"I thought they was shouting something in the street - I mean just before I was took bad."It was now Bunting's turn to stare at his wife quickly and rather furtively.He had felt sure that her sudden attack of queerness, of hysterics - call it what you might - had been due to the shouting outside.She was not the only woman in London who had got the Avenger murders on her nerves.His morning paper said quite a lot of women were afraid to go out alone.Was it possible that the curious way she had been taken just now had had nothing to do with the shouts and excitement outside?
"Don't you know what it was they were calling out?" he asked slowly.
Mrs.Bunting looked across at him.She would have given a very great deal to be able to lie, to pretend that she did not know what those dreadful cries had portended.But when it came to the point she found she could not do so.
"Yes," she said dully."I heard a word here and there.There's been another murder, hasn't there?""Two other murders," he said soberly.
"Two? That's worse news!" She turned so pale - a sallow greenish-white - that Bunting thought she was again going queer.
"Ellen?" he said warningly, "Ellen, now do have a care! I can't think what's come over, you about these murders.Turn your mind away from them, do! We needn't talk about them - not so much, that is ""But I wants to talk about them," cried Mrs.Bunting hysterically.
The husband and wife were standing, one each side of the table, the man with his back to the fire, the woman with her back to the door.
Bunting, staring across at his wife, felt sadly perplexed and disturbed.She really did seem ill; even her slight, spare figure looked shrunk.For the first time, so he told himself ruefully, Ellen was beginning to look her full age.Her slender hands - she had kept the pretty, soft white hands of the woman who has never done rough work - grasped the edge of the table with a convulsive movement.
Bunting didn't at all like the look of her."Oh, dear," he said to himself, "I do hope Ellen isn't going to be ill! That would be a to-do just now.""Tell me about it," she commanded, in a low voice." Can't you see I'm waiting to hear? Be quick now, Bunting!""There isn't very much to tell," he said reluctantly."There's precious little in this paper, anyway.But the cabman what brought Daisy told me - ""Well?"
"What I said just now.There's two of 'em this time, and they'd both been drinking heavily, poor creatures.""Was it where the others was done?" she asked looking at her husband fearfully.
"No," he said awkwardly."No, it wasn't, Ellen.It was a good bit farther West - in fact, not so very far from here.Near King's Cross - that's how the cabman knew about it, you see.They seems to have been done in a passage which isn't used no more." And then, as he thought his wife's eyes were beginning to look rather funny, he added hastily."There, that's enough for the present! We shall soon be hearing a lot more about it from Joe Chandler.He's pretty sure to come in some time to-day.""Then the five thousand constables weren't no use?" said Mrs.
Bunting slowly.
She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was standing more upright.
"No use at all," said Bunting briefly."He is artful and no mistake about it.But wait a minute - " he turned and took up the paper which he had laid aside, on a chair."Yes they says here that they has a clue.""A clue, Bunting?" Mrs.Bunting spoke in a soft, weak, die-away voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the edge of the table.
But her husband was not noticing her now.He was holding the paper close up to his eyes, and he read from it, in a tone of considerable satisfaction:
1
His wife, with a curious sighing moan, had slipped down on to the floor, taking with her the tablecloth as she went.She lay there in what appeared to be a dead faint.And Bunting, scared out of his wits, opened the door and screamed out, "Daisy! Daisy! Come up, child.Ellen's took bad again."And Daisy, hurrying in, showed an amount of sense and resource which even at this anxious moment roused her fond father's admiration.
