The Lodger (5 page)

  "I prefer bare walls, Mrs. Bunting," he spoke with
some agitation. "As a matter of fact, I have been used to seeing
bare walls about me for a long time." And then, at last his
landlady answered him, in a composed, soothing voice, which somehow
did him good to hear. "I quite understand, sir. And when Bunting
comes in he shall take the pictures all down. We have plenty of
space in our own rooms for them."

  "Thank you - thank you very much."

  Mr. Sleuth appeared greatly relieved.

  "And I have brought you up my Bible, sir. I
understood you wanted the loan of it?"

  Mr. Sleuth stared at her as if dazed for a moment;
and then, rousing himself, he said, "Yes, yes, I do. There is no
reading like the Book. There is something there which suits every
state of mind, aye, and of body too - "

  "Very true, sir." And then Mrs. Bunting, having laid
out what really looked a very appetising little meal, turned round
and quietly shut the door.

  She went down straight into her sitting-room and
waited there for Bunting, instead of going to the kitchen to clear
up. And as she did so there came to her a comfortable recollection,
an incident of her long-past youth, in the days when she, then
Ellen Green, had maided a dear old lady.

  The old lady had a favourite nephew - a bright,
jolly young gentleman, who was learning to paint animals in Paris.
And one morning Mr. Algernon - that was his rather peculiar
Christian name - had had the impudence to turn to the wall six
beautiful engravings of paintings done by the famous Mr.
Landseer!

  Mrs. Bunting remembered all the circumstances as if
they had only occurred yesterday, and yet she had not thought of
them for years.

  It was quite early; she had come down - for in those
days maids weren't thought so much of as they are now, and she
slept with the upper housemaid, and it was the upper housemaid's
duty to be down very early - and, there, in the dining-room, she
had found Mr. Algernon engaged in turning each engraving to the
wall! Now, his aunt thought all the world of those pictures, and
Ellen had felt quite concerned, for it doesn't do for a young
gentleman to put himself wrong with a kind aunt.

  "Oh, sir," she had exclaimed in dismay, "whatever
are you doing?" And even now she could almost hear his merry voice,
as he had answered, "I am doing my duty, fair Helen" - he had
always called her "fair Helen" when no one was listening. "How can
I draw ordinary animals when I see these half-human monsters
staring at me all the time I am having my breakfast, my lunch, and
my dinner?" That was what Mr. Algernon had said in his own saucy
way, and that was what he repeated in a more serious, respectful
manner to his aunt, when that dear old lady had come downstairs. In
fact he had declared, quite soberly, that the beautiful animals
painted by Mr. Landseer put his eye out!

  But his aunt had been very much annoyed - in fact,
she had made him turn the pictures all back again; and as long as
he stayed there he just had to put up with what he called "those
half-human monsters." Mrs. Bunting, sitting there, thinking the
matter of Mr. Sleuth's odd behaviour over, was glad to recall that
funny incident of her long-gone youth. It seemed to prove that her
new lodger was not so strange as he appeared to be. Still, when
Bunting came in, she did not tell him the queer thing which had
happened. She told herself that she would be quite able to manage
the taking down of the pictures in the drawing-room herself.

  But before getting ready their own supper, Mr.
Sleuth's landlady went upstairs to dear away, and when on the
staircase she heard the sound of - was it talking, in the
drawing-room? Startled, she waited a moment on the landing outside
the drawing-room door, then she realised that it was only the
lodger reading aloud to himself. There was something very awful in
the words which rose and fell on her listening ears:

  "A strange woman is a narrow gate. She also lieth in
wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among
men."

  She remained where she was, her hand on the handle
of ,the door, and again there broke on her shrinking ears that
curious, high, sing-song voice, "Her house is the way to hell,
going down to the chambers of death."

  It made the listener feel quite queer. But at last
she summoned up courage, knocked, and walked in.

  "I'd better clear away, sir, had I not?" she said.
And Mr. Sleuth nodded.

  Then he got up and dosed the Book. "I think I'll go
to bed now," he said. "I am very, very tired. I've had a long and a
very weary day, Mrs. Bunting."

  After he had disappeared into the back room, Mrs.
Bunting climbed up on a chair and unhooked the pictures which had
so offended Mr. Sleuth. Each left an unsightly mark on the wall -
but that, after all, could not be helped.

  Treading softly, so that Bunting should not hear
her, she carried them down, two by two, and stood them behind her
bed.

  
M
rs. Bunting woke
up the next morning feeling happier than she had felt for a very,
very long time.

  For just one moment she could not think why she felt
so different - and then she suddenly remembered.

  How comfortable it was to know that upstairs, just
over her head, lay, in the well-found bed she had bought with such
satisfaction at an auction held in a Baker Street house, a lodger
who was paying two guineas a week! Something seemed to tell her
that Mr. Sleuth would be "a permanency." In any case, it wouldn't
be her fault if he wasn't. As to his - his queerness, well, there's
always something funny in everybody. But after she had got up, and
as the morning wore itself away, Mrs. Bunting grew a little
anxious, for there came no sound at all from the new lodger's
rooms. At twelve, however, the drawing-room bell rang. Mrs. Bunting
hurried upstairs. She was painfully anxious to please and satisfy
Mr. Sleuth. His coming had only been in the nick of time to save
them from terrible disaster.

