The coming and going went on all day. Mrs. Bunting stayed indoors; Bunting went out. After all, the ex-butler was human—it was natural that he should feel thrilled and excited. All their neighbors were the same. His wife wasn’t reasonable about such things. She quarreled with him when he didn’t tell her anything, and yet he was sure she would have been angry with him if he had said very much about it.
The lodger’s bell rang about two o’clock, and Mrs. Bunting prepared the simple luncheon that was also his breakfast. As she rested the tray a minute on the drawing-room floor landing, she heard Mr. Sleuth’s high, quavering voice reading aloud the words:
“She saith to him, Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.”
The landlady turned the handle of the door and walked in with the tray. Mr. Sleuth was sitting close by the window, and Mrs. Bunting’s Bible lay open before him. As she came in he hastily closed the Bible and looked down at the crowd walking along the Marylebone Road.
“There seem a great many people out today,” he observed, without looking round.
“Yes, sir, there do.” Mrs. Bunting said nothing more, and offered no other explanation; and the lodger, as he at last turned to his landlady, smiled pleasantly. He had acquired a great liking and respect for this well-behaved, taciturn woman; she was the first person for whom he had felt any such feeling for many years past.
He took a half sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket; Mrs. Bunting noticed that it was not the same waistcoat Mr. Sleuth had been wearing the day before. “Will you please accept this half sovereign for the use of your kitchen last night?” he said. “I made as little mess as I could, but I was carrying on a rather elaborate experiment.”
She held out her hand, hesitated, and then took the coin.
As she walked down the stairs, the winter sun, a yellow ball hanging in the smoky sky, glinted in on Mrs. Bunting, and lent blood-red gleams, or so it seemed to her, to the piece of gold she was holding in her hand.
* * *
—
It was a very cold night—so cold, so windy, so snowladen the atmosphere, that every one who could do so stayed indoors. Bunting, however, was on his way home from what had proved a very pleasant job; he had been acting as waiter at a young lady’s birthday party, and a remarkable piece of luck had come his way. The young lady had come into a fortune that day, and she had had the gracious, the surprising thought of presenting each of the hired waiters with a sovereign.
This birthday treat had put him in mind of another birthday. His daughter Daisy would be eighteen the following Saturday. Why shouldn’t he send her a postal order for half a sovereign, so that she might come up and spend her birthday in London?
Having Daisy for three or four days would cheer up Ellen. Mr. Bunting, slackening his footsteps, began to think with puzzled concern of how queer his wife had seemed lately. She had become so nervous, so “jumpy,” that he didn’t know what to make of her sometimes. She had never been a really good-tempered woman—your capable, self-respecting woman seldom is—but she had never been like what she was now. Of late she sometimes got quite hysterical; he had let fall a sharp word to her the other day, and she had sat down on a chair, thrown her black apron over her face, and burst out sobbing violently.
During the last ten days Ellen had taken to talking in her sleep. “No, no, no!” she had cried out, only the night before. “It isn’t true! I won’t have it said! It’s a lie!” And there had been a wail of horrible fear and revolt in her usually quiet, mincing voice. Yes, it would certainly be a good thing for her to have Daisy’s company for a bit. Whew! It was cold; and Bunting had stupidly forgotten his gloves. He put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm.
Suddenly he became aware that Mr. Sleuth, the lodger who seemed to have “turned their luck,” as it were, was walking along on the opposite side of the solitary street.
Mr. Sleuth’s tall, thin figure was rather bowed, his head bent toward the ground. His right arm was thrust into his long Inverness cape; the other occasionally sawed the air, doubtless in order to help him keep warm. He was walking rather quickly. It was clear that he had not yet become aware of the proximity of his landlord.
Bunting felt pleased to see his lodger; it increased his feeling of general satisfaction. Strange, was it not, that that odd, peculiar-looking figure should have made all the difference to his (Bunting’s) and Mrs. Bunting’s happiness and comfort in life?
