The Lodger | Page 3

be saved from actually starving
to death.
Suddenly, across the stillness of the dark November evening there came
the muffled sounds of hurrying feet and of loud, shrill shouting
outside--boys crying the late afternoon editions of the evening papers.
Bunting turned uneasily in his chair. The giving up of a daily paper had
been, after his tobacco, his bitterest deprivation. And the paper was an
older habit than the tobacco, for servants are great readers of
newspapers.
As the shouts came through the closed windows and the thick damask
curtains, Bunting felt a sudden sense of mind hunger fall upon him.
It was a shame--a damned shame--that he shouldn't know what was
happening in the world outside! Only criminals are kept from hearing
news of what is going on beyond their prison walls. And those shouts,
those hoarse, sharp cries must portend that something really exciting
had happened, something warranted to make a man forget for the
moment his own intimate, gnawing troubles.
He got up, and going towards the nearest window strained his ears to
listen. There fell on them, emerging now and again from the confused
babel of hoarse shouts, the one clear word "Murder!"
Slowly Bunting's brain pieced the loud, indistinct cries into some sort
of connected order. Yes, that was it--"Horrible Murder! Murder at St.
Pancras!" Bunting remembered vaguely another murder which had
been committed near St. Pancras--that of an old lady by her
servant-maid. It had happened a great many years ago, but was still
vividly remembered, as of special and natural interest, among the class
to which he had belonged.
The newsboys--for there were more than one of them, a rather unusual
thing in the Marylebone Road--were coming nearer and nearer; now
they had adopted another cry, but he could not quite catch what they

were crying. They were still shouting hoarsely, excitedly, but he could
only hear a word or two now and then. Suddenly "The Avenger! The
Avenger at his work again!" broke on his ear.
During the last fortnight four very curious and brutal murders had been
committed in London and within a comparatively small area.
The first had aroused no special interest--even the second had only
been awarded, in the paper Bunting was still then taking in, quite a
small paragraph.
Then had come the third--and with that a wave of keen excitement, for
pinned to the dress of the victim--a drunken woman--had been found a
three-cornered piece of paper, on which was written, in red ink, and in
printed characters, the words,
"THE AVENGER"
It was then realised, not only by those whose business it is to
investigate such terrible happenings, but also by the vast world of men
and women who take an intelligent interest in such sinister mysteries,
that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes; and before that
extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into the public mind there
took place yet another murder, and again the murderer had been to
special pains to make it clear that some obscure and terrible lust for
vengeance possessed him.
Now everyone was talking of The Avenger and his crimes! Even the
man who left their ha'porth of milk at the door each morning had
spoken to Bunting about them that very day.
******
Bunting came back to the fire and looked down at his wife with mild
excitement. Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of weary,
mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him. He felt he
could have shaken her!

Ellen had hardly taken the trouble to listen when he, Bunting, had come
back to bed that morning, and told her what the milkman had said. In
fact, she had been quite nasty about it, intimating that she didn't like
hearing about such horrid things.
It was a curious fact that though Mrs. Bunting enjoyed tales of pathos
and sentiment, and would listen with frigid amusement to the details of
a breach of promise action, she shrank from stories of immorality or of
physical violence. In the old, happy days, when they could afford to
buy a paper, aye, and more than one paper daily, Bunting had often had
to choke down his interest in some exciting "case" or "mystery" which
was affording him pleasant mental relaxation, because any allusion to it
sharply angered Ellen.
But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she felt.
Walking away from the window he took a slow, uncertain step towards
the door; when there he turned half round, and there came over his
close-shaven, round face the rather sly, pleading look with which a
child about to do something naughty glances at its parent.
But Mrs. Bunting remained quite still; her thin, narrow shoulders just
showed above the back of