  She found her lodger up, and fully dressed. He was
sitting at the round table which occupied the middle of the
sitting-room, and his landlady's large Bible lay open before
him.

  As Mrs. Bunting came in, he looked up, and she was
troubled to see how tired and worn he seemed.

  "You did not happen," he asked, "to have a
Concordance, Mrs. Bunting?"

  She shook her head; she had no idea what a
Concordance could be, but she was quite sure that she had nothing
of the sort about.

  And then her new lodger proceeded to tell her what
it was he desired her to buy for him. She had supposed the bag he
had brought with him to contain certain little necessaries of
civilised life - such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush,
a set of razors, a toothbrush, to say nothing of a couple of
nightshirts - but no, that was evidently not so, for Mr. Sleuth
required all these things to be bought now.

  After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs.
Bunting hurried out to purchase the things of which he was in
urgent need.

  How pleasant it was to feel that there was money in
her purse again - not only someone else's' money, but money she was
now in the very act of earning so agreeably.

  Mrs. Bunting first made her way to a little barber's
shop close by. It was there she purchased the brush and comb and
the razors. It was a funny, rather smelly little place, and she
hurried as much as she could, the more so that the foreigner who
served her insisted on telling her some of the strange, peculiar
details of this Avenger murder which had taken place forty-eight
hours before, and in which Bunting took such a morbid interest.

  The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting. She didn't want
to think of anything painful or disagreeable on such a day as
this.

  Then she came back and showed the lodger her various
purchases. Mr. Sleuth was pleased with everything, and thanked her
most courteously. But when she suggested doing his bedroom he
frowned, and looked quite put out.

  "Please wait till this evening," he said hastily.
"It is my custom to stay at home all day. I only care to walk about
the streets when the lights are lit. You must bear with me, Mrs.
Bunting, if I seem a little, just a little, unlike the lodgers you
have been accustomed to. And I must ask you to understand that I
must not be disturbed when thinking out my problems - " He broke
off short, sighed, then added solemnly, "for mine are the great
problems of life and death."

  And Mrs. Bunting willingly fell in with his wishes.
In spite of her prim manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's
landlady was a true woman - she had, that is, an infinite patience
with masculine vagaries and oddities.

  When she was downstairs again, Mr. Sleuth's landlady
met with a surprise; but it was quite a pleasant surprise. While
she had been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young
friend, Joe Chandler, the detective, had come in, and as she walked
into the sitting-room she saw that her husband was pushing half a
sovereign across the table towards Joe.

  Joe Chandler's fair, good-natured face was full of
satisfaction: not at seeing his money again, mark you, but at the
news Bunting had evidently been telling him - that news of the
sudden wonderful change in their fortunes, the coming of an ideal
lodger.

  "Mr. Sleuth don't want me to do his bedroom till
he's gone out!" she exclaimed. And then she sat down for a bit of a
rest.

  It was a comfort to know that the lodger was eating
his good breakfast? and there was no need to think of him for the
present. In a few minutes she would be going down to make her own
and Bunting's dinner, and she told Joe Chandler that he might as
well stop and have a bite with them.

  Her heart warmed to the young man, for Mrs. Bunting
was in a mood which seldom surprised her - a mood to be pleased
with anything and everything. Nay, more. When Bunting began to ask
Joe Chandler about the last of those awful Avenger murders, she
even listened with a certain languid interest to all he had to
say.

  In the morning paper which Bunting had begun taking
again that very day three columns were devoted to the extraordinary
mystery which was now beginning to be the one topic of talk all
over London, West and East, North and South. Bunting had read out
little bits about it while they ate their breakfast, and in spite
of herself Mrs. Bunting had felt thrilled and excited.

  "They do say," observed Bunting cautiously, "They do
say, Joe, that the police have a clue they won't say nothing
about?" He looked expectantly at his visitor. To Bunting the fact
that Chandler was attached to the detective section of the
Metropolitan Police invested the young man with a kind of sinister
glory - especially just now, when these awful and mysterious crimes
were amazing and terrifying the town.

  "Them who says that says wrong," answered Chandler
slowly, and a look of unease, of resentment came over his fair,
stolid face. "'Twould make a good bit of difference to me if the
Yard had a clue."

  And then Mrs. Bunting interposed. "Why that, Joe?"
she said, smiling indulgently; the young man's keenness about his
work pleased her. And in his slow, sure way Joe Chandler was very
keen, and took his job very seriously. He put his whole heart and
mind into it.

  "Well, 'tis this way," he explained. "From to-day
I'm on this business myself. You see, Mrs. Bunting, the Yard's
nettled - that's what it is, and we're all on our mettle - that we
are. I was right down sorry for the poor chap who was on point duty
in the street where the last one happened - "

  "No!" said Bunting incredulously. "You don't mean
there was a policeman there, within a few yards?"

  That fact hadn't been recorded in his newspaper.

  Chandler nodded. "That's exactly what I do mean, Mr.
Bunting! The man is near off his head, so I'm told. He did hear a
yell, so he says, but he took no notice - there are a good few
yells in that part o' London, as you can guess. People always
quarrelling and rowing at one another in such low parts."