Everything had been settled in less than a quarter of an hour. Mr. Sleuth had at once “taken” to the drawing-room floor, and then, as Mrs. Bunting eagerly lit the gas in the front room above, he had looked around him and said, rubbing his hands with a nervous movement, “Capital—capital! This is just what I’ve been looking for!”
The sink had specially pleased him—the sink and the gas-stove. “This is quite first-rate!” he had exclaimed, “for I make all sorts of experiments. I am, you must understand, Mrs.—er—Bunting, a man of science.” Then he had sat down—suddenly. “I’m very tired,” he had said in a low tone, “very tired indeed! I have been walking about all day.”
From the very first the lodger’s manner had been odd, sometimes distant and abrupt, and then, for no reason at all that she could see, confidential and plaintively confiding. But Mrs. Bunting was aware that eccentricity has always been a perquisite, as it were the special luxury, of the well born and well educated. Scholars and such-like are never quite like other people.
And then, this particular gentleman had proved himself so eminently satisfactory as to the one thing that really matters to those who let lodgings. “My name is Sleuth,” he said. “S-l-e-u-t-h. Think of a hound, Mrs. Bunting, and you’ll never forget my name. I could give you references,” he had added, giving her, as she now remembered, a funny sidewise look, “but I prefer to dispense with them. How much did you say? Twenty-three shillings a week, with attendance? Yes, that will suit me perfectly; and I’ll begin by paying my first month’s rent in advance. Now, four times twenty-three shillings is”—he looked at Mrs. Bunting, and for the first time he smiled, a queer, wry smile—“ninety-two shillings.”
He had taken a handful of sovereigns out of his pocket and put them down on the table. “Look here,” he had said, “there’s five pounds; and you can keep the change, for I shall want you to do a little shopping for me tomorrow.”
After he had been in the house about an hour, the bell had rung, and the new lodger had asked Mrs. Bunting if she could oblige him with the loan of a Bible. She brought up to him her best Bible, the one that had been given to her as a wedding present by a lady with whose mother she had lived for several years. This Bible and one other book, of which the odd name was Cruden’s Concordance, formed Mr. Sleuth’s only reading; he spent hours each day poring over the Old Testament and over the volume which Mrs. Bunting had at last decided to be a queer kind of index to the Book.
However, to return to the lodger’s first arrival. He had had no luggage with him, barring the small brown bag, but very soon parcels had begun to arrive addressed to Mr. Sleuth, and it was then that Mrs. Bunting first became curious. These parcels were full of clothes; but it was quite clear to the landlady’s feminine eye that none of those clothes had been made for Mr. Sleuth. They were, in fact, second-hand clothes, bought at good second-hand places, each marked, when marked at all, with a different name. And the really extraordinary thing was that occasionally a complete suit disappeared—became, as it were, obliterated from the lodger’s wardrobe.
As for the bag he had brought with him, Mrs. Bunting had never caught sight of it again. And this also was certainly very strange.
Mrs. Bunting thought a great deal about that bag. She often wondered what had been in it; not a nightshirt and comb and brush, as she had at first supposed, for Mr. Sleuth had asked her to go out and buy him a brush and comb and tooth-brush the morning after his arrival. That fact was specially impressed on her memory, for at the little shop, a barber’s, where she had purchased the brush and comb, the foreigner who had served her had insisted on telling her some of the horrible details of the murder that had taken place the day before in Whitechapel, and it had upset her very much.
As to where the bag was now, it was probably locked up in the lower part of a chiffonnier in the front sitting-room. Mr. Sleuth evidently always carried the key of the little cupboard on his person, for Mrs. Bunting, though she looked well for it, had never been able to find it.
And yet, never was there a more confiding or trusting gentleman. The first four days that he had been with them he had allowed his money—the considerable sum of one hundred and eighty-four pounds in gold—to lie about wrapped up in pieces of paper on his dressing-table. This was a very foolish, indeed a wrong thing to do, as she had allowed herself respectfully to point out to him; but as only answer he had laughed, a loud, discordant shout of laughter.
