The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes (color ebook reader txt) 📕

awake listening —and there is nothing so tiring as to lie awake listening for a sound that never comes.

The house had remained so still you could have heard a pin drop. Mr. Sleuth, lying snug in his nice warm bed upstairs, had not stirred. Had he stirred his landlady was bound to have heard him, for his bed was, as we know, just above hers. No, during those long hours of darkness Daisy’s light, regular breathing was all that had fallen on Mrs. Bunting’s ears.

And then her mind switched off Mr. Sleuth. She made a determined effort to expel him, to toss him, as it were, out of her thoughts.

It seemed strange that The Avenger had stayed his hand, for, as Joe had said only last evening, it was full time that he should again turn that awful, mysterious searchlight of his on himself. Mrs. Bunting always visioned The Avenger as a black shadow in the centre a bright blinding light—but the shadow had no form or definite substance. Sometimes he looked like one thing, sometimes like another …

Mrs. Bunting had now come to the corner which led up the street where there was a Post Office. But instead of turning sharp to the left she stopped short for a minute.

There had suddenly come over her a feeling of horrible self-rebuke and even self-loathing. It was dreadful that she, of all women, should have longed to hear that another murder had been committed last night!

Yet such was the shameful fact. She had listened all through breakfast hoping to hear the dread news being shouted outside; yes, and more or less during the long discussion which had followed on the receipt of Margaret’s letter she had been hoping—hoping against hope—that those dreadful triumphant shouts of the newspaper-sellers still might come echoing down the Marylebone Road. And yet hypocrite that she was, she had reproved Bunting when he had expressed, not disappointment exactly—but, well, surprise, that nothing had happened last night.

Now her mind switched off to Joe Chandler. Strange to think how afraid she had been of that young man! She was no longer afraid of him, or hardly at all. He was dotty—that’s what was the matter with him, dotty with love for rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed little Daisy. Anything might now go on, right under Joe Chandler’s very nose—but, bless you, he’d never see it! Last summer, when this affair, this nonsense of young Chandler and Daisy had begun, she had had very little patience with it all. In fact, the memory of the way Joe had gone on then, the tiresome way he would be always dropping in, had been one reason (though not the most important reason of all) why she had felt so terribly put about at the idea of the girl coming again. But now? Well, now she had become quite tolerant, quite kindly—at any rate as far as Joe Chandler was concerned.

She wondered why.

Still, ‘twouldn’t do Joe a bit of harm not to see the girl for a couple of days. In fact ‘twould be a very good thing, for then he’d think of Daisy—think of her to the exclusion of all else. Absence does make the heart grow fonder—at first, at any rate. Mrs. Bunting was well aware of that. During the long course of hers and Bunting’s mild courting, they’d been separated for about three months, and it was that three months which had made up her mind for her. She had got so used to Bunting that she couldn’t do without him, and she had felt—oddest fact of all—acutely, miserably jealous. But she hadn’t let him know that—no fear!

Of course, Joe mustn’t neglect his job—that would never do. But what a good thing it was, after all, that he wasn’t like some of those detective chaps that are written about in stories—the sort of chaps that know everything, see everything, guess everything —even where there isn’t anything to see, or know, or guess!

Why, to take only one little fact—Joe Chandler had never shown the slightest curiosity about their lodger… .

Mrs. Bunting pulled herself together with a start, and hurried quickly on. Bunting would begin to wonder what had happened to her.

She went into the Post Office and handed the form to the young woman without a word. Margaret, a sensible woman, who was accustomed to manage other people’s affairs, had even written out the words: “Will be with you to tea.—DAISY.”

It was a comfort to have the thing settled once for all. If anything horrible was going to happen in the next two or three days—it was just as well Daisy shouldn’t be at home. Not that there was any real danger that anything would happen,—Mrs. Bunting felt sure of that.

By this time she was out in the street again, and she began mentally counting up the number of murders The Avenger had committed. Nine, or was it ten? Surely by now The Avenger must be avenged? Surely by now, if—as that writer in the newspaper had suggested—he was a quiet, blameless gentleman living in the West End, whatever vengeance he had to wreak, must be satisfied?

