And as she stood there listening, a feeling of keen distress, of spiritual oppression, came over Mrs. Bunting. For the first time in her life she visioned the infinite mystery, the sadness and strangeness, of human life.
Poor Mr. Sleuth—poor unhappy, distraught Mr. Sleuth! An overwhelming pity blotted out for a moment the fear, aye, and the loathing, she had been feeling for her lodger.
She knocked at the door, and then she took up her tray.
“Come in, Mrs. Bunting.” Mr. Sleuth’s voice sounded feebler, more toneless than usual.
She turned the handle of the door and walked in. The lodger was not sitting in his usual place; he had taken the little round table on which his candle generally rested when he read in bed, out of his bedroom, and placed it over by the drawing-room window. On it were placed, open, the Bible and the Concordance. But as his landlady came in, Mr. Sleuth hastily closed the Bible, and began staring dreamily out of the window, down at the sordid, hurrying crowd of men and women which now swept along the Marylebone Road.
“There seem a great many people out today,” he observed, without looking round.
“Yes, sir, there do.”
Mrs. Bunting began busying herself with laying the cloth and putting out the breakfast-lunch, and as she did so she was seized with a mortal, instinctive terror of the man sitting there.
At last Mr. Sleuth got up and turned round. She forced herself to look at him. How tired, how worn, he looked, and—how strange!
Walking towards the table on which lay his meal, he rubbed his hands together with a nervous gesture—it was a gesture he only made when something had pleased, nay, satisfied him. Mrs. Bunting, looking at him, remembered that he had rubbed his hands together thus when he had first seen the room upstairs, and realised that it contained a large gas-stove and a convenient sink.
What Mr. Sleuth was doing now also reminded her in an odd way of a play she had once seen—a play to which a young man had taken her when she was a girl, unnumbered years ago, and which had thrilled and fascinated her. “Out, out, damned spot!” that was what the tall, fierce, beautiful lady who had played the part of a queen had said, twisting her hands together just as the lodger was doing now.
“It’s a fine day,” said Mr. Sleuth, sitting down and unfolding his napkin. “The fog has cleared. I do not know if you will agree with me, Mrs. Bunting, but I always feel brighter when the sun is shining, as it is now, at any rate, trying to shine.” He looked at her inquiringly, but Mrs. Bunting could not speak. She only nodded. However, that did not affect Mr. Sleuth adversely.
He had acquired a great liking and respect for this well-balanced, taciturn woman. She was the first woman for whom he had experienced any such feeling for many years past.
He looked down at the still covered dish, and shook his head. “I don’t feel as if I could eat very much today,” he said plaintively. And then he suddenly took a half-sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket.
Already Mrs. Bunting had noticed that it was not the same waistcoat Mr. Sleuth had been wearing the day before.
“Mrs. Bunting, may I ask you to come here?”
And after a moment of hesitation his landlady obeyed him.
“Will you please accept this little gift for the use you kindly allowed me to make of your kitchen last night?” he said quietly. “I tried to make as little mess as I could, Mrs. Bunting, but— well, the truth is I was carrying out a very elaborate experiment.”
Mrs. Bunting held out her hand, she hesitated, and then she took the coin. The fingers which for a moment brushed lightly against her palm were icy cold—cold and clammy. Mr. Sleuth was evidently not well.
As she walked down the stairs, the winter sun, a scarlet ball hanging in the smoky sky, glinted in on Mr. Sleuth’s landlady, and threw blood-red gleams, or so it seemed to her, on to the piece of gold she was holding in her hand.
The day went by, as other days had gone by in that quiet household, but, of course, there was far greater animation outside the little house than was usually the case.
Perhaps because the sun was shining for the first time for some days, the whole of London seemed to be making holiday in that part of the town.
When Bunting at last came back, his wife listened silently while he told her of the extraordinary excitement reigning everywhere. And then, after he had been talking a long while, she suddenly shot a strange look at him.
“I suppose you went to see the place?” she said.
And guiltily he acknowledged that he had done so.
“Well?”
“Well, there wasn’t anything much to see—not now. But, oh, Ellen, the daring of him! Why, Ellen, if the poor soul had had time to cry out—which they don’t believe she had—it’s impossible someone wouldn’t ‘a heard her. They say that if he goes on doing it like that—in the afternoon, like—he never will be caught. He must have just got mixed up with all the other people within ten seconds of what he’d done!”
During the afternoon Bunting bought papers recklessly—in fact, he must have spent the best part of six-pence. But in spite of all the supposed and suggested clues, there was nothing—nothing at all new to read, less, in fact than ever before.
The police, it was clear, were quite at a loss, and Mrs. Bunting began to feel curiously better, less tired, less ill, less—less terrified than she had felt through the morning.
And then something happened which broke with dramatic suddenness the quietude of the day.
They had had their tea, and Bunting was reading the last of the papers he had run out to buy, when suddenly there came a loud, thundering, double knock at the door.
Mrs. Bunting looked up, startled. “Why, whoever can that be?” she said.
But as Bunting got up she added quickly, “You just sit down again. I’ll go myself. Sounds like someone after lodgings. I’ll soon send them to the right-about!”
And then she left the room, but not before there had come another loud double knock.
Mrs. Bunting opened the front door. In a moment she saw that the person who stood there was a stranger to her. He was a big, dark man, with fierce, black moustaches. And somehow—she could not have told you why—he suggested a policeman to Mrs. Bunting’s mind.
This notion of hers was confirmed by the very first words he uttered. For, “I’m here to execute a warrant!” he exclaimed in a theatrical, hollow tone.
With a weak cry of protest Mrs. Bunting suddenly threw out her arms as if to bar the way; she turned deadly white—but then, in an instant the supposed stranger’s laugh rang out, with loud, jovial, familiar sound!
“There now, Mrs. Bunting! I never thought I’d take you in as well as all that!”
It was Joe Chandler—Joe Chandler dressed up, as she knew he sometimes, not very often, did dress up in the course of his work.
Mrs. Bunting began laughing—laughing helplessly, hysterically, just as she had done on the morning of Daisy’s arrival, when the newspaper-sellers had come shouting down the Marylebone Road.
“What’s all this about?” Bunting came out
Young Chandler ruefully shut the front door. “I didn’t mean to upset her like this,” he said, looking foolish; “’twas just my silly nonsense, Mr. Bunting.” And together they helped her into the sitting-room.
But, once there, poor Mrs. Bunting went on worse than ever; she threw her black apron over her face, and began to sob hysterically.
“I made sure she’d know who I was when I spoke,” went on the young fellow apologetically. “But, there now, I have upset her. I am sorry!”