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Updated: May 24, 2025
Sleuth was moving restlessly about the room, not sitting reading, as was his wont at this time of the evening. She knocked, and then waited a moment. There came the sound of a sharp click, that of the key turning in the lock of the chiffonnier cupboard or so Mr. Sleuth's landlady could have sworn. There was a pause she knocked again. "Come in," said Mr.
Bunting sat up in bed and sniffed; and then, in spite of the cold, she quietly crept out of her nice, warm bedclothes, and crawled along to the bottom of the bed. When there, Mr. Sleuth's landlady did a very curious thing; she leaned over the brass rail and put her face close to the hinge of the door giving into the hall.
I wish I'd known that it was 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 on earth Mr. Sleuth's own business out could be on this bitter night.
Sleuth home earlier than she expected, she went to the corner where the chiffonnier stood, and, exerting the whole of her not very great physical strength, she tipped forward the heavy piece of furniture. As she did so, she heard a queer rumbling sound, something rolling about on the second shelf, something which had not been there before Mr. Sleuth's arrival.
She moistened her lips with her tongue. "Yes," she repeated dully, "my lodger." 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.
At first she heard nothing, but gradually there stole on her listening ears the sound of someone moving softly about in the room just overhead, that is, in Mr. Sleuth's bedroom. But, try as she might, it was impossible for her to guess what the lodger was doing. At last she heard him open the door leading out on the little landing. She could hear the stairs creaking. That meant, no doubt, that Mr.
"Oh, no, sir, I wouldn't think of charging you anything for that. We don't use our stove very much, you know, sir. I'm never in the kitchen a minute longer than I can help this cold weather." Mrs. Bunting was beginning to feel better. When she was actually in Mr. Sleuth's presence her morbid fears would be lulled, perhaps because his manner almost invariably was gentle and very quiet.
She looked as if stricken in a vital part; he saw from her face that there was something wrong very wrong indeed. The hours dragged on. All three felt moody and ill at ease. Daisy knew there was no chance that young Chandler would come in to-day. About six o'clock Mrs. Bunting went upstairs. She lit the gas in Mr. Sleuth's sitting-room and looked about her with a fearful glance.
I thought of coming in on the way back, and asking you for a cup o' tea, Mrs. Bunting." "Do," she said. "Do, Joe. You'll be welcome," but there was no welcome in her tired voice. She let him go alone to the door, and then she went down to her kitchen, and began cooking Mr. Sleuth's breakfast.
But the more he hurried along, the more the other hastened, and that without ever turning round to see whose steps he could hear 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 Mrs. Bunting's side in the pitch darkness.
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