The Lodger (6 page)

  "Have you seen the bits of grey paper on which the
monster writes his name?" inquired Bunting eagerly.

  Public imagination had been much stirred by the
account of those three-cornered pieces of grey paper, pinned to the
victims' skirts, on which was roughly written in red ink and in
printed characters the words "The Avenger."

  His round, fat face was full of questioning
eagerness. He put his elbows on the table, and stared across
expectantly at the young man.

  "Yes, I have," said Joe briefly.

  "A funny kind of visiting card, eh!" Bunting
laughed; the notion struck him as downright comic.

  But Mrs. Bunting coloured. "It isn't a thing to make
a joke about," she said reprovingly.

  And Chandler backed her up. "No, indeed," he said
feelingly. "I'll never forget what I've been made to see over this
job. And as for that grey bit of paper, Mr. Bunting - or, rather,
those grey bits of paper " - he corrected himself hastily - " you
know they've three of them now at the Yard - well, they gives me
the horrors!"

  And then he jumped up. "That reminds me that I
oughtn't to be wasting my time in pleasant company - "

  "Won't you stay and have a bit of dinner?" said Mrs.
Bunting solicitously.

  But the detective shook his head. "No," he said, "I
had a bite before I came out. Our job's a queer kind of job, as you
know. A lot's left to our discretion, so to speak, but it don't
leave us much time for lazing about, I can tell you."

  When he reached the door he turned round, and with
elaborate carelessness he inquired, "Any chance of Miss Daisy
coming to London again soon?"

  Bunting shook his head, but his face brightened. He
was very, very fond of his only child; the pity was he saw her so
seldom. "No," he said, "I'm afraid not Joe. Old Aunt, as we calls
the old lady, keeps Daisy pretty tightly tied to her apron-string.
She was quite put about that week the child was up with us last
June."

  "Indeed? Well, so long!"

  After his wife had let their friend out, Bunting
said cheerfully, "Joe seems to like our Daisy, eh, Ellen?"

  But Mrs. Bunting shook her head scornfully. She did
not exactly dislike the girl, though she did not hold with the way
Bunting's daughter was being managed by that old aunt of hers - an
idle, good-for-nothing way, very different from the fashion in
which she herself had been trained at the Foundling, for Mrs.
Bunting as a little child bad known no other home, no other family
than those provided by good Captain Coram.

  "Joe Chandler's too sensible a young chap to be
thinking of girls yet awhile," she said tartly.

  "No doubt you're right," Bunting agreed. "Times be
changed. In my young days chaps always had time for that. 'Twas
just a notion that came into my head, hearing him asking,
anxious-like, after her."

***

  About five o'clock, after the street lamps were well
alight, Mr. Sleuth went out, and that same evening there came two
parcels addressed to his landlady. These parcels contained clothes.
But it was quite clear to Mrs. Bunting's eyes that they were not
new clothes. In fact, they had evidently been bought in some good
second-hand clothes-shop. A funny thing for a real gentleman like
Mr. Sleuth to do! It proved that he had given up all hope of
getting back his lost luggage.

  When the lodger had gone out he had not taken his
bag with him, of that Mrs. Bunting was positive. And yet, though
she searched high and low for it, she could not find the place
where Mr. Sleuth kept it. And at last, had it not been that she was
a very clear-headed woman, with a good memory, she would have been
disposed to think that the bag had never existed, save in her
imagination.

  But no, she could not tell herself that! She
remembered exactly how it had looked when Mr. Sleuth had first
stood, a strange, queer-looking figure of a man, on her
doorstep.

  She further remembered how he had put the bag down
on the floor of the top front room, and then, forgetting what he
had done, how he had asked her eagerly, in a tone of angry fear,
where the bag was - only to find it safely lodged at his feet!

  As time went on Mrs. Bunting thought a great deal
about that bag, for, strange and amazing fact, she never saw Mr.
Sleuth's bag again. But, of course, she soon formed a theory as to
its whereabouts. The brown leather bag which had formed Mr.
Sleuth's only luggage the afternoon of his arrival was almost
certainly locked up in the lower part of the drawing-room
chiffonnier. Mr. Sleuth evidently always carried the key of the
little corner cupboard about his person; Mrs. Bunting had also had
a good hunt for that key, but, as was the case with the bag, the
key disappeared, and she never saw either the one or the other
again.

  
H
ow quietly, how
uneventfully, how pleasantly, sped the next few days. Already life
was settling down into a groove. Waiting on Mr. Sleuth was just
what Mrs. Bunting could manage to do easily, and without tiring
herself.

  It had at once become clear that the lodger
preferred to be waited on only by one person, and that person his
landlady. He gave her very little trouble. Indeed, it did her good
having to wait on the lodger; it even did her good that he was not
like other gentlemen; for the fact occupied her mind, and in a way
it amused her. The more so that whatever his oddities Mr. Sleuth
had none of those tiresome, disagreeable ways with which landladies
are only too familiar, and which seem peculiar only to those human
beings who also happen to be lodgers. To take but one point: Mr.
Sleuth did not ask to be called unduly early. Bunting and his Ellen
had fallen into the way of lying rather late in the morning, and it
was a great comfort not to have to turn out to make the lodger a
cup of tea at seven, or even half-past seven. Mr. Sleuth seldom
required anything before eleven.

