THE LODGER (Murder Mystery). Marie Belloc Lowndes
out; but Mr. Sleuth disliked her to be moving about in it when he himself was in his bedroom; and when up he sat there almost all the time. Delighted as he had seemed to be with the top room, he only used it when making his mysterious experiments, and never during the day-time.
And now, this afternoon, she looked at the rosewood chiffonnier with longing eyes—she even gave that pretty little piece of furniture a slight shake. If only the doors would fly open, as the locked doors of old cupboards sometimes do, even after they have been securely fastened, how pleased she would be, how much more comfortable somehow she would feel!
But the chiffonnier refused to give up its secret.
About eight o’clock on that same evening Joe Chandler came in, just for a few minutes’ chat. He had recovered from his agitation of the morning, but he was full of eager excitement, and Mrs. Bunting listened in silence, intensely interested in spite of herself, while he and Bunting talked.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m as right as a trivet now! I’ve had a good rest —laid down all this afternoon. You see, the Yard thinks there’s going to be something on to-night. He’s always done them in pairs.”
“So he has,” exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. “So he has! Now, I never thought o’ that. Then you think, Joe, that the monster’ll be on the job again to-night?”
Chandler nodded. “Yes. And I think there’s a very good chance of his being caught too—”
“I suppose there’ll be a lot on the watch to-night, eh?”
“I should think there will be! How many of our men d’you think there’ll be on night duty to-night, Mr. Bunting?”
Bunting shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said helplessly.
“I mean extra,” suggested Chandler, in an encouraging voice.
“A thousand?” ventured Bunting.
“Five thousand, Mr. Bunting.”
“Never!” exclaimed Bunting, amazed.
And even Mrs. Bunting echoed “Never!” incredulously.
“Yes, that there will. You see, the Boss has got his monkey up!” Chandler drew a folded-up newspaper out of his coat pocket. “Just listen to this:
“‘The police have reluctantly to admit that they have no clue to the perpetrators of these horrible crimes, and we cannot feel any surprise at the information that a popular attack has been organised on the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. There is even talk of an indignation mass meeting.’
“What d’you think of that? That’s not a pleasant thing for a gentleman as is doing his best to read, eh?”
“Well, it does seem queer that the police can’t catch him, now doesn’t it?” said Bunting argumentatively.
“I don’t think it’s queer at all,” said young Chandler crossly. “Now you just listen again! Here’s a bit of the truth for once— in a newspaper.” And slowly he read out:
“‘The detection of crime in London now resembles a game of blind man’s buff, in which the detective has his hands tied and his eyes bandaged. Thus is he turned loose to hunt the murderer through the slums of a great city.’”
“Whatever does that mean?” said Bunting. “Your hands aren’t tied, and your eyes aren’t bandaged, Joe?”
“It’s metaphorical-like that it’s intended, Mr. Bunting. We haven’t got the same facilities—no, not a quarter of them—that the French ‘tecs have.”
And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting spoke: “What was that word, Joe—‘perpetrators’? I mean that first bit you read out.”
“Yes,” he said, turning to her eagerly.
“Then do they think there’s more than one of them?” she said, and a look of relief came over her thin face.
“There’s some of our chaps thinks it’s a gang,” said Chandler. “They say it can’t be the work of one man.”
“What do you think, Joe?”
“Well, Mrs. Bunting, I don’t know what to think. I’m fair puzzled.”
He got up. “Don’t you come to the door. I’ll shut it all right. So long! See you tomorrow, perhaps.” As he had done the other evening, Mr. and Mrs. Bunting’s visitor stopped at the door. “Any news of Miss Daisy?” he asked casually.
“Yes; she’s coming tomorrow,” said her father. “They’ve got scarlet fever at her place. So Old Aunt thinks she’d better clear out.”
The husband and wife went to bed early that night, but Mrs. Bunting found she could not sleep. She lay wide awake, hearing the hours, the half-hours, the quarters chime out from the belfry of the old church close by.
And then, just as she was dozing off—it must have been about one o’clock—she heard the sound she had half unconsciously been expecting to hear, that of the lodger’s stealthy footsteps coming down the stairs just outside her room.
He crept along the passage and let himself out very, very quietly.
But though she tried to keep awake, Mrs. Bunting did not hear him come in again, for she soon fell into a heavy sleep.
Oddly enough, she was the first to wake the next morning; odder still, it was she, not Bunting, who jumped out of bed, and going out into the passage, picked up the newspaper which had just been pushed through the letter-box.
But having picked it up, Mrs. Bunting did not go back at once into her bedroom. Instead she lit the gas in the passage, and leaning up against the wall to steady herself, for she was trembling with cold and fatigue, she opened the paper.
Yes, there was the heading she sought:
“The AVENGER Murders”
But, oh, how glad she was to see the words that followed:
“Up to the time of going to press there is little new to report concerning the extraordinary series of crimes which are amazing, and, indeed, staggering not only London, but the whole civilised world, and which would seem to be the work of some woman-hating teetotal fanatic. Since yesterday morning, when the last of these dastardly murders was committed, no reliable clue to the perpetrator, or perpetrators, has been obtained, though several arrests were made in the course of the day. In every case, however, those arrested were able to prove a satisfactory alibi.”
And then, a little lower down:
“The excitement grows and grows. It is not too much to say that even a stranger to London would know that something very unusual was in the air. As for the place where the murder was committed last night—”
“Last night!” thought Mrs. Bunting, startled; and then she realised that “last night,” in this connection, meant the night before last.
She began the sentence again:
“As for the place where the murder was committed last night, all approaches to it were still blocked up to a late hour by hundreds of onlookers, though, of course, nothing now remains in the way of traces of the tragedy.”
Slowly and carefully Mrs. Bunting folded the paper up again in its original creases, and then she stooped and put it back down on the mat where she had found it. She then turned out the gas, and going back into bed she lay down by her still sleeping husband.
“Anything the matter?” Bunting murmured, and stirred uneasily. “Anything the matter, Ellen?”
She answered in a whisper, a whisper thrilling with a strange gladness, “No, nothing, Bunting—nothing the matter! Go to sleep again, my dear.”
They got up an hour later, both in a happy, cheerful mood. Bunting rejoiced at the thought of his daughter’s coming, and even Daisy’s stepmother told herself that it would be pleasant having the