The Lodger (35 page)

  Just now he was smiling down into the face of a
young lady. "Monsieur Barberoux is quite right," he was saying in a
loud, cheerful voice, "our English law is too kind to the criminal,
especially to the murderer. If we conducted our trials in the
French fashion, the place we have just left would be very much
fuller than it is to-day. A man of whose guilt we are absolutely
assured is oftener than not acquitted, and then the public taunt us
with 'another undiscovered crime!"'

  "D'you mean, Sir John, that murderers sometimes
escape scot-free? Take the man who has been committing all these
awful murders this last month? I suppose there's no doubt he'll be
hanged - if he's ever caught, that is!"

  Her girlish voice rang out, and Mrs. Bunting could
hear every word that was said.

  The whole party gathered round, listening eagerly.
"Well, no." He spoke very deliberately. "I doubt if that particular
murderer ever will be hanged."

  "You mean that you'll never catch him?" the girl
spoke with a touch of airy impertinence in her clear voice.

  "I think we shall end by catching him - because" -
he waited a moment, then added in a lower voice - "now don't give
me away to a newspaper fellow, Miss Rose - because now I think we
do know who the murderer in question is - "

  Several of those standing near by uttered
expressions of surprise and incredulity.

  "Then why don't you catch him?" cried the girl
indignantly.

  "I didn't say we knew where he was; I only said we
knew who he was, or, rather, perhaps I ought to say that I
personally have a very strong suspicion of his identity."

  Sir John's French colleague looked up quickly. "De
Leipsic and Liverpool man?" he said interrogatively.

  The other nodded. "Yes, I suppose you've had the
case turned up?"

  Then, speaking very quickly, as if he wished to
dismiss the subject from his own mind, and from that of his
auditors, he went on:

  "Four murders of the kind were committed eight years
ago - two in Leipsic, the others, just afterwards, in Liverpool, -
and there were certain peculiarities connected with the crimes
which made it clear they were committed by the same hand. The
perpetrator was caught, fortunately for us, red-handed, just as he
was leaving the house of his last victim, for in Liverpool the
murder was committed in a house. I myself saw the unhappy man - I
say unhappy, for there is no doubt at all that he was mad " - he
hesitated, and added in a lower tone-" suffering from an acute form
of religious mania. I myself saw him, as I say, at some length. But
now comes the really interesting point. I have just been informed
that a month ago this criminal lunatic, as we must of course regard
him, made his escape from the asylum where he was confined. He
arranged the whole thing with extraordinary cunning and
intelligence, and we should probably have caught him long ago, were
it not that he managed, when on his way out of the place, to annex
a considerable sum of money in gold, with which the wages of the
asylum staff were about to be paid. It is owing to that fact that
his escape was. very wrongly, concealed - "

  He stopped abruptly, as if sorry he had said so
much, and a moment later the party were walking in Indian file
through the turnstile, Sir John Burney leading the way.

  Mrs. Bunting looked straight before her. She felt -
so she expressed it to her husband later - as if she had been
turned to stone.

  Even had she wished to do so, she had neither the
time nor the power to warn her lodger of his danger, for Daisy and
her companion were now coming down the room, bearing straight for
the Commissioner of Police. In another moment Mrs. Bunting's lodger
and Sir John Burney were face to face.

  Mr. Sleuth swerved to one side; there came a
terrible change over his pale, narrow face; it became discomposed,
livid with rage and terror.

  But, to Mrs. Bunting's relief - yes, to her
inexpressible relief - Sir John Burney and his friends swept on.
They passed Mr. Sleuth and the girl by his side, unaware, or so it
seemed to her, that there was anyone else in the room hut
themselves.

  "Hurry up, Mrs. Bunting," said the turnstile-keeper;
"you and your friends will have the place all to yourselves for a
bit." From an official he had become a man, and it was the man in
Mr. Hopkins that gallantly addressed pretty Daisy Bunting: "It
seems strange that a young lady like you should want to go in and
see all those 'orrible frights," he said jestingly.

  "Mrs. Bunting, may I trouble you to come over here
for a moment?"

  The words were hissed rather than spoken by Mr.
Sleuth's lips.

  His landlady took a doubtful step towards him.

  "A last word with you, Mrs. Bunting." The lodger's
face was still distorted with fear and passion. "Do not think to
escape the consequences of your hideous treachery. I trusted you,
Mrs. Bunting, and you betrayed me! Put I am protected by a higher
power, for I still have much to do." Then, his voice sinking to a
whisper, he hissed out "Your end will be bitter as wormwood and
sharp as a two-edged sword. Your feet shall go down to death, and
your steps take hold on hell."

  Even while Mr. Sleuth was muttering these strange,
dreadful words, he was looking round, glancing this way and that,
seeking a way of escape.

