27 chapters
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27 chapters
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning, carefully-banked-up fire. The room, especially when it be known that it was part of a house standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare, was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for. A casual stranger, more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr. and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of comfortable married
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
Mr. Bunting jumped nervously to her feet. She stood for a moment listening in the darkness, a darkness made the blacker by the line of light under the door behind which sat Bunting reading his paper. And then it came again, that loud, tremulous, uncertain double knock; not a knock, so the listener told herself, that boded any good. Would-be lodgers gave sharp, quick, bold, confident raps. No; this must be some kind of beggar. The queerest people came at all hours, and asked—whining or threatenin
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
But what was a little snub compared with the intense relief and joy of going down and telling Bunting of the great piece of good fortune which had fallen their way? Staid Mrs. Bunting seemed to make but one leap down the steep stairs. In the hall, however, she pulled herself together, and tried to still her agitation. She had always disliked and despised any show of emotion; she called such betrayal of feeling “making a fuss.” Opening the door of their sitting-room, she stood for a moment lookin
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
Mrs. Bunting woke up the next morning feeling happier than she had felt for a very, very long time. For just one moment she could not think why she felt so different—and then she suddenly remembered. How comfortable it was to know that upstairs, just over her head, lay, in the well-found bed she had bought with such satisfaction at an auction held in a Baker Street house, a lodger who was paying two guineas a week! Something seemed to tell her that Mr. Sleuth would be “a permanency.” In any case
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
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
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
Mr. Sleuth’s bell rang again. Mr. Sleuth’s breakfast was quite ready, but for the first time since he had been her lodger Mrs. Bunting did not answer the summons at once. But when there came the second imperative tinkle—for electric bells had not been fitted into that old-fashioned house—she made up her mind to go upstairs. As she emerged into the hall from the kitchen stairway, Bunting, sitting comfortably in their parlour, heard his wife stepping heavily under the load of the well-laden tray.
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
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
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice slice of roast pork downstairs. “I hope you’re feeling a little better, sir,” Mrs. Bunting had forced herself to say when she first took in his tray. And he had answered plaintively, querulously, “No, I can’t say I feel well to-day, Mrs. Bunting. I am tired—very tired. And as I lay in bed I seemed to
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CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
The moment she passed though the great arched door which admits the stranger to that portion of New Scotland Yard where throbs the heart of that great organism which fights the forces of civilised crime, Daisy Bunting felt that she had indeed become free of the Kingdom of Romance. Even the lift in which the three of them were whirled up to one of the upper floors of the huge building was to the girl a new and delightful experience. Daisy had always lived a simple, quiet life in the little countr
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
By what she regarded as a fortunate chance, Mrs. Bunting found herself for close on an hour quite alone in the house during her husband’s and Daisy’s jaunt with young Chandler. Mr. Sleuth did not often go out in the daytime, but on this particular afternoon, after he had finished his tea, when dusk was falling, he suddenly observed that he wanted a new suit of clothes, and his landlady eagerly acquiesced in his going out to purchase it. As soon as he had left the house, she went quickly up to th
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
It was only Joe. Somehow, even Bunting called him “Joe” now, and no longer “Chandler,” as he had mostly used to do. Mrs. Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way. She wasn’t going to have any strangers pushing in past her. To her sharpened, suffering senses her house had become a citadel which must be defended; aye, even if the besiegers were a mighty horde with right on their side . And she was always expecting that first single spy who would herald the battalion against whom he
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CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
“All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go. One can’t always do just what one wants to do—not in this world, at any rate!” Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular, though both her husband and her stepdaughter were in the room. She was standing by the table, staring straight before her, and as she spoke she avoided looking at either Bunting or Daisy. There was in her voice a tone of cross decision, of thin finality, with which they were both acquainted, and to which each
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CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
Daisy’s father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door, watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness. A yellow pall of fog had suddenly descended on London, and Joe had come a full half-hour before they expected him, explaining, rather lamely, that it was the fog which had brought him so soon. “If we was to have waited much longer, perhaps, ’twouldn’t have been possible to walk a yard,” he explained, and they had accepted, silently, his explanation. “I hope it’s qu
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CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XIV.
“There he is at last, and I’m glad of it, Ellen. ’Tain’t a night you would wish a dog to be out in.” Bunting’s voice was full of relief, but he did not turn round and look at his wife as he spoke; instead, he continued to read the evening paper he held in his hand. He was still close to the fire, sitting back comfortably in his nice arm-chair. He looked very well—well and ruddy. Mrs. Bunting stared across at him with a touch of sharp envy, nay, more, of resentment. And this was very curious, for
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CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV.
The Buntings went to bed early that night. But Mrs. Bunting made up her mind to keep awake. She was set upon knowing at what hour of the night the lodger would come down into her kitchen to carry through his experiment, and, above all, she was anxious to know how long he would stay there. But she had had a long and a very anxious day, and presently she fell asleep. The church clock hard by struck two, and, suddenly Mrs. Bunting awoke. She felt put out, sharply annoyed with herself. How could she
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CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
Bunting began moving about the room restlessly. He would go to the window; stand there awhile staring out at the people hurrying past; then, coming back to the fireplace, sit down. But he could not stay long quiet. After a glance at his paper, up he would rise from his chair, and go to the window again. “I wish you’d stay still,” his wife said at last. And then, a few minutes later, “Hadn’t you better put your hat and coat on and go out?” she exclaimed. And Bunting, with a rather shamed expressi
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CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII.
