The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4324]
As Mrs. Bunting came in, he looked up, and she was troubled to see how tired and worn he seemed.
"You did not happen," he asked, "to have a Concordance, Mrs. Bunting?"
She shook her head; she had no idea what a Concordance could be, but she was quite sure that she had nothing of the sort about.
And then her new lodger proceeded to tell her what it was he desired her to buy for him. She had supposed the bag he had brought with him to contain certain little necessaries of civilised life--such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush, a set of razors, a toothbrush, to say nothing of a couple of nightshirts--but no, that was evidently not so, for Mr. Sleuth required all these things to be bought now.
After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs. Bunting hurried out to purchase the things of which he was in urgent need.
How pleasant it was to feel that there was money in her purse again--not only someone else's money, but money she was now in the very act of earning so agreeably.
Mrs. Bunting first made her way to a little barber's shop close by. It was there she purchased the brush and comb and the razors. It was a funny, 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 the strange, peculiar details of this Avenger murder which had taken place forty-eight hours before, and in which Bunting took such a morbid interest.
The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting. She didn't want to think of anything painful or disagreeable on such a day as this.
Then she came back and showed the lodger her various purchases. Mr. Sleuth was pleased with everything, and thanked her most courteously. But when she suggested doing his bedroom he frowned, and looked quite put out.
"Please wait till this evening," he said hastily. "It is my custom to stay at home all day. I only care to walk about the streets when the lights are lit. You 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 I must not be disturbed when thinking out my problems--" He broke off short, sighed, then added solemnly, "for mine are the great problems of life and death."
And Mrs. Bunting willingly fell in with his wishes. In spite of her prim manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's landlady was a true woman --she had, that is, an infinite patience with masculine vagaries and oddities.
When she was downstairs again, Mr. Sleuth's landlady met with a surprise; but it was quite a pleasant surprise. While she had been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young friend, Joe Chandler, the detective, had come in, and as she walked into the sitting-room she saw that her husband was pushing half a sovereign across the table towards Joe.
Joe Chandler's fair, good-natured face was full of satisfaction: not at seeing his money again, mark you, but at the news Bunting had evidently been telling him--that news of the sudden wonderful change in their fortunes, the coming of an ideal lodger.
"Mr. Sleuth don't want me to do his bedroom till he's gone out!" she exclaimed. And then she sat down for a bit of a rest.
It was a comfort to know that the lodger was eating his good breakfast, and there was no need to think of him for the present. In a few minutes she would be going down to make her own and Bunting's dinner, and she told Joe Chandler that he might as well stop and have a bite with them.
Her heart warmed to the young man, for Mrs. Bunting was in a mood which seldom surprised her--a mood to be pleased with anything and everything. Nay, more. When Bunting began to ask Joe Chandler about the last of those awful Avenger murders, she even listened with a certain languid interest to all he had to say.
In the morning paper which Bunting had begun taking again that very day three columns were devoted to the extraordinary mystery which was now beginning to