shook his head. "I don't know," he said
helplessly.

  "I mean extra," suggested Chandler, in an
encouraging voice."

  "A thousand?" ventured Bunting.

  "Five thousand, Mr. Bunting.

  "Never!" exclaimed Bunting, amazed.

  And even Mrs. Bunting echoed "Never!"
incredulously.

  "Yes, that there will. You see, the Boss has got his
monkey up!" Chandler drew a folded-up newspaper out of his coat
pocket. "Just listen to this:

  "'The police have reluctantly to admit that they
have no clue to the perpetrators of these horrible crimes, and we
cannot feel any surprise at the information that a popular attack
has been organised on the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan
Police. There is even talk of an indignation mass meeting.'

  "What d'you think of that? That's not a pleasant
thing for a gentleman as is doing his best to read, eh?"

  "Well, it does seem queer that the police can't
catch him, now doesn't it?" said Bunting argumentatively.

  "I don't think it's queer at all," said young
Chandler crossly. "Now you just listen again! Here's a bit of the
truth for once - in a newspaper." And slowly he read out:

  "'The detection of crime in London now resembles a
game of blind man's buff, in which the detective has his hands tied
and his eyes bandaged. Thus is he turned loose to hunt the murderer
through the slums of a great city."'

  "Whatever does that mean?" said Bunting. "Your hands
aren't tied, and your eyes aren't bandaged, Joe?"

  "It's metaphorical-like that it's intended, Mr.
Bunting. We haven't got the same facilities - no, not a quarter of
them - that the French 'tecs have."

  And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting spoke:
"What was that word, Joe - 'perpetrators'? I mean that first bit
you read out."

  "Yes," he said, turning to her eagerly.

  "Then do they think there's more than one of them?"
she said, and a look of relief came over her thin face.

  "There's some of our chaps thinks it's a gang," said
Chandler. "They say it can't be the work of one man."

  "What do you think, Joe?"

  "Well, Mrs. Bunting, I don't know what to think. I'm
fair puzzled."

  He got up. "Don't you come to the door. I'll shut it
all right. So long! See you to-morrow, perhaps." As he had done the
other evening, Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's visitor stopped at the door.
"Any news of Miss Daisy?" he asked casually.

  "Yes; she's coming to-morrow," said her father.
"They've got scarlet fever at her place. So Old Aunt thinks she'd
better clear out."

  The husband and wife went to bed early that night,
but Mrs. Bunting found she could not sleep. She lay wide awake,
hearing the hours, the half-hours, the quarters chime out from the
belfry of the old church close by.

  And then, just as she was dozing off - it must have
been about one o'clock - she heard the sound she had half
unconsciously been expecting to hear, that of the lodger's stealthy
footsteps coming down the stairs just outside her room.