Mrs. Bunting slept well the night following that during which the lodger had been engaged in making his mysterious experiments in her kitchen. She was so tired, so utterly exhausted, that sleep came to her the moment she laid her head upon her pillow. Perhaps that was why she rose so early the next morning. Hardly giving herself time to swallow the tea Bunting had made and brought her, she got up and dressed. She had suddenly come to the conclusion that the hall and staircase required a thorough
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CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Any ordeal is far less terrifying, far easier to meet with courage, when it is repeated, than is even a milder experience which is entirely novel. Mrs. Bunting had already attended an inquest, in the character of a witness, and it was one of the few happenings of her life which was sharply etched against the somewhat blurred screen of her memory. In a country house where the then Ellen Green had been staying for a fortnight with her elderly mistress, there had occurred one of those sudden, pitif
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CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XIX.
It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that she had been sitting there a long time—it was really about a quarter of an hour—when her official friend came back. “Better come along now,” he whispered; “it’ll begin soon.” She followed him out into a passage, up a row of steep stone steps, and so into the Coroner’s Court. The court was big, well-lighted room, in some ways not unlike a chapel, the more so that a kind of gallery ran half-way round, a gallery evidently set aside for the general public, for it was n
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CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XX.
It was not late even now, for the inquest had begun very punctually, but Mrs. Bunting felt that no power on earth should force her to go to Ealing. She felt quite tired out and as if she could think of nothing. Pacing along very slowly, as if she were an old, old woman, she began listlessly turning her steps towards home. Somehow she felt that it would do her more good to stay out in the air than take the train. Also she would thus put off the moment—the moment to which she looked forward with d
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CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXI.
It was a very cold night—so cold, so windy, so snow-laden was the atmosphere, that everyone who could do so stayed indoors. Bunting, however, was now on his way home from what had proved a really pleasant job. A remarkable piece of luck had come his way this evening, all the more welcome because it was quite unexpected! The young lady at whose birthday party he had been present in capacity of waiter had come into a fortune that day, and she had had the gracious, the surprising thought of present
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CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXII.
Feeling amazingly light-hearted, almost light-headed, Bunting lit the gas-ring to make his wife her morning cup of tea. While he was doing it, he suddenly heard her call out: “Bunting!” she cried weakly. “Bunting!” Quickly he hurried in response to her call. “Yes,” he said. “What is it, my dear? I won’t be a minute with your tea.” And he smiled broadly, rather foolishly. She sat up and looked at him, a dazed expression on her face. “What are you grinning at?” she asked suspiciously. “I’ve had a
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CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
All afternoon it went on snowing; and the three of them sat there, listening and waiting—Bunting and his wife hardly knew for what; Daisy for the knock which would herald Joe Chandler. And about four there came the now familiar sound. Mrs. Bunting hurried out into the passage, and as she opened the front door she whispered, “We haven’t said anything to Daisy yet. Young girls can’t keep secrets.” Chandler nodded comprehendingly. He now looked the low character he had assumed to the life, for he w
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CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Each hour of the days that followed held for Bunting its full meed of aching fear and suspense. The unhappy man was ever debating within himself what course he should pursue, and, according to his mood and to the state of his mind at any particular moment, he would waver between various widely-differing lines of action. He told himself again and again, and with fretful unease, that the most awful thing about it all was that he wasn’t sure . If only he could have been sure , he might have made up
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CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXV.
Daisy’s eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully. Her father gave her what he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth birthday—a watch. It was a pretty little silver watch, which Bunting had bought secondhand on the last day he had been happy—it seemed a long, long time ago now. Mrs. Bunting thought a silver watch a very extravagant present but she was far too wretched, far too absorbed in her own thoughts, to trouble much about it. Besides, in such matters she had generally had the
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CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Madame Tussaud’s had hitherto held pleasant memories for Mrs. Bunting. In the days when she and Bunting were courting they often spent there part of their afternoon-out. The butler had an acquaintance, a man named Hopkins, who was one of the waxworks staff, and this man had sometimes given him passes for “self and lady.” But this was the first time Mrs. Bunting had been inside the place since she had come to live almost next door, as it were, to the big building. They walked in silence to the fa
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CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVII.
In vain Mr. Hopkins invited Mrs. Bunting and her pretty stepdaughter to step through into the Chamber of Horrors. “I think we ought to go straight home,” said Mr. Sleuth’s landlady decidedly. And Daisy meekly assented. Somehow the girl felt confused, a little scared by the lodger’s sudden disappearance. Perhaps this unwonted feeling of hers was induced by the look of stunned surprise and, yes, pain, on her stepmother’s face. Slowly they made their way out of the building, and when they got home
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