  But odd he certainly was.

  The second evening he had been with them Mr. Sleuth
had brought in a book of which the queer name was Cruden's
Concordance. That and the Bible - Mrs. Bunting had soon discovered
that there was a relation between the two books - seemed to be the
lodger's only reading. He spent hours each day, generally after he
had eaten the breakfast which also served for luncheon, poring over
the Old Testament and over that, strange kind of index to the
Book.

  As for the delicate and yet the all-important
question of money, Mr. Sleuth was everything - everything that the
most exacting landlady could have wished. Never had there been a
more confiding or trusting gentleman. On the very first day he had
been with them he had allowed his money - the considerable sum of
one hundred and eighty-four sovereigns - to lie about wrapped up in
little pieces of rather dirty newspaper on his dressing-table. That
had quite upset Mrs. Bunting. She had allowed herself respectfully
to point out to him that what he was doing was foolish, indeed
wrong. But as only answer he had laughed, and she had been startled
when the loud, unusual and discordant sound had issued from his
thin lips.

  "I know those I can trust," he had answered,
stuttering rather, as was his way when moved. "And - and I assure
you, Mrs. Bunting, that I hardly have to speak to a human being -
especially to a woman" (and he had drawn in his breath with a
hissing sound) "before I know exactly what manner of person is
before me."

  It hadn't taken the landlady very long to find out
that her lodger had a queer kind of fear and dislike of women. When
she was doing the staircase and landings she would often hear Mr.
Sleuth reading aloud to himself passages in the Bible that were
very uncomplimentary to her sex. But Mrs. Bunting had no very great
opinion of her sister woman, so that didn't put her out. Besides,
where one's lodger is concerned, a dislike of women is better than
- well, than the other thing.

  In any case, where would have been the good of
worrying about the lodger's funny ways? Of course, Mr. Sleuth was
eccentric. If he hadn't been, as Bunting funnily styled it, "just a
leetle touched upstairs," he wouldn't be here, living this strange,
solitary life in lodgings. He would be living in quite a different
sort of way with some of his relatives, or with a friend of his own
class.

  There came a time when Mrs. Bunting, looking back -
as even the least imaginative of us are apt to look back to any
part of our own past lives which becomes for any reason poignantly
memorable - wondered how soon it was that she had discovered that
her lodger was given to creeping out of the house at a time when
almost all living things prefer to sleep.

  She brought herself to believe - but I am inclined
to doubt whether she was right in so believing - that the first
time she became aware of this strange nocturnal habit of Mr.
Sleuth's happened to be during the night which preceded the day on
which she had observed a very curious circumstance. This very
curious circumstance was the complete disappearance of one of Mr.
Sleuth's three suits of clothes.

  It always passes my comprehension how people can
remember, over any length of time, not every moment of certain
happenings, for that is natural enough, but the day, the hour, the
minute when these happenings took place! Much as she thought about
it afterwards, even Mrs. Bunting never quite made up her mind
whether it was during the fifth or the sixth night of Mr. Sleuth's
stay under her roof that she became aware that he had gone out at
two in the morning and had only come in at five.

  But that there did come such a night is certain - as
certain as is the fact that her discovery coincided with various
occurrences which were destined to remain retrospectively
memorable.

***

  It was intensely dark, intensely quiet - the darkest
quietest hour of the night, when suddenly Mrs. Bunting was awakened
from a deep, dreamless sleep by sounds at once unexpected and
familiar. She knew at once what those sounds were. They were those
made by Mr. Sleuth, first coming down the stairs, and walking on
tiptoe - she was sure it was. on tiptoe - past her door, and
finally softly shutting the front door behind him.

  Try as she would, Mrs. Bunting found it quite
impossible to go to sleep again. There she lay wide awake, afraid
to move lest Bunting should waken up too, till she heard Mr.
Sleuth, three hours later, creep back into the house and so up to
bed.

  Then, and not till then, she slept again. But in the
morning she felt very tired, so tired indeed, that she had been
very glad when Bunting good-naturedly suggested that he should go
out and do their little bit of marketing.

  The worthy couple had very soon discovered that in
the matter of catering it was not altogether an easy matter to
satisfy Mr. Sleuth, and that though he always tried to appear
pleased. This perfect lodger had one serious fault from the point
of view of those who keep lodgings. Strange to say, he was a
vegetarian. He would not eat meat in any form. He sometimes,
however, condescended to a chicken, and when he did so condescend
he generously intimated that Mr. and Mrs. Bunting were welcome to a
share in it.

  Now to-day - this day of which the happenings were
to linger in Mrs. Bunting's mind so very long, and to remain so
very vivid, it had been arranged that Mr. Sleuth was to have some
fish for his lunch, while what he left was to be "done up" to serve
for his simple supper.

  Knowing that Bunting would be out for at least an
hour, for he was a gregarious soul, and liked to have a gossip in
the shops he frequented, Mrs. Bunting rose and dressed in a
leisurely manner; then she went and "did" her front
sitting-room.

  She felt languid and dull, as one is apt to feel
after a broken night, and it was a comfort to her to know that Mr.
Sleuth was not likely to ring before twelve.