The Lodger (33 page)

  And so at last Bunting began to long for a solution
which he knew to be indefensible from every point of view; he began
to hope, that is, in the depths of his heart, that the ledger would
again go out one evening on his horrible business and be caught -
red-handed.

  But far from going out on any business, horrible or
other, Mr. Sleuth now never went out at all. He kept upstairs, and
often spent quite a considerable part of his day in bed. He still
felt, so he assured Mrs. Bunting, very far from well. He had never
thrown off the chill he had caught on that bitter night he and his
landlord had met on their several ways home.

  Joe Chandler, too, had become a terrible
complication to Daisy's father. The detective spent every waking
hour that he was not on duty with the Buntings; and Bunting, who at
one time had liked him so well and so cordially, now became
mortally afraid of him.

  But though the young man talked of little else than
The Avenger, and though on one evening he described at immense
length the eccentric-looking gent who had given the barmaid a
sovereign, picturing Mr. Sleuth with such awful accuracy that both
Bunting and Mrs. Bunting secretly and separately turned sick when
they listened to him, he never showed the slightest interest in
their lodger.

  At last there came a morning when Bunting and
Chandler held a strange conversation about The Avenger. The young
fellow had come in earlier than usual, and just as he arrived Mrs.
Bunting and Daisy were starting out to do some shopping. The girl
would fain have stopped behind, but her stepmother had given her a
very peculiar, disagreeable look, daring her, so to speak, to be so
forward, and Daisy had gone on with a flushed, angry look on her
pretty face.

  And then, as young Chandler stepped through into the
sitting-room, it suddenly struck Bunting that the young man looked
unlike himself - indeed, to the ex-butler's apprehension there was
something almost threatening in Chandler's attitude.

  "I want a word with you, Mr. Bunting," he began
abruptly, falteringly. "And I'm glad to have the chance now that
Mrs. Bunting and Miss Daisy are out."

  Bunting braced himself to hear the awful words - the
accusation of having sheltered a murderer, the monster whom all the
world was seeking, under his roof. And then he remembered a phrase,
a horrible legal phrase - "Accessory after the fact." Yes, he had
been that, there wasn't any doubt about it!

  "Yes?" he said. "What is it, Joe?" and then the
unfortunate man sat down in his chair. "Yes?" he said again
uncertainly; for young Chandler had now advanced to the table, he
was looking at Bunting fixedly - the other thought threateningly.
"Well, out with it, Joe! Don't keep me in suspense."

  And then a slight smile broke over the young man's
face. "I don't think what I've got to say can take you by surprise,
Mr. Bunting."

  And Bunting wagged his head in a way that might mean
anything - yes or no, as the case might be.

  The two men looked at one another for what seemed a
very, very long time to the elder of them. And then, making a great
effort, Joe Chandler brought out the words, "Well, I suppose you
know what it is I want to talk about. I'm sure Mrs. Bunting would,
from a look or two she's lately cast on me. It's your daughter -
it's Miss Daisy."

  And then Bunting gave a kind of cry, 'twixt a sob
and a laugh. "My girl?" he cried. "Good Lord, Joe! Is that all you
wants to talk about? Why, you fair frightened me - that you
did!"

  And, indeed, the relief was so great that the room
swam round as he stared across it at his daughter's lover, that
lover who was also the embodiment of that now awful thing to him,
the law. He smiled, rather foolishly, at his visitor; and Chandler
felt a sharp wave of irritation, of impatience sweep over his
good-natured soul. Daisy's father was an old stupid - that's what
he was.

  And then Bunting grew serious. The room ceased to go
round. "As far as I'm concerned," he said, with a good deal of
solemnity, even a little dignity, "you have my blessing, Joe.
You're a very likely young chap, and I had a true respect for your
father."

  "Yes," said Chandler, "that's very kind of you, Mr.
Bunting. But how about her - her herself?"

  Bunting stared at him. It pleased him to think that
Daisy hadn't given herself away, as Ellen was always hinting the
girl was doing.

  "I can't answer for Daisy," he said heavily. "You'll
have to ask her yourself - that's not a job any other man can do
for you, my lad."

  "I never gets a chance. I never sees her, not by our
two selves," said Chandler, with some heat. "You don't seem to
understand, Mr. Bunting, that I never do see Miss Daisy alone," he
repeated. "I hear now that she's going away Monday, and I've only
once had the chance of a walk with her. Mrs. Bunting's very
particular, not to say pernickety in her ideas, Mr. Bunting - "

  "That's a fault on the right side, that is - with a
young girl," said Bunting thoughtfully.

  And Chandler nodded. He quite agreed that as
regarded other young chaps Mrs. Bunting could not be too
particular.

  "She's been brought up like a lady, my Daisy has,"
went on Bunting, with some pride. "That Old Aunt of hers hardly
lets her out of her sight."

  "I was coming to the old aunt," said Chandler
heavily. "Mrs. Bunting she talks as if your daughter was going to
stay with that old woman the whole of her natural life - now is
that right? That's what I wants to ask you, Mr. Bunting, - is that
right?"

  "I'll say a word to Ellen, don't you fear," said
Bunting abstractedly.

  His mind had wandered off, away from Daisy and this
nice young chap, to his now constant anxious preoccupation. "You
come along to-morrow," he said, "and I'll see you gets your walk
with Daisy. It's only right you and she should have a chance of
seeing one another without old folk being by; else how's the girl
to tell whether she likes you or not! For the matter of that, you
hardly knows her, Joe - " He looked at the young man
consideringly.

