ning feeling happier than she had

think why she felt so different

ould be "a permanency." In any case, it wouldn't be her fault if he wasn't. As to his-his queerness, well, there's always something funny in everybody. But after she had got up, and as the morning wore itself away, Mrs. Bunting grew a little anxious, for there came

at the round table which occupied the middle of the sitti

ed up, and she was troubled to s

" he asked, "to have

tin

Concordance could be, but she was quite s

m to contain certain little necessaries of civilised life-such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush, a set of razors, a toothbrus

Mrs. Bunting hurried out to purchase th

er purse again-not only someone else's money, but mon

rather smelly little place, and she hurried as much as she could, the more so that the foreigner who served her insisted on telling her some of th

didn't want to think of anything painfu

showed the lodger her

everything, and thanke

d doing his bedroom h

e pu

ou must bear with me, Mrs. Bunting, if I seem a little, just a little, unlike the lodgers you have been accustomed to. And I must ask you to understand that

m manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's landlady was a true woman -she

she had been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young friend, Joe Chandler, the detective, had come in, and

money again, mark you, but at the news Bunting had evidently been telling him-that

oom till he's gone out!" she exclaimed.

o think of him for the present. In a few minutes she would be going down to make her own and Bu

e pleased with anything and everything. Nay, more. When Bunting began to ask Joe Chandler about the last

tery which was now beginning to be the one topic of talk all over London, West and East, North and South. Bunting had read

ctantly at his visitor. To Bunting the fact that Chandler was attached to the detective section of the Metropolitan Police invested the

look of unease, of resentment came over his fair, stolid face. "'

oung man's keenness about his work pleased her. And in his slow, sure way Joe Chandler

nting, the Yard's nettled-that's what it is, and we're all on our mettle-that we are. I was rig

"You don't mean there was a poli

been recorded i

told. He did hear a yell, so he says, but he took no notice-there are a good few yells in that part

per on which the monster writes hi

nered pieces of grey paper, pinned to the victims' skirts, on which was ro

eagerness. He put his elbows on the table, a

ve," said

eh!" Bunting laughed; the noti

t isn't a thing to make a jok

e over this job. And as for that grey bit of paper, Mr. Bunting-or, rather, those grey bits of paper"-he

nds me that I oughtn't to be wast

a bit of dinner?" said

t. Our job's a queer kind of job, as you know. A lot's left to our discretion,

ith elaborate carelessness he inquired, "Any ch

saw her so seldom. "No," he said, "I'm afraid not Joe. Old Aunt, as we calls the old lady, keeps Daisy pret

Well, s

t their friend out, B

like our Dai

as being managed by that old aunt of hers-an idle, good-for-nothing way, very different from the fashion in which she herself had been trai

young chap to be thinking of gi

young days chaps always had time for that. 'Twas just a notion tha

**

e parcels contained clothes. But it was quite clear to Mrs. Bunting's eyes that they were not new clothes. In fact, they had evidently been bought in some goo

igh and low for it, she could not find the place where Mr. Sleuth kept it. And at last, had it not been that she was a very clear

xactly how it had looked when Mr. Sleuth had first stood,

room, and then, forgetting what he had done, how he had asked her eagerly, in a

leather bag which had formed Mr. Sleuth's only luggage the afternoon of his arrival was almost certainly locked up in the lower part of the drawing-room chiffonnier. Mr. Sleuth evidently always carried the key