The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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      “Them who says that says wrong,” answered Chandler slowly, and a look of unease, of resentment came over his fair, stolid face. “’Twould make a good bit of difference to me if the Yard had a clue.”

      And then Mrs. Bunting interposed. “Why that, Joe?” she said, smiling indulgently; the young man’s keenness about his work pleased her. And in his slow, sure way Joe Chandler was very keen, and took his job very seriously. He put his whole heart and mind into it.

      “Well, ’tis this way,” he explained. “From today I’m on this business myself. You see, Mrs. Bunting, the Yard’s nettled—that’s what it is, and we’re all on our mettle—that we are. I was right down sorry for the poor chap who was on point duty in the street where the last one happened—”

      “No!” said Bunting incredulously. “You don’t mean there was a policeman there, within a few yards?”

      That fact hadn’t been recorded in his newspaper.

      Chandler nodded. “That’s exactly what I do mean, Mr. Bunting! The man is near off his head, so I’m told. He did hear a yell, so he says, but he took no notice—there are a good few yells in that part o’ London, as you can guess. People always quarrelling and rowing at one another in such low parts.”

      “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 had 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.

      Chapter 5

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      How 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.

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