  At last his eyes became fixed on a small placard
placed above a curtain. "Emergency Exit" was written there. Mrs.
Bunting thought he was going to make a dash for the place; but Mr.
Sleuth did something very different. Leaving his landlady's side,
he walked over to the turnstile, he fumbled in his pocket for a
moment, and then touched the man on the arm. "I feel ill," he said,
speaking very rapidly; "very ill indeed! It is the atmosphere of
this place. I want you to let me out by the quickest way. It would
be a pity for me to faint here - especially with ladies about."

  His left hand shot out and placed what he had been
fumbling for in his pocket on the other's bare palm. "I see there's
an emergency exit over there. Would it be possible for me to get
out that way?"

  "Well, yes, sir; I think so."

  The man hesitated; he felt a slight, a very sight,
feeling of misgiving. He looked at Daisy, flushed and smiling,
happy and unconcerned, and then at Mrs. Bunting. She was very pale;
but surely her lodger's sudden seizure was enough to make her feel
worried. Hopkins felt the half -sovereign pleasantly tickling his
palm. The Paris Prefect of Police had given him only half-a-crown -
mean, shabby foreigner!

  "Yes, sir; I can let you out that way," he said at
last, "and p'raps when you're standing out in the air, on the iron
balcony, you'll feel better. But then, you know, sir, you'll have
to come round to the front if you wants to come in again, for those
emergency doors only open outward."

  "Yes, yes," said Mr. Sleuth hurriedly. "I quite
understand! If I feel better I'll come in by the front way, and pay
another shilling - that's only fair."

  "You needn't do that if you'll just explain what
happened here."

  The man went and pulled the curtain aside, and put
his shoulder against the door. It burst open, and the light, for a
moment, blinded Mr. Sleuth.

  He passed his hand over his eyes. "Thank you," he
muttered, "thank you. I shall get all right out there."

  An iron stairway led down into a small stable yard,
of which the door opened into a side street.

  Mr. Sleuth looked round once more; he really did
feel very ill - ill and dazed. How pleasant it would be to take a
flying leap over the balcony railing and find rest, eternal rest,
below.

  But no - he thrust the thought the temptation, from
him. Again a convulsive look of rage came over his face. He had
remembered his landlady. How could the woman whom he had treated so
generously have betrayed him to his arch-enemy? - to the official,
that is, who had entered into a conspiracy years ago to have him
confined - him, an absolutely sane man with a great avenging work
to do in the world - in a lunatic asylum.

  He stepped out into the open air, and the curtain,
falling-to behind him, blotted out the tall, thin figure from the
little group of people who had watched him disappear.

  Even Daisy felt a little scared. "He did look bad,
didn't he, now?" she turned appealingly to Mr. Hopkins.

  "Yes, that he did, poor gentleman - your lodger,
too?" he looked sympathetically at Mrs. Bunting.

  She moistened her lips with her tongue. "Yes," she
repeated dully, "my lodger."

  
I
n 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 step-mother's face.

  Slowly they made their way out of the building, and
when they got home it was Daisy who described the strange way Mr.
Sleuth had been taken.

  "I don't suppose he'll be long before he comes
"home," said Bunting heavily, and he cast an anxious, furtive look
at his wife. 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. Somehow everything seemed to speak to her of the
lodger, there lay her Bible and his Concordance, side by side on
the table, exactly as he had left chew, when he had come downstairs
and suggested that ill-starred expedition to his landlord's
daughter. She took few steps forward, listening the while anxiously
for the familiar sound of the click in the door which would tell
her that the lodger had come back, and then she went over to the
window and looked out.

  What a cold night for a man to be wandering about,
homeless, friendless, and, as she suspected with a pang, with but
very little money on him!

  Turning abruptly, she went into the lodger's bedroom
and opened the drawer of the looking-glass.

  Yes, there lay the much-diminished heap of
sovereigns. If only he had taken his money out with him! She
wondered painfully whether he had enough on his person to secure a
good night's lodging, and then suddenly she remembered that which
brought relief to her mind. 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. Sleuth, she had sheltered him
- kept his awful secret as she could not have kept it had she
known, or even dimly suspected, the horrible fact with which Sir
John Burney's words had made her acquainted; namely, that Mr.
Sleuth was victim of no temporary aberration, but that he was, and
had been for years, a madman, a homicidal maniac.

  In her ears there still rang the Frenchman's half
careless yet confident question, "De Leipsic and Liverpool
man?"

  Following a sudden impulse, she went back into the
sitting-room, and taking a black-headed pin out of her bodice stuck
it amid the leaves of the Bible. Then she opened the Book, and
looked at the page the pin had marked: -

  "My tabernacle is spoiled and all my cords are
broken. .. There is none to stretch forth my tent any more and to
set up my curtains."

  At last leaving the Bible open, Mrs. Bunting went
downstairs, and as she opened the door of her sitting-room Daisy
came towards her stepmother.