Naturally, Bunting saw far less of the lodger than did Mrs. Bunting. Their gentleman had made it very clear that he did not like either the husband or wife to come up to his rooms without being definitely asked to do so, and Bunting had been up there only once since Mr. Sleuth’s arrival five weeks before. This seemed to be a good opportunity for a little genial conversation.
Bunting, still an active man for his years, crossed the road, and, stepping briskly forward, tried to overtake Mr. Sleuth; but the more he hurried, the more the other hastened, and that without even turning to see whose steps he heard echoing behind him on the now freezing pavement.
Mr. Sleuth’s own footsteps were quite inaudible—an odd circumstance, when you came to think of it, as Bunting did think of it later, lying awake by Ellen’s side in the pitch-darkness. What it meant was, of course, that the lodger had rubber soles on his shoes.
The two men, the pursued and the pursuer, at last turned into the Marylebone Road. They were now within a hundred yards of home; and so, plucking up courage, Bunting called out, his voice echoing freshly on the still air:
“Mr. Sleuth, sir! Mr. Sleuth!”
The lodger stopped and turned round. He had been walking so quickly, and he was in so poor a physical condition, that the sweat was pouring down his face.
“Ah! So it’s you, Mr. Bunting? I heard footsteps behind me, and I hurried on. I wish I’d known that it was only you; there are so many queer characters about at night in London.”
“Not on a night like this, sir. Only honest folk who have business out of doors would be out such a night as this. It is cold, sir!” And then into Bunting’s slow and honest mind there suddenly crept the query as to what Mr. Sleuth’s own business out could be on this cold, bitter night.
“Cold?” the lodger repeated. “I can’t say that I find it cold, Mr. Bunting. When the snow falls the air always becomes milder.”
“Yes, sir; but tonight there’s such a sharp east wind. Why, it freezes the very marrow in one’s bones!”
Bunting noticed that Mr. Sleuth kept his distance in a rather strange way: he walked at the edge of the pavement, leaving the rest of it, on the wall side, to his landlord.
“I lost my way,” he said abruptly. “I’ve been over Primrose Hill to see a friend of mine, and then, coming back, I lost my way.”
Bunting could well believe that, for when he had first noticed Mr. Sleuth he was coming from the east, and not, as he should have done if walking home from Primrose Hill, from the north.
They had now reached the little gate that gave on to the shabby, paved court in front of the house. Mr. Sleuth was walking up the flagged path, when, with a “By your leave, sir,” the ex-butler, stepping aside, slipped in front of his lodger, in order to open the front door for him.
As he passed by Mr. Sleuth, the back of Bunting’s bare left hand brushed lightly against the long Inverness cape the other man was wearing, and, to his surprise, the stretch of cloth against which his hand lay for a moment was not only damp, damp from the flakes of snow that had settled upon it, but wet—wet and gluey. Bunting thrust his left hand into his pocket; it was with the other that he placed the key in the lock of the door.
The two men passed into the hall together. The house seemed blackly dark in comparison with the lighted-up road outside; and then, quite suddenly, there came over Bunting a feeling of mortal terror, an i
nstinctive knowledge that some terrible and immediate danger was near him. A voice—the voice of his first wife, the long-dead girl to whom his mind so seldom reverted nowadays—uttered in his ear the words, “Take care!”
“I’m afraid, Mr. Bunting, that you must have felt something dirty, foul, on my coat? It’s too long a story to tell you now, but I brushed up against a dead animal—a dead rabbit lying across a bench on Primrose Hill.”
Mr. Sleuth spoke in a very quiet voice, almost in a whisper.
“No, sir; no, I didn’t notice nothing. I scarcely touched you, sir.” It seemed as if a power outside himself compelled Bunting to utter these lying words. “And now, sir, I’ll be saying good night to you,” he added.