Mr. Sleuth had many other odd ways; but Mrs. Bunting, a true woman in spite of her prim manner and love of order, had an infinite patience with masculine vagaries.
On the first morning of Mr. Sleuth’s stay in the Buntings’ house, while Mrs. Bunting was out buying things for him, the new lodger had turned most of the pictures and photographs hanging in his sitting-room with their faces to the wall! But this queer action on Mr. Sleuth’s part had not surprised Mrs. Bunting as much as it might have done; it recalled an incident of her long-past youth—something that had happened a matter of twenty years ago, at a time when Mrs. Bunting, then the still youthful Ellen Cottrell, had been maid to an old lady. The old lady had a favorite nephew, a bright, jolly young gentleman who had been learning to paint animals in Paris; and it was he who had had the impudence, early one summer morning, to turn to the wall six beautiful engravings of paintings done by the famous Mr. Landseer! The old lady thought the world of these pictures, but her nephew, as the only excuse for the extraordinary thing he had done, had observed that “they put his eye out.”
Mr. Sleuth’s excuse had been much the same; for, when Mrs. Bunting had come into his sitting-room and found all her pictures, or at any rate all those of her pictures that happened to be portraits of ladies, with their faces to the wall, he had offered as only explanation, “Those women’s eyes follow me about.”
Mrs. Bunting had gradually become aware that Mr. Sleuth had a fear and dislike of women. When she was “doing” the staircase and landing, she often heard him reading bits of the Bible aloud to himself, and in the majority of instances the texts he chose contained uncomplimentary reference to her own sex. Only today she had stopped and listened while he uttered threateningly the awful words, “A strange woman is a narrow pit. She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.” There had been a pause, and then had come, in a high singsong, “Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.” It had made Mrs. Bunting feel quite queer.
The lodger’s daily habits were also peculiar. He stayed in bed all the morning, and sometimes part of the afternoon, and he never went out before the street lamps were alight. Then, there was his dislike of an open fire; he generally sat in the top front room, and while there he always used the large gas-stove, not only for his experiments, which he carried on at night, but also in the daytime, for warmth.
But there! Where was the use of worrying about the lodger’s funny ways? Of course, Mr. Sleuth was eccentric; if he hadn’t been “just a leetle ‘touched’ upstairs”—as Bunting had once described it—he wouldn’t be their lodger now; he would be living in a quite different sort of way with some of his relations, or with a friend of his own class.
Mrs. Bunting, while these thoughts galloped disconnectedly through her brain, went on with her cooking, doing everything with a certain delicate and cleanly precision.
While in the middle of making the toast on which was to be poured some melted cheese, she suddenly heard a noise, or rather a series of noises. Shuffling, hesitating steps were creaking down the house above. She looked up and listened. Surely Mr. Sleuth was not going out again into the cold, foggy night? But no; for the sounds did not continue down the passage leading to the front door.
The heavy steps were coming slowly down the kitchen stairs. Nearer and nearer came the thudding sounds, and Mrs. Bunting’s heart began to beat as if in response. She put out the gas-stove, unheedful of the fact that the cheese would stiffen and spoil in the cold air;
and then she turned and faced the door. There was a fumbling at the handle, and a moment later the door opened and revealed, as she had known it would, her lodger.
Mr. Sleuth was clad in a plaid dressing-gown, and in his hand was a candle. When he saw the lit-up kitchen, and the woman standing in it, he looked inexplicably taken aback, almost aghast.
“Yes, sir? What can I do for you, sir? I hope you didn’t ring, sir?” Mrs. Bunting did not come forward to meet her lodger; instead, she held her ground in front of the stove. Mr. Sleuth had no business to come down like this into her kitchen.
“No, I—I didn’t ring,” he stammered; “I didn’t know you were down here, Mrs. Bunting. Please excuse my costume. The truth is, my gas-stove has gone wrong, or, rather, that shilling-in-the-slot arrangement has done so. I came down to see if you had a gas-stove. I am going to ask leave to use it to-night for an experiment I want to make.”
