Chapter 14
“There he is at last, and I’m glad of it, Ellen. ‘Tain’t a night you would wish a dog to be out in.”
Bunting’s voice was full of relief, but he did not turn round and look at his wife as he spoke; instead, he continued to read the evening paper he held in his hand.
He was still close to the fire, sitting back comfortably in his nice arm-chair. He looked very well—well and ruddy. Mrs. Bunting stared across at him with a touch of sharp envy, nay, more, of resentment. And this was very curious, for she was, in her own dry way, very fond of Bunting.
“You needn’t feel so nervous about him; Mr. Sleuth can look out for himself all right.”
Bunting laid the paper he had been reading down on his knee. “I can’t think why he wanted to go out in such weather,” he said impatiently.
“Well, it’s none of your business, Bunting, now, is it?”
“No, that’s true enough. Still, ’twould be a very bad thing for us if anything happened to him. This lodger’s the first bit of luck we’ve had for a terrible long time, Ellen.”
Mrs. Bunting moved a little impatiently in her high chair. She remained silent for a moment. What Bunting had said was too obvious to be worth answering. Also she was listening, following in imagination her lodger’s quick, singularly quiet progress— “stealthy” she called it to herself—through the fog-filled, lamp-lit hall. Yes, now he was going up the staircase. What was that Bunting was saying?
“It isn’t safe for decent folk to be out in such weather—no, that it ain’t, not unless they have something to do that won’t wait till tomorrow.” The speaker was looking straight into his wife’s narrow, colourless face. Bunting was an obstinate man, and liked to prove himself right. “I’ve a good mind to speak to him about it, that I have! He ought to be told that it isn’t safe—not for the sort of man he is—to be wandering about the streets at night. I read you out the accidents in Lloyd’s—shocking, they were, and all brought about by the fog! And then, that horrid monster ‘ull soon be at his work again—”
“Monster?” repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.
She was trying to hear the lodger’s footsteps overhead. She was very curious to know whether he had gone into his nice sitting-room, or straight upstairs, to that cold experiment-room, as he now always called it.
But her husband went on as if he had not heard her, and she gave up trying to listen to what was going on above.
“It wouldn’t be very pleasant to run up against such a party as that in the fog, eh, Ellen?” He spoke as if the notion had a certain pleasant thrill in it after all.
“What stuff you do talk!” said Mrs. Bunting sharply. And then she got up. Her husband’s remarks had disturbed her. Why couldn’t they talk of something pleasant when they did have a quiet bit of time together?
Bunting looked down again at his paper, and she moved quietly about the room. Very soon it would be time for supper, and to-night she was going to cook her husband a nice piece of toasted cheese. That fortunate man, as she was fond of telling him, with mingled contempt and envy, had the digestion of an ostrich, and yet he was rather fanciful, as gentlemen’s servants who have lived in good places often are.
Yes, Bunting was very lucky in the matter of his digestion. Mrs. Bunting prided herself on having a nice mind, and she would never have allowed an unrefined word—such a word as “stomach,” for instance, to say nothing of an even plainer term—to pass her lips, except, of course, to a doctor in a sick-room.
Mr. Sleuth’s landlady did not go down at once into her cold kitchen; instead, with a sudden furtive movement, she opened the door leading into her bedroom, and then, closing the door quietly, stepped back into the darkness, and stood motionless, listening.
At first she heard nothing, but gradually there stole on her listening ears the sound of someone moving softly about in the room just overhead, that is, in Mr. Sleuth’s bedroom. But, try as she might, it was impossible for her to guess what the lodger was doing.
At last she heard him open the door leading out on the little landing. She could hear the stairs creaking. That meant, no doubt, that Mr. Sleuth would pass the rest of the evening in the cheerless room above. He hadn’t spent any time up there for quite a long while—in fact, not for nearly ten days. ’Twas odd he chose to-night, when it was so foggy, to carry out an experiment.
She groped her way to a chair and sat down. She felt very tired— strangely tired, as if she had gone through some great physical exertion.
Yes, it was true that Mr. Sleuth had brought her and Bunting luck, and it was wrong, very wrong, of her ever to forget that.
As she sat there she also reminded herself, and not for the first time, what the lodger’s departure would mean. It would almost certainly mean ruin; just as his staying meant all sorts of good things, of which physical comfort was the least. If Mr. Sleuth stayed on with them, as he showed every intention of doing, it meant respectability, and, above all, security.
Mrs. Bunting thought of Mr. Sleuth’s money. He never received a letter, and yet he must have some kind of income—so much was clear. She supposed he went and drew his money, in sovereigns, out of a bank as he required it.
Her mind swung round, consciously, deliberately, away from Mr. Sleuth.
The Avenger? What a strange name! Again she assured herself that there would come a time when The Avenger, whoever he was, must feel satiated; when he would feel himself to be, so to speak, avenged.
To go back to Mr. Sleuth; it was lucky that the lodger seemed so pleased, not only with the rooms, but with his landlord and landlady —indeed, there was no real reason why Mr. Sleuth should ever wish to leave such nice lodgings.
Mrs. Bunting suddenly stood up. She made a strong effort, and shook off her awful sense of apprehension and unease. Feeling for the handle of the door giving into the passage she turned it, and then, with light, firm steps, she went down into the kitchen.
When they had first taken the house, the basement had been made by her care, if not into a pleasant, then, at any rate, into a very clean place. She had had it whitewashed, and against the still white walls the gas stove loomed up, a great square of black iron and bright steel. It was a large gas-stove, the kind for which one pays four shillings a quarter rent to the gas company, and here, in the kitchen, there was no foolish shilling-inthe-slot arrangement. Mrs. Bunting was too shrewd a woman to have anything to do with that kind of business. There was a proper gas-meter, and she paid for what she consumed after she had consumed it.
Putting her candle down on the well-scrubbed wooden table, she turned up the gas-jet, and blew out the candle.
Then, lighting one of the gas-rings, she put a frying-pan on the stove, and once more her mind reverted, as if in spite of herself, to Mr. Sleuth. Never had there been a more confiding or trusting gentleman than the lodger, and yet in some ways he was so secret, so—so peculiar.
She thought of the bag—that bag which had rumbled about so queerly in the chiffonnier. Something seemed to tell her that tonight the lodger had taken that bag out with him.
And then she thrust away the thought of the bag almost violently from her mind, and went back to the more agreeable thought of Mr. Sleuth’s income, and of how little trouble he gave. Of course, the lodger was eccentric, otherwise he wouldn’t be their lodger at all—he would be living in quite a different sort of way with some of his relations, or with a friend in his own class.
While these thoughts galloped disconnectedly through her mind, Mrs. Bunting went on with her cooking, preparing the cheese, cutting it up into little shreds, carefully measuring out the butter, doing