The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 girl about the house to help her a bit.

      About ten o’clock Bunting went out to do some shopping. He brought back with him a nice little bit of pork for Daisy’s dinner, and three mince-pies. He even remembered to get some apples for the sauce.

      Chapter 7

       Table of Contents

      Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate.

      It brought Daisy—pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy—a sight to gladden any father’s heart.

      “Old Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad,” she cried out joyously.

      There was a bit of a wrangle over the fare. King’s Cross, as all the world knows, is nothing like two miles from the Marylebone Road, but the man clamoured for one and sixpence, and hinted darkly that he had done the young lady a favour in bringing her at all.

      While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it, walked up the flagged path to the door where her stepmother was awaiting her.

      As they were exchanging a rather frigid kiss, indeed, ’twas a mere peck on Mrs. Bunting’s part, there fell, with startling suddenness, loud cries on the still, cold air. Long-drawn and wailing, they sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar of traffic in the Edgware Road.

      “What’s that?” exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. “Why, whatever’s that?”

      The cabman lowered his voice. “Them’s ‘a-crying out that ‘orrible affair at King’s Cross. He’s done for two of ’em this time! That’s what I meant when I said I might ‘a got a better fare. I wouldn’t say nothink before little missy there, but folk ‘ave been coming from all over London the last five or six hours; plenty of toffs, too—but there, there’s nothing to see now!”

      “What? Another woman murdered last night?”

      Bunting felt tremendously thrilled. What had the five thousand constables been about to let such a dreadful thing happen?

      The cabman СКАЧАТЬ