He waited until the lodger had gone upstairs, and then he turned into his own sitting-room. There he sat down, for he felt very queer. He did not draw his left hand out of his pocket till he heard the other man moving about in the room above. Then he lit the gas and held up his left hand; he put it close to his face. It was flecked, streaked with blood.
He took off his boots, and then, very quietly, he went into the room where his wife lay asleep. Stealthily he walked across to the toilet-table, and dipped his hand into the water-jug.
* * *
—
The next morning Mr. Sleuth’s landlord awoke with a start; he felt curiously heavy about the limbs and tired about the eyes.
Drawing his watch from under his pillow, he saw that it was nearly nine o’clock. He and Ellen had overslept. Without waking her, he got out of bed and pulled up the blind. It was snowing heavily, and, as is the way when it snows, even in London, it was strangely, curiously still.
After he had dressed he went out into the passage. A newspaper and a letter were lying on the mat. Fancy having slept through the postman’s knock! He picked them both up and went into the sitting-room; then he carefully shut the door behind him, and, tossing the letter aside, spread the newspaper wide open on the table and bent over it.
As Bunting at last looked up and straightened himself, a look of inexpressible relief shone upon his stolid face. The item of news he had felt certain would be there, printed in big type on the middle sheet, was not there.
He folded the paper and laid it on a chair, and then eagerly took up his letter.
DEAR FATHER [it ran] I hope this finds you as well as it leaves me. Mrs. Puddle’s youngest child has got scarlet fever, and aunt thinks I had better come away at once, just to stay with you for a few days. Please tell Ellen I won’t give her no trouble.
Your loving daughter,
Daisy.
Bunting felt amazingly light-hearted; and, as he walked into the next room, he smiled broadly.
“Ellen,” he cried out, “here’s news! Daisy’s coming today. There’s scarlet fever in their house, and Martha thinks she had better come away for a few days. She’ll be here for her birthday!”
Mrs. Bunting listened in silence; she did not even open her eyes. “I can’t have the girl here just now,” she said shortly: “I’ve got just as much as I can manage to do.”
But Bunting felt pugnacious, and so cheerful as to be almost light-headed. Deep down in his heart he looked back to last night with a feeling of shame and self-rebuke. Whatever had made such horrible thoughts and suspicions come into his head?
“Of course Daisy will come here,” he said shortly. “If it comes to that, she’ll be able to help you with the work, and she’ll brisk us both up a bit.”
Rather to his surprise, Mrs. Bunting said nothing in answer to this, and he changed the subject abruptly. “The lodger and me came in together last night,” he observed. “He’s certainly a funny kind of gentleman. It wasn’t the sort of night one would choose to go for a walk over Primrose Hill, and yet that was what he had been doing—so he said.”
It stopped snowing about ten o’clock, and the morning wore itself away.
Just as twelve was striking, a four-wheeler drew up to the gate. It was Daisy—pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy, a sight to gladden any father’s heart. “Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad,” she said.
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 clamored for one-and-sixpence, and hinted darkly that he had done the young lady a favor in bringing her at all.
While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it, walked up the path to the door where her stepmother was awaiting her.
Suddenly there fell loud shouts on the still air. They sounded strangely eerie, breaking sharply across the muffled, snowy air.
“What’s that?” said Bunting, with a look of startled fear. “Why, whatever’s that?”
The cabman lowered his voice: “Them are 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 have got a better fare; I wouldn’t say anything before Missy there, but folk ’ave been coming from all over London—like a fire; plenty of toffs, too. But there—there’s nothing to see now!”
“What! Another woman murdered last night?” Bunting felt and looked convulsed with horror.
The cabman stared at him, surprised. “Two of ’em, I tell yer—within a few yards of one another. He ’ave got a nerve—”
“Have they caught him?” asked Bunting perfunctorily.
“Lord, no! They’ll never catch ’im! It must ’ave happened hours and hours ago—they was both stone-cold. One each end of an archway. That’s why they didn’t see ’em before.”
