The Lodger, Marie Belloc Lowndes [the kiss of deception read online txt] 📗

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.

The second evening he had been with them Mr. Sleuth had brought in a book of which the queer name was Cruden’s Concordance. That and the Bible—Mrs. Bunting had soon discovered that there was a relation between the two books—seemed to be the lodger’s only reading. He spent hours each day, generally after he had eaten the breakfast which also served for luncheon, poring over the Old Testament and over that strange kind of index to the Book.

As for the delicate and yet the all-important question of money, Mr. Sleuth was everything—everything that the most exacting landlady could have wished. Never had there been a more confiding or trusting gentleman. On the very first day he had been with them he had allowed his money—the considerable sum of one hundred and eighty-four sovereigns—to lie about wrapped up in little pieces of rather dirty newspaper on his dressing-table. That had quite upset Mrs. Bunting. She had allowed herself respectfully to point out to him that what he was doing was foolish, indeed wrong. But as only answer he had laughed, and she had been startled when the loud, unusual and discordant sound had issued from his thin lips.

“I know those I can trust,” he had answered, stuttering rather, as was his way when moved. “And—and I assure you, Mrs. Bunting, that I hardly have to speak to a human being—especially to a woman” (and he had drawn in his breath with a hissing sound) “before I know exactly what manner of person is before me.”

It hadn’t taken the landlady very long to find out that her lodger had a queer kind of fear and dislike of women. When she was doing the staircase and landings she would often hear Mr. Sleuth reading aloud to himself passages in the Bible that were very uncomplimentary to her sex. But Mrs. Bunting had no very great opinion of her sister woman, so that didn’t put her out. Besides, where one’s lodger is concerned, a dislike of women is better than—well, than the other thing.

In any case, where would have been the good of worrying about the lodger’s funny ways? Of course, Mr. Sleuth was eccentric. If he hadn’t been, as Bunting funnily styled it, “just a leetle touched upstairs,” he wouldn’t be here, living this strange, solitary life in lodgings. He would be living in quite a different sort of way with some of his relatives, or with a friend of his own class.

There came a time when Mrs. Bunting, looking back—as even the least imaginative of us are apt to look back to any part of our own past lives which becomes for any reason poignantly memorable —wondered how soon it was that she had discovered that her lodger was given to creeping out of the house at a time when almost all living things prefer to sleep.

She brought herself to believe—but I am inclined to doubt whether she was right in so believing—that the first time she became aware of this strange nocturnal habit of Mr. Sleuth’s happened to be during the night which preceded the day on which she had observed a very curious circumstance. This very curious circumstance was the complete disappearance of one of Mr. Sleuth’s three suits of clothes.

It always passes my comprehension how people can remember, over any length of time, not every moment of certain happenings, for that is natural enough, but the day, the hour, the minute when these happenings took place! Much as she thought about it afterwards, even Mrs. Bunting never quite made up her mind whether it was during the fifth or the sixth night of Mr. Sleuth’s stay under her roof that she became aware that he had gone out at two in the morning and had only come in at five.

But that there did come such a night is certain—as certain as is the fact that her discovery coincided with various occurrences which were destined to remain retrospectively memorable.

******

It was intensely dark, intensely quiet—the darkest quietest hour of the night, when suddenly Mrs. Bunting was awakened from a deep, dreamless sleep by sounds at once unexpected and familiar. She knew at once what those sounds were. They were those made by Mr. Sleuth, first coming down the stairs, and walking on tiptoe—she was sure it was on tiptoe—past her door, and finally softly shutting the front door behind him.

Try as she would, Mrs. Bunting found it quite impossible to go to sleep again. There she lay wide awake, afraid to move lest Bunting should waken up too, till she heard Mr. Sleuth, three hours later, creep back into the house and so up to bed.

Then, and not till then, she slept again. But in the morning she felt very tired, so tired indeed, that she had been very glad when Bunting good-naturedly suggested that he should go out and do their little bit of marketing.

The worthy couple had very soon discovered that in the matter of catering it was not altogether an easy matter to satisfy Mr. Sleuth, and that though he always tried to appear pleased. This perfect lodger had one serious fault from the point of view of those who keep lodgings. Strange to say, he was a vegetarian. He would not eat meat in any form. He sometimes, however, condescended to a chicken, and when he did so condescend he generously intimated that Mr. and Mrs. Bunting were welcome to a share in it.

Now to-day—this day of which the happenings were to linger in Mrs. Bunting’s mind so very long, and to remain so very vivid, it had been arranged that Mr. Sleuth was to have some fish for his lunch, while what he left was to be “done up” to serve for his simple supper.