She began hurrying homewards; it wouldn’t do for the lodger to ring before she had got back. Bunting would never know how to manage Mr. Sleuth, especially if Mr. Sleuth was in one of his queer moods.

******

Mrs. Bunting put the key into the front door lock and passed into the house. Then her heart stood still with fear and terror. There came the sound of voices—of voices she thought she did not know— in the sitting-room.

She opened the door, and then drew a long breath. It was only Joe Chandler—Joe, Daisy, and Bunting, talking together. They stopped rather guiltily as she came in, but not before she had heard Chandler utter the words: “That don’t mean nothing! I’ll just run out and send another saying you won’t come, Miss Daisy.”

And then the strangest smile came over Mrs. Bunting’s face. There had fallen on her ear the still distant, but unmistakable, shouts which betokened that something had happened last night—something which made it worth while for the newspaper-sellers to come crying down the Marylebone Road.

“Well?” she said a little breathlessly. “Well, Joe? I suppose you’ve brought us news? I suppose there’s been another?”

He looked at her, surprised. “No, that there hasn’t, Mrs. Bunting —not as far as I know, that is. Oh, you’re thinking of those newspaper chaps? They’ve got to cry out something,” he grinned. “You wouldn’t ‘a thought folk was so bloodthirsty. They’re just shouting out that there’s been an arrest; but we don’t take no stock of that. It’s a Scotchman what gave himself up last night at Dorking. He’d been drinking, and was a-pitying of himself. Why, since this business began, there’s been about twenty arrests, but they’ve all come to nothing.”

“Why, Ellen, you looks quite sad, quite disappointed,” said Bunting jokingly. “Come to think of it, it’s high time The Avenger was at work again.” He laughed as he made his grim joke. Then turned to young Chandler: “Well, you’ll be glad when its all over, my lad.”

“Glad in a way,” said Chandler unwillingly. “But one ‘ud have liked to have caught him. One doesn’t like to know such a creature’s at large, now, does one?”

Mrs. Bunting had taken off her bonnet and jacket. “I must just go and see about Mr. Sleuth’s breakfast,” she said in a weary, dispirited voice, and left them there.

She felt disappointed, and very, very depressed. As to the plot which had been hatching when she came in, that had no chance of success; Bunting would never dare let Daisy send out another telegram contradicting the first. Besides, Daisy’s stepmother shrewdly suspected that by now the girl herself wouldn’t care to do such a thing. Daisy had plenty of sense tucked away somewhere in her pretty little head. If it ever became her fate to live as a married woman in London, it would be best to stay on the right side of Aunt Margaret.

And when she came into her kitchen the stepmother’s heart became very soft, for Daisy had got everything beautifully ready. In fact, there was nothing to do but to boil Mr. Sleuth’s two eggs. Feeling suddenly more cheerful than she had felt of late, Mrs. Bunting took the tray upstairs.

“As it was rather late, I didn’t wait for you to ring, sir,” she said.

And the lodger looked up from the table where, as usual, he was studying with painful, almost agonising intentness, the Book. “Quite right, Mrs. Bunting—quite right! I have been pondering over the command, ‘Work while it is yet light.’”

“Yes, sir?” she said, and a queer, cold feeling stole over her heart. “Yes, sir?”

“‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh—the flesh is weak,’” said Mr. Sleuth, with a heavy sigh.

“You studies too hard, and too long—that’s what’s ailing you, sir,” said Mr. Sleuth’s landlady suddenly.

******

When Mrs. Bunting went down again she found that a great deal had been settled in her absence; among other things, that Joe Chandler was going to escort Miss Daisy across to Belgrave Square. He could carry Daisy’s modest bag, and if they wanted to ride instead of walk, why, they could take the bus from Baker Street Station to Victoria—that would land them very near Belgrave Square.

But Daisy seemed quite willing to walk; she hadn’t had a walk, she declared, for a long, long time—and then she blushed rosy red, and even her stepmother had to admit to herself that Daisy was very nice looking, not at all the sort of girl who ought to be allowed to go about the London streets by herself.