  Chandler shook his head impatiently. "I knows her
quite as well as I wants to know her," he said. "I made up my mind
the very first time I see'd her, Mr. Bunting."

  "No! Did you really?" said Bunting. "Well, come to
think of it, I did so with her mother; aye, and years after, with
Ellen, too. But I hope you'll never want no second, Chandler,"

  "God forbid!" said the young man under his breath.
And then he asked, rather longingly, "D'you think they'll be out
long now, Mr. Bunting?"

  And Bunting woke up to a due sense of hospitality.
"Sit down, sit down; do!" he said hastily. "I don't believe they'll
be very long. They've only got a little bit of shopping to do."

  And then, in a changed, in a ringing, nervous tone,
he asked, "And how about your job, Joe? Nothing new, I take it? I
suppose you're all just waiting for the next time?"

  "Aye - that's about the figure of it." Chandler's
voice had also changed; it was now sombre, menacing. "We're fair
tired of it - beginning to wonder when it'll end, that we are!"

  "Do you ever try and make to yourself a picture of
what the master's like?" asked Bunting. Somehow, he felt he must
ask that.

  "Yes," said Joe slowly. "I've a sort of notion - a
savage, fierce-looking devil, the chap must be. It's that
description that was circulated put us wrong. I don't believe it
was the man that knocked up against that woman in the fog - no, not
one bit I don't. But I wavers, I can't quite make up my mind.
Sometimes I think it's a sailor - the foreigner they talks about,
that goes away for eight or nine days in between, to Holland maybe,
or to France. Then, again, I says to myself that it's a butcher, a
man from the Central Market. Whoever it is, it's someone used to
killing, that's flat."

  "Then it don't seem to you possible - ?" (Bunting
got up and walked over to the window.) "You don't take any stock, I
suppose, in that idea some of the papers put out, that the man is"
- then he hesitated and brought out, with a gasp - "a
gentleman?"

  Chandler looked at him, surprised. "No," he said
deliberately. "I've made up my mind that's quite a wrong tack,
though I knows that some of our fellows - big pots, too - are quite
sure that the fellow what gave the girl the sovereign is the man
we're looking for. You see, Mr. Bunting, if that's the fact - well,
it stands to reason the fellow's an escaped lunatic; and if he's an
escaped lunatic he's got a keeper, and they'd be raising a hue and
cry after him; now, wouldn't they?"

  "You don't think," went on Bunting, lowering his
voice, "that he could be just staying somewhere, lodging like?"

  " D'you mean that The Avenger may be a toff, staying
in some West-end hotel, Mr. Bunting? Well, things almost as funny
as that 'ud be have come to pass." He smiled as if the notion was a
funny one.

  "Yes, something o' that sort," muttered Bunting.

  "Well, if your idea's correct, Mr.- Bunting - "

  "I never said 'twas my idea," said Bunting, all in a
hurry.

  "Well, if that idea's correct then, 'twill make our
task more difficult than ever. Why, 'twould be looking for a needle
in a field of hay, Mr. Bunting! But there! I don't think it's
anything quite so unlikely as that - not myself I don't." He
hesitated. "There's some of us" - he lowered his voice-" that hopes
he'll betake himself off - The Avenger, I mean - to another big
city, to Manchester or to Edinburgh. There'd be plenty of work for
him to do there," and Chandler chuckled at his own grim joke.

  And then, to both men's secret relief, for Bunting
was now mortally afraid of this discussion concerning The Avenger
and his doings, they heard Mrs. Bunting's key in the lock.

  Daisy blushed rosy-red with pleasure when she saw
that young Chandler was still there. She had feared that when they
got home he would be gone, the more so that Ellen, just as if she
was doing it on purpose, had lingered aggravatingly long over each
small purchase.

  "Here's Joe come to ask if he can take Daisy out for
a walk," blurted out Bunting.

  "My mother says as how she'd like you to come to
tea, over at Richmond," said Chandler awkwardly, "I just come in to
see whether we could fix it up, Miss Daisy." And Daisy looked
imploringly at her stepmother.

  "D'you mean now - this minute?" asked Mrs. Bunting
tartly.

  "No, o' course not" - Bunting broke in hastily. "How
you do go on, Ellen!"

  "What day did your mother mention would be
convenient to her?" asked Mrs. Bunting, looking at the young man
satirically.

  Chandler hesitated. His mother had not mentioned any
special day - in fact, his mother had shown a surprising lack of
anxiety to see Daisy at all. But he had talked her round.

  "How about Saturday?" suggested Bunting. "That's
Daisy's' birthday. 'Twould be a birthday treat for her to go to
Richmond, and she's going back to Old Aunt on Monday."

  "I can't go Saturday," said Chandler disconsolately.
"I'm on duty Saturday."

  "Well, then, let it be Sunday," said Bunting firmly.
And his wife looked at him surprised; he seldom asserted himself so
much in her presence.

  "What do you say, Miss Daisy?" said Chandler.

  "Sunday would be very nice," said Daisy demurely.
And then, as the young man took up his hat, and as her stepmother
did not stir, Daisy ventured to go out into the hall with him for a
minute.

  Chandler shut the door behind them, and so was
spared the hearing of Mrs. Bunting's whispered remark: "When I was
a young woman folk didn't gallivant about on Sunday; those who was
courting used to go to church together, decent-like - "

  
D
aisy's
eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully. Her father gave her what
he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth birthday -
a watch. It was a pretty little silver watch, which Bunting had
bought secondhand on the last day he had been happy - it seemed a
long, long time ago now.