“Hurry up, Mrs. Bunting,” said the turnstile-keeper; “you and your friends will have the place all to yourselves for a bit.” From an official he had become a man, and it was the man in Mr. Hopkins that gallantly addressed pretty Daisy Bunting: “It seems strange that a young lady like you should want to go in and see all those ’orrible frights,” he said jestingly.
“Mrs. Bunting, may I trouble you to come over here for a moment?”
The words were hissed rather than spoken by Mr. Sleuth’s lips.
His landlady took a doubtful step towards him.
“A last word with you, Mrs. Bunting.” The lodger’s face was still distorted with fear and passion. “Do not think to escape the consequences of your hideous treachery. I trusted you, Mrs. Bunting, and you betrayed me! But I am protected by a higher power, for I still have much to do.” Then, his voice sinking to a whisper, he hissed out “Your end will be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword. Your feet shall go down to death, and your steps take hold on hell.”
Even while Mr. Sleuth was muttering these strange, dreadful words, he was looking round, glancing this way and that, seeking a way of escape.
At last his eyes became fixed on a small placard placed above a curtain. “Emergency Exit” was written there. Mrs. Bunting thought he was going to make a dash for the place; but Mr. Sleuth did something very different. Leaving his landlady’s side, he walked over to the turnstile, he fumbled in his pocket for a moment, and then touched the man on the arm. “I feel ill,” he said, speaking very rapidly; “very ill indeed! It is the atmosphere of this place. I want you to let me out by the quickest way. It would be a pity for me to faint here—especially with ladies about.”
His left hand shot out and placed what he had been fumbling for in his pocket on the other’s bare palm. “I see there’s an emergency exit over there. Would it be possible for me to get out that way?”
“Well, yes, sir; I think so.”
The man hesitated; he felt a slight, a very sight, feeling of misgiving. He looked at Daisy, flushed and smiling, happy and unconcerned, and then at Mrs. Bunting. She was very pale; but surely her lodger’s sudden seizure was enough to make her feel worried. Hopkins felt the half-sovereign pleasantly tickling his palm. The Paris Prefect of Police had given him only half-a-crown—mean, shabby foreigner!
“Yes, sir; I can let you out that way,” he said at last, “and p’raps when you’re standing out in the air, on the iron balcony, you’ll feel better. But then, you know, sir, you’ll have to come round to the front if you wants to come in again, for those emergency doors only open outward.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Sleuth hurriedly. “I quite understand! If I feel better I’ll come in by the front way, and pay another shilling—that’s only fair.”
“You needn’t do that if you’ll just explain what happened here.”
The man went and pulled the curtain aside, and put his shoulder against the door. It burst open, and the light, for a moment, blinded Mr. Sleuth.
He passed his hand over his eyes. “Thank you,” he muttered, “thank you. I shall get all right out there.”
An iron stairway led down into a small stable yard, of which the door opened into a side street.
Mr. Sleuth looked round once more; he really did feel very ill—ill and dazed. How pleasant it would be to take a flying leap over the balcony railing and find rest, eternal rest, below.
But no—he thrust the thought, the temptation, from him. Again a convulsive look of rage came over his face. He had remembered his landlady. How could the woman whom he had treated so generously have betrayed him to his arch-enemy?—to the official, that is, who had entered into a conspiracy years ago to have him confined—him, an absolutely sane man with a great avenging work to do in the world—in a lunatic asylum.
He stepped out into the open air, and the curtain, falling-to behind him, blotted out the tall, thin figure from the little group of people who had watched him disappear.
Even Daisy felt a little scared. “He did look bad, didn’t he, now?” she turned appealingly to Mr. Hopkins.
“Yes, that he did, poor gentleman—your lodger, too?” he looked sympathetically at Mrs. Bunting.
She moistened her lips with her tongue. “Yes,” she repeated dully, “my lodger.”
XXVII
In vain Mr. Hopkins invited Mrs. Bunting and her pretty stepdaughter to step through into the Chamber of Horrors. “I think we ought to go straight home,” said Mr. Sleuth’s landlady decidedly. And Daisy meekly assented. Somehow the girl felt confused, a little scared by the lodger’s sudden disappearance. Perhaps this unwonted feeling of hers was induced by the look of stunned surprise and, yes, pain, on her stepmother’s face.
Slowly they made their way out of the building, and when they got home it was Daisy who described the strange way Mr. Sleuth had been taken.
“I don’t suppose he’ll be long before he comes home,” said Bunting heavily, and he cast an anxious, furtive look at his wife. She looked as if stricken in a vital part; he saw from her face that there was something wrong—very wrong indeed.
The hours dragged on. All three felt moody and ill at ease. Daisy knew there was no chance that young Chandler would come in today.
About six o’clock Mrs. Bunting went upstairs. She lit the gas in Mr. Sleuth’s sitting-room and looked about her with a fearful glance. Somehow everything seemed to speak to her of the lodger, there lay her Bible and his Concordance, side by side on the table, exactly as he had left them,