Mrs. Bunting felt troubled—oddly, unnaturally troubled. Why couldn’t the lodger’s experiment wait till tomorrow? “Oh, certainly, sir; but you will find it very cold down here.” She looked round her dubiously.
“It seems most pleasantly warm,” he observed, “warm and cozy after my cold room upstairs.”
“Won’t you let me make you a fire?” Mrs. Bunting’s housewifely instincts were roused. “Do let me make you a fire in your bedroom, sir; I’m sure you ought to have one there these cold nights.”
“By no means—I mean, I would prefer not. I do not like an open fire, Mrs. Bunting.” He frowned, and still stood, a strange-looking figure, just inside the kitchen door.
“Do you want to use this stove now, sir? Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“No, not now—thank you all the same, Mrs. Bunting. I shall come down later, altogether later—probably after you and your husband have gone to bed. But I should be much obliged if you would see that the gas people come tomorrow and put my stove in order.”
“Perhaps Bunting could put it right for you sir. I’ll ask him to go up.”
“No, no—I don’t want anything of that sort done tonight. Besides, he couldn’t put it right. The cause of the trouble is quite simple. The machine is choked up with shillings: a foolish plan, so I have always felt it to be.”
Mr. Sleuth spoke very pettishly, with far more heat than he was wont to speak; but Mrs. Bunting sympathized with him. She had always suspected those slot-machines to be as dishonest as if they were human. It was dreadful, the way they swallowed up the shillings!
As if he were divining her thoughts, Mr. Sleuth, walking forward, stared up at the kitchen slot-machine. “Is it nearly full?” he asked abruptly. “I expect my experiment will take some time, Mrs. Bunting.”
“Oh, no, sir; there’s plenty of room for shillings there still. We don’t use our stove as much as you do yours, sir. I’m never in the kitchen a minute longer than I can help in this cold weather.”
And then, with him preceding her, Mrs. Bunting and her lodger made a low progress to the ground floor. There Mr. Sleuth courteously bade his landlady good night, and proceeded upstairs to his own apartments.
Mrs. Bunting again went down into her kitchen, again she lit the stove, and again she cooked the toasted cheese. But she felt unnerved, afraid of she knew not what. The place seemed to her alive with alien presences, and once she caught herself listening, which was absurd, for of course she could not hope to hear what her lodger was doing two, if not three, flights upstairs. She had never been able to discover what Mr. Sleuth’s experiments really were; all she knew was that they required a very high degree of heat.
The Buntings went to bed early that night. But Mrs. Bunting intended to stay awake. She wanted to know at what hour of the night her lodger would come down into the kitchen, and, above all, she was anxious as to how long he would stay there. But she had had a long day, and presently she fell asleep.
The church clock hard by struck two in the morning, and suddenly Mrs. Bunting awoke. She felt sharply annoyed with herself. How could she have dropped off like that? Mr. Sleuth must have been down and up again hours ago.
Then, gradually, she became aware of a faint acrid odor; elusive, almost intangible, it yet seemed to encompass her and the snoring man by her side almost as a vapor might have done.
Mrs. Bunting sat up in bed and sniffed; and then, in spite of the cold, she quietly crept out of the nice, warm bedclothes and crawled along to the bottom of the bed. There Mr. Sleuth’s landlady did a very curious thing; she leaned over the brass rail and put her face close to the hinge of the door. Yes, it was from there that this strange, horrible odor was coming; the smell must be very strong in the passage. Mrs. Bunting thought she knew now what became of these suits of clothes of Mr. Sleuth’s that disappeared.
As she crept back, shivering, under the bed-clothes, she longed to give her sleeping husband a good shake, and in fancy she heard herself saying: “Bunting, get up! There is something strange going on downstairs that we ought to know about.”
