Free The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes Page B

paper?" she said at last.
      "Yes, of course I did," he answered hastily. "But
I've put it away. I thought you'd rather not look at it, as you're
that nervous."
      Again she glanced at him quickly, furtively, but he
seemed just as usual - he evidently meant just what he said and no
more.
      "I thought they was shouting something in the street
- I mean just before I was took bad."
      It was now Bunting's turn to stare at his wife
quickly and rather furtively. He had felt sure that her sudden
attack of queerness, of hysterics - call it what you might - had
been due to the shouting outside. She was not the only woman in
London who had got the Avenger murders on her nerves. His morning
paper said quite a lot of women were afraid to go out alone. Was it
possible that the curious way she had been taken just now had had
nothing to do with the shouts and excitement outside?
      "Don't you know what it was they were calling out?"
he asked slowly.
      Mrs. Bunting looked across at him. She would have
given a very great deal to be able to lie, to pretend that she did
not know what those dreadful cries had portended. But when it came
to the point she found she could not do so.
      "Yes," she said dully. "I heard a word here and
there. There's been another murder, hasn't there?"
      "Two other murders," he said soberly.
      "Two? That's worse news!" She turned so pale - a
sallow greenish-white - that Bunting thought she was again going
queer.
      "Ellen?" he said warningly, "Ellen, now do have a
care! I can't think what's come over, you about these murders. Turn
your mind away from them, do! We needn't talk about them - not so
much, that is "
      "But I wants to talk about them," cried Mrs. Bunting
hysterically.
      The husband and wife were standing, one each side of
the table, the man with his back to the fire, the woman with her
back to the door.
      Bunting, staring across at his wife, felt sadly
perplexed and disturbed. She really did seem ill; even her slight,
spare figure looked shrunk. For the first time, so he told himself
ruefully, Ellen was beginning to look her full age. Her slender
hands - she had kept the pretty, soft white hands of the woman who
has never done rough work - grasped the edge of the table with a
convulsive movement.
      Bunting didn't at all like the look of her. "Oh,
dear," he said to himself, "I do hope Ellen isn't going to be ill!
That would be a to-do just now."
      "Tell me about it," she commanded, in a low voice. "
Can't you see I'm waiting to hear? Be quick now, Bunting!"
      "There isn't very much to tell," he said
reluctantly. "There's precious little in this paper, anyway. But
the cabman what brought Daisy told me - "
      "Well?"
      "What I said just now. There's two of 'em this time,
and they'd both been drinking heavily, poor creatures."
      "Was it where the others was done?" she asked
looking at her husband fearfully.
      "No," he said awkwardly. "No, it wasn't, Ellen. It
was a good bit farther West - in fact, not so very far from here.
Near King's Cross - that's how the cabman knew about it, you see.
They seems to have been done in a passage which isn't used no
more." And then, as he thought his wife's eyes were beginning to
look rather funny, he added hastily. "There, that's enough for the
present! We shall soon be hearing a lot more about it from Joe
Chandler. He's pretty sure to come in some time to-day."
      "Then the five thousand constables weren't no use?"
said Mrs. Bunting slowly.
      She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was
standing more upright.
      "No use at all," said Bunting briefly. "He is artful
and no mistake about it. But wait a minute - " he turned and took
up the paper which he had laid aside, on a chair. "Yes they says
here that they has a clue."
      "A clue, Bunting?" Mrs. Bunting spoke in a soft,
weak, die-away voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the
edge of the table.
      But her husband was not noticing her now. He