The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
almost pallid under his usual healthy, tanned complexion—the complexion of the man who lives much out of doors.
“Wouldn’t you like me just to make you a cup of tea?” she said solicitously.
“Well, to tell truth, I should be right down thankful for one, Mrs. Bunting!” Then he looked round, and again he said her name, “Mrs. Bunting—?”
He spoke in so odd, so thick a tone that she turned quickly. “Yes, what is it, Joe?” she asked. And then, in sudden terror, “You’ve never come to tell me that anything’s happened to Bunting? He’s not had an accident?”
“Goodness, no! Whatever made you think that? But—but, Mrs. Bunting, there’s been another of them!”
His voice dropped almost to a whisper. He was staring at her with unhappy, it seemed to her terror-filled, eyes.
“Another of them?” She looked at him, bewildered—at a loss. And then what he meant flashed across her—“another of them” meant another of these strange, mysterious, awful murders.
But her relief for the moment was so great—for she really had thought for a second that he had come to give her ill news of Bunting—that the feeling that she did experience on hearing this piece of news was actually pleasurable, though she would have been much shocked had that fact been brought to her notice.
Almost in spite of herself, Mrs. Bunting had become keenly interested in the amazing series of crimes which was occupying the imagination of the whole of London’s nether-world. Even her refined mind had busied itself for the last two or three days with the strange problem so frequently presented to it by Bunting—for Bunting, now that they were no longer worried, took an open, unashamed, intense interest in “The Avenger” and his doings.
She took the kettle off the gas-ring. “It’s a pity Bunting isn’t here,” she said, drawing in her breath. “He’d a-liked so much to hear you tell all about it, Joe.”
As she spoke she was pouring boiling water into a little teapot.
But Chandler said nothing, and she turned and glanced at him. “Why, you do look bad!” she exclaimed.
And, indeed, the young fellow did look bad—very bad indeed.
“I can’t help it,” he said, with a kind of gasp. “It was your saying that about my telling you all about it that made me turn queer. You see, this time I was one of the first there, and it fairly turned me sick—that it did. Oh, it was too awful, Mrs. Bunting! Don’t talk of it.”
He began gulping down the hot tea before it was well made.
She looked at him with sympathetic interest. “Why, Joe,” she said, “I never would have thought, with all the horrible sights you see, that anything could upset you like that.”
“This isn’t like anything there’s ever been before,” he said. “And then—then—oh, Mrs. Bunting, ’twas I that discovered the piece of paper this time.”
“Then it is true,” she cried eagerly. “It is The Avenger’s bit of paper! Bunting always said it was. He never believed in that practical joker.”
“I did,” said Chandler reluctantly. “You see, there are some queer fellows even—even—” (he lowered his voice, and looked round him as if the walls had ears)—“even in the Force, Mrs. Bunting, and these murders have fair got on our nerves.”
“No, never!” she said. “D’you think that a Bobby might do a thing like that?”
He nodded impatiently, as if the question wasn’t worth answering. Then, “It was all along of that bit of paper and my finding it while the poor soul was still warm,”—he shuddered—“that brought me out West this morning. One of our bosses lives close by, in Prince Albert Terrace, and I had to go and tell him all about it. They never offered me a bit or a sup—I think they might have done that, don’t you, Mrs. Bunting?”
“Yes,” she said absently. “Yes, I do think so.”
“But, there, I don’t know that I ought to say that,” went on Chandler. “He had me up in his dressing-room, and was very considerate-like to me while I was telling him.”
“Have a bit of something now?” she said suddenly.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t eat anything,” he said hastily. “I don’t feel as if I could ever eat anything any more.”
“That’ll only make you ill.” Mrs. Bunting spoke rather crossly, for she was a sensible woman. And to please her he took a bite out of the slice of bread-and-butter she had cut for him.
“I expect you’re right,” he said. “And I’ve a goodish heavy day in front of me. Been up since four, too—”
“Four?” she said. “Was it then they found—” she hesitated a moment, and then said, “it?”
He nodded. “It was just a chance I was near by. If I’d been half a minute sooner either I or the officer who found her must have knocked up against that—that monster. But two or three people do think they saw him slinking away.”
“What was he like?” she asked curiously.
“Well, that’s hard to answer. You see, there was such an awful fog. But there’s one thing they all agree about. He was carrying a bag—”
“A bag?” repeated Mrs. Bunting, in a low voice. “Whatever sort of bag might it have been, Joe?”
There had come across her—just right in her middle, like—such a strange sensation, a curious kind of tremor, or fluttering.
She was at a loss to account for it.
“Just a hand-bag,” said Joe Chandler vaguely. “A woman I spoke to —cross-examining her, like—who was positive she had seen him, said, ‘Just a tall, thin shadow—that’s what he was, a tall, thin shadow of a man—with a bag.’”
“With a bag?” repeated Mrs. Bunting absently. “How very strange and peculiar—”
“Why, no, not strange at all. He has to carry the thing he does the deed with in something, Mrs. Bunting. We’ve always wondered how he hid it. They generally throws the knife or fire-arms away, you know.”
“Do they, indeed?” Mrs. Bunting still spoke in that absent, wondering way. She was thinking that she really must try and see what the lodger had done with his bag. It was possible—in fact, when one came to think of it, it was very probable—that he had just lost it, being so forgetful a gentleman, on one of the days he had gone out, as she knew he was fond of doing, into the Regent’s Park.
“There’ll be a description circulated in an hour or two,” went on Chandler. “Perhaps that’ll help catch him. There isn’t a London man or woman, I don’t suppose, who wouldn’t give a good bit to lay that chap by the heels. Well, I suppose I must be going now.”
“Won’t you wait a bit longer for Bunting?” she said hesitatingly.
“No, I can’t do that. But I’ll come in, maybe, either this evening or tomorrow, and tell you any more that’s happened. Thanks kindly for the tea. It’s made a man of me, Mrs. Bunting.”
“Well, you’ve had enough to unman you, Joe.”
“Aye, that I have,” he said heavily.
A few minutes later Bunting did come in, and he and his wife had quite a little tiff—the first tiff they had had since Mr. Sleuth became their lodger.
It fell out this way. When he heard who had been there, Bunting was angry that Mrs. Bunting hadn’t got more details of the horrible occurrence which had taken place that morning, out of Chandler.
“You don’t mean to say, Ellen, that you can’t even tell me where it happened?” he said indignantly. “I suppose you put Chandler off —that’s what you did! Why, whatever did he come here for, excepting