But Mr. Sleuth’s landlady, as she lay by her husband’s side, listening with painful intentness, knew very well that she would do nothing of the sort. The lodger had a right to destroy his clothes by burning if the fancy took him. What if he did make a certain amount of mess, a certain amount of smell, in her nice kitchen? Was he not—was he not such a good lodger! If they did anything to upset him, where could they ever hope to get another like him?
Three o’clock struck before Mrs. Bunting heard slow, heavy steps creaking up her kitchen stairs. But Mr. Sleuth did not go straight up to his own quarters, as she expected him to do. Instead, he went to the front door, and opening it, put it on the chain. At the end of ten minutes or so he closed the front door, and by that time Mrs. Bunting had divined why the lodger had behaved in this strange fashion—it must have been to get the strong acrid smell of burning wool out of the passage. But Mrs. Bunting felt as if she herself would never get rid of the horrible odor. She felt herself to be all smell.
At last the unhappy woman fell into a deep, troubled sleep; and then she dreamed a most terrible and unnatural dream; hoarse voices seemed to be shouting in her ear, “ ’Orrible murder off the Edgeware Road!” Then three words, indistinctly uttered, followed by “—at his work again! Awful details!”
Even in her dream Mrs. Bunting felt angered and impatient; she knew so well why she was being disturbed by this horrid nightmare. It was because of Bunting—Bunting, who insisted on talking to her of those frightful murders, in which only morbid, vulgar-minded people took any interest. Why, even now, in her dream, she could hear her husband speaking to her about it.
“Ellen,”—so she heard Bunting say in her ear—“Ellen, my dear, I am just going to get up to get a paper. It’s after seven o’clock.”
Mrs. Bunting sat up in bed. The shouting, nay, worse, the sound of tramping, hurrying feet smote on her ears. It had been no nightmare, then, but something infinitely worse—reality. Why couldn’t Bunting have lain quietly in bed awhile longer, and let his poor wife go on dreaming? The most awful dream would have been easier to bear than this awakening.
She heard her husband go to the front door, and, as he bought the paper, exchange a few excited words with the newspaper boy. Then he came back and began silently moving about the room.
“Well!” she cried. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“I thought you’d rather not hear.”
“Of course I like to know what happens close to our own front door!” she snapped out.
And then he read out a piece of the newspaper—only a few lines, after all—telling in brief, unemotional language that the body of woman, apparently done to death in a peculiarly atrocious fashion some hours before, had been found in a passage leading to a disused warehouse off the Marylebone Road.
“It serves that sort of hussy right!” was Mrs. Bunting’s only comment.
When Mrs. Bunting went
down into the kitchen, everything there looked just as she had left it, and there was no trace of the acrid smell she had expected to find there. Instead, the cavernous whitewashed room was full of fog, and she noticed that, though the shutters were bolted and barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had been widely opened to the air. She, of course, had left them shut.
She stooped and flung open the oven door of her gas-stove. Yes, it was as she had expected; a fierce heat had been generated there since she had last used the oven and a mass of black, gluey soot had fallen through to the stone floor below.
Mrs. Bunting took the ham and eggs that she had bought the previous day for her own and Bunting’s breakfast, and broiled them over the gas-ring in their sitting-room. Her husband watched her in surprised silence. She had never done such a thing before.
“I couldn’t stay down there,” she said, “it was so cold and foggy. I thought I’d make breakfast up here, just for to-day.”
“Yes,” he said kindly; “that’s quite right, Ellen. I think you’ve done quite right, my dear.”
But, when it came to the point, his wife could not eat any of the nice breakfast she had got ready; she only had another cup of tea.
“Are you ill?” Bunting asked solicitously.
“No,” she said shortly; “of course I’m not ill. Don’t be silly! The thought of that horrible thing happening so close by has upset me. Just hark to them, now!”
Through their closed windows penetrated the sound of scurrying feet and loud, ribald laughter. A crowd, nay, a mob, hastened to and from the scene of the murder.
Mrs. Bunting made her husband lock the front gate. “I don’t want any of those ghouls in here!” she exclaimed angrily. And then, “What a lot of idle people there must be in the world,” she said.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 54
