Not only Bunting, but Daisy also, thought Ellen far pleasanter in her manner than usual that evening. She listened to all they had to say about their interesting visit to the Black Museum, and did not snub either of them—no, not even when Bunting told of the dreadful, haunting, silly-looking death-masks taken from the hanged.
But a few minutes after that, when her husband suddenly asked her a question, Mrs. Bunting answered at random. It was clear she had not heard the last few words he had been saying.
“A penny for your thoughts!” he said jocularly. But she shook her head.
Daisy slipped out of the room, and, five minutes later, came back dressed up in a blue-and-white check silk gown.
“My!” said her father. “You do look fine, Daisy. I’ve never seen you wearing that before.”
“And a rare figure of fun she looks in it!” observed Mrs. Bunting sarcastically. And then, “I suppose this dressing up means that you’re expecting someone. I should have thought both of you must have seen enough of young Chandler for one day. I wonder when that young chap does his work—that I do! He never seems too busy to come and waste an hour or two here.”
But that was the only nasty thing Ellen said all that evening. And even Daisy noticed that her stepmother seemed dazed and unlike herself. She went about her cooking and the various little things she had to do even more silently than was her wont.
Yet under that still, almost sullen, manner, how fierce was the storm of dread, of sombre anguish, and, yes, of sick suspense, which shook her soul, and which so far affected her poor, ailing body that often she felt as if she could not force herself to accomplish her simple round of daily work.
After they had finished supper Bunting went out and bought a penny evening paper, but as he came in he announced, with a rather rueful smile, that he had read so much of that nasty little print this last week or two that his eyes hurt him.
“Let me read aloud a bit to you, father,” said Daisy eagerly, and he handed her the paper.
Scarcely had Daisy opened her lips when a loud ring and a knock echoed through the house.
XI
It was only Joe. Somehow, even Bunting called him “Joe” now, and no longer “Chandler,” as he had mostly used to do.
Mrs. Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way. She wasn’t going to have any strangers pushing in past her.
To her sharpened, suffering senses her house had become a citadel which must be defended; aye, even if the besiegers were a mighty horde with right on their side. And she was always expecting that first single spy who would herald the battalion against whom her only weapon would be her woman’s wit and cunning.
But when she saw who stood there smiling at her, the muscles of her face relaxed, and it lost the tense, anxious, almost agonised look it assumed the moment she turned her back on her husband and stepdaughter.
“Why, Joe,” she whispered, for she had left the door open behind her, and Daisy had already begun to read aloud, as her father had bidden her. “Come in, do! It’s fairly cold tonight.”
A glance at his face had shown her that there was no fresh news.
Joe Chandler walked in, past her, into the little hall. Cold? Well, he didn’t feel cold, for he had walked quickly to be the sooner where he was now.
Nine days had gone by since that last terrible occurrence, the double murder which had been committed early in the morning of the day Daisy had arrived in London. And though the thousands of men belonging to the Metropolitan Police—to say nothing of the smaller, more alert body of detectives attached to the Force—were keenly on the alert, not one but had begun to feel that there was nothing to be alert about. Familiarity, even with horror, breeds contempt.
But with the public it was far otherwise. Each day something happened to revive and keep alive the mingled horror and interest this strange, enigmatic series of crimes had evoked. Even the more sober organs of the Press went on attacking, with gathering severity and indignation, the Commissioner of Police; and at the huge demonstration held in Victoria Park two days before violent speeches had also been made against the Home Secretary.
But just now Joe Chandler wanted to forget all that. The little house in the Marylebone Road had become to him an enchanted isle of dreams, to which his thoughts were ever turning when he had a moment to spare from what had grown to be a wearisome, because an unsatisfactory, job. He secretly agreed with one of his pals who had exclaimed, and that within twenty-four hours of the last double crime, “Why, ’twould be easier to find a needle in a rick o’ hay than this—bloke!”
And if that had been true then, how much truer it was now—after nine long, empty days had gone by?
Quickly he divested himself of his greatcoat, muffler, and low hat. Then he put his finger on his lip, and motioned smilingly to Mrs. Bunting to wait a moment. From where he stood in the hall the father and daughter made a pleasant little picture of contented domesticity. Joe Chandler’s honest heart swelled at the sight.
Daisy, wearing the blue-and-white check silk dress about which her stepmother and she had had words, sat on a low stool on the left side of the fire, while Bunting, leaning back in his own comfortable armchair, was listening, his hand to his ear, in an attitude—as it was the first time she had caught him doing it, the fact brought a pang to Mrs. Bunting—which showed that age was beginning to creep over the listener.
One of Daisy’s duties as companion to her great-aunt
