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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.
I have never seen those famous waxworks, though I've heard of the place all my life." As Bunting forced himself to look fixedly at his lodger, a sudden doubt bringing with it a sense of immeasurable relief, came to Mr. Sleuth's landlord.
"I suppose that you don't know that you've left the light burning in the hall, wasting our good money?" she observed tartly. He got up painfully and opened the door into the passage. It was as she had said; the gas was flaring away, wasting their good money or, rather, Mr. Sleuth's good money. Since he had come to be their lodger they had not had to touch their rent money.
She knocked at the door, and then she took up her tray. "Come in, Mrs. Bunting." Mr. Sleuth's voice sounded feebler, more toneless than usual. She turned the handle of the door and walked in. The lodger was not sitting in his usual place; he had taken the little round table on which his candle generally rested when he read in bed, out of his bedroom, and placed it over by the drawing-room window.
Bunting's heart was beating quickly quickly. She felt horribly troubled, unnaturally so. Why couldn't Mr. Sleuth's experiment wait till the morning? She stared at him dubiously, but there was that in his face that made her at once afraid and pitiful. It was a wild, eager, imploring look. "Oh, certainly, sir; but you will find it very cold down here."
Sleuth's voice answered her from the bedroom. "I'm not well," he called out querulously; "I think I've caught a chill. I should be obliged if you would kindly bring me up a cup of tea, and put it outside my door, Mrs. Bunting." "Very well, sir." Mrs. Bunting turned and went downstairs.
The lodger had given something to that Hopkins fellow either a sovereign or half a sovereign, she wasn't sure which. The memory of Mr. Sleuth's cruel words to her, of his threat, did not disturb her overmuch. It had been a mistake all a mistake. Far from betraying Mr.
The noise the newspaper-sellers made outside had evidently wakened Mr. Sleuth, for his landlady hadn't been in the kitchen ten minutes before his bell rang. 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.
What exactly was at the back of the sleuth's mind, prompting these manoeuvres, he did not know. But that there was something, and that that something was directed in a hostile manner against Mike, probably in connection with last night's wild happenings, he was certain. Psmith had noticed, on leaving his bed at the sound of the alarm bell, that he and Jellicoe were alone in the room.
Bunting felt a little startled. It was the first time anyone had quoted the Bible to her for many a long day. But it seemed to set the seal, as it were, on Mr. Sleuth's respectability. What a comfort it was, too, that she had to deal with only one lodger, and that a gentleman, instead of with a married couple! Very peculiar married couples had drifted in and out of Mr. and Mrs.
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