The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer—two news-venders trying to outshout each other.
“ ’Orrible discovery near King’s Cross!” they yelled exultantly. And as Bunting, with his daughter’s bag in his hand, hurried up the path and passed through his front door, the words pursued him like a dreadful threat.
Angrily he shut out the hoarse, insistent cries. No, he had no wish to buy a paper. That kind of crime wasn’t fit reading for a young girl, such a girl as was his Daisy, brought up as carefully as if she had been a young lady by her strict Methody aunt.
As he stood in his little hall, trying to feel “all right” again, he could hear Daisy’s voice—high, voluble, excited—giving her stepmother a long account of the scarlet-fever case to which she owed her presence in London. But, as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room, there came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter’s voice, and he heard her say: “Why Ellen! Whatever is the matter? You do look bad!” and his wife’s muffled answer: “Open the window—do.”
Rushing across the room, Bunting pushed up the sash. The newspaper-sellers were now just outside the house. “Horrible discovery near King’s Cross—a clue to the murderer!” they yelled. And then, helplessly, Mrs. Bunting began to laugh. She laughed and laughed and laughed, rocking herself to and fro as if in an ecstasy of mirth.
“Why, father, whatever’s the matter with her?” Daisy looked quite scared.
“She’s in ’sterics—that’s what it is,” he said shortly. “I’ll just get the water-jug. Wait a minute.”
Bunting felt very put out, and yet glad, too, for this queer seizure of Ellen’s almost made him forget the sick terror with which he had been possessed a moment before. That he and his wife should be obsessed by the same fear, the same terror, never crossed his simple, slow-working mind.
The lodger’s bell rang. That, or the threat of the water-jug, had a magical effect on Mrs. Bunting. She rose to her feet, still trembling, but composed.
As Mrs. Bunting went upstairs she felt her legs trembling under her, and put out a shaking hand to clutch at the bannister for support. She waited a few minutes on the landing, and then knocked at the door of her lodger’s parlor.
But Mr. Sleuth’s voice answered her from the bedroom. “I’m not well,” he called o
ut querulously; “I think I caught a chill going out to see a friend last night. I’d be obliged if you’ll bring me up a cup of tea and put it outside my door, Mrs. Bunting.”
“Very well, sir.”
Mrs. Bunting went downstairs and made her lodger a cup of tea over the gas-ring, Bunting watching her the while in heavy silence.
During their midday dinner the husband and wife had a little discussion as to where Daisy should sleep. It had already been settled that a bed should be made up for her in the sitting-room, but Bunting saw reason to change this plan. As the two women were clearing away the dishes, he looked up and said shortly: “I think ’twould be better if Daisy were to sleep with you, Ellen, and I were to sleep in the sitting-room.”
Ellen acquiesced quietly.
Daisy was a good-natured girl; she liked London, and wanted to make herself useful to her stepmother. “I’ll wash up; don’t you bother to come downstairs,” she said.
Bunting began to walk up and down the room. His wife gave him a furtive glance; she wondered what he was thinking about.
“Didn’t you get a paper?” she said at last.
“There’s the paper,” he said crossly, “the paper we always do take in, the Telegraph.” His look challenged her to a further question.
“I thought they was shouting something in the street—I mean just before I was took bad.”
But he made no answer; instead, he went to the top of the staircase and called out sharply: “Daisy! Daisy, child, are you there?”
“Yes, father,” she answered from below.
“Better come upstairs out of that cold kitchen.”
He came back into the sitting-room again.
“Ellen, is the lodger in? I haven’t heard him moving about. I don’t want Daisy to be mixed up with him.”
“Mr. Sleuth is not well today,” his wife answered; “he is remaining in bed a bit. Daisy needn’t have anything to do with him. She’ll have her work cut out looking after things down here. That’s where I want her to help me.”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 55