Knowing that Bunting would be out for at least an hour, for he was a gregarious soul, and liked to have a gossip in the shops he frequented, Mrs. Bunting rose and dressed in a leisurely manner; then she went and “did” her front sitting-room.

She felt languid and dull, as one is apt to feel after a broken night, and it was a comfort to her to know that Mr. Sleuth was not likely to ring before twelve.

But long before twelve a loud ring suddenly clanged through the quiet house. She knew it for the front door bell.

Mrs. Bunting frowned. No doubt the ring betokened one of those tiresome people who come round for old bottles and such-like fal-lals.

She went slowly, reluctantly to the door. And then her face cleared, for it was that good young chap, Joe Chandler, who stood waiting outside.

He was breathing a little hard, as if he had walked over-quickly through the moist, foggy air.

“Why, Joe?” said Mrs. Bunting wonderingly. “Come in—do! Bunting’s out, but he won’t be very long now. You’ve been quite a stranger these last few days.”

“Well, you know why, Mrs. Bunting—”

She stared at him for a moment, wondering what he could mean. Then, suddenly she remembered. Why, of course, Joe was on a big job just now—the job of trying to catch The Avenger! Her husband had alluded to the fact again and again when reading out to her little bits from the halfpenny evening paper he was taking again.

She led the way to the sitting-room. It was a good thing Bunting had insisted on lighting the fire before he went out, for now the room was nice and warm—and it was just horrible outside. She had felt a chill go right through her as she had stood, even for that second, at the front door.

And she hadn’t been alone to feel it, for, “I say, it is jolly to be in here, out of that awful cold!” exclaimed Chandler, sitting down heavily in Bunting’s easy chair.

And then Mrs. Bunting bethought herself that the young man was tired, as well as cold. He was pale, almost pallid under his usual healthy, tanned complexion—the complexion of the man who lives much out of doors.

“Wouldn’t you like me just to make you a cup of tea?” she said solicitously.

“Well, to tell truth, I should be right down thankful for one, Mrs. Bunting!” Then he looked round, and again he said her name, “Mrs. Bunting—?”

He spoke in so odd, so thick a tone that she turned quickly. “Yes, what is it, Joe?” she asked. And then, in sudden terror, “You’ve never come to tell me that anything’s happened to Bunting? He’s not had an accident?”

“Goodness, no! Whatever made you think that? But—but, Mrs. Bunting, there’s been another of them!”

His voice dropped almost to a whisper. He was staring at her with unhappy, it seemed to her terror-filled, eyes.

“Another of them?” She looked at him, bewildered—at a loss. And then what he meant flashed across her—“another of them” meant another of these strange, mysterious, awful murders.

But her relief for the moment was so great—for she really had thought for a second that he had come to give her ill news of Bunting—that the feeling that she did experience on hearing this piece of news was actually pleasurable, though she would have been much shocked had that fact been brought to her notice.

Almost in spite of herself, Mrs. Bunting had become keenly interested in the amazing series of crimes which was occupying the imagination of the whole of London’s nether-world. Even her refined mind had busied itself for the last two or three days with the strange problem so frequently presented to it by Bunting—for Bunting, now that they were no longer worried, took an open, unashamed, intense interest in “The Avenger” and his doings.

She took the kettle off the gas-ring. “It’s a pity Bunting isn’t here,” she said, drawing in her breath. “He’d a-liked so much to hear you tell all about it, Joe.”

As she spoke she was pouring boiling water into a little teapot.

But Chandler said nothing, and she turned and glanced at him. “Why, you do look bad!” she exclaimed.

And, indeed, the young fellow did look bad—very bad indeed.

“I can’t help it,” he said, with a kind of gasp. “It was your saying that about my telling you all about it that made me turn queer. You see, this time I was one of the first there, and it fairly turned me sick—that it did. Oh, it was too awful, Mrs. Bunting! Don’t talk of it.”

He began gulping down the hot tea before it was well made.

She looked at him with sympathetic interest. “Why, Joe,” she said, “I never would have thought, with all the horrible sights you see, that anything could upset you like that.”

“This isn’t like anything there’s ever been before,” he said. “And then—then—oh, Mrs. Bunting, ‘twas I that discovered the piece of paper this time.”

“Then it is true,” she cried eagerly. “It is The Avenger’s bit of paper! Bunting always said it was. He never believed in that practical joker.”

“I did,” said Chandler reluctantly. “You see, there are some queer fellows even—even—” (he lowered his voice, and looked round him as if the walls had ears)—“even in the Force, Mrs. Bunting, and these murders have fair got on our nerves.”

“No, never!” she said. “D’you think that a Bobby might do a thing like