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Page 2
But she had said nothing when there had occurred the gradual
disappearance of various little possessions she knew that Bunting
valued, notably of the old-fashioned gold watch-chain which had been
given to him after the death of his first master, a master he had
nursed faithfully and kindly through a long and terrible illness.
There had also vanished a twisted gold tie-pin, and a large mourning
ring, both gifts of former employers.
When people are living near that deep pit which divides the secure
from the insecure--when they see themselves creeping closer and
closer to its dread edge--they are apt, however loquacious by
nature, to fall into long silences. Bunting had always been a
talker, but now he talked no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but
then she had always been a silent woman, and that was perhaps one
reason why Bunting had felt drawn to her from the very first moment
he had seen her.
It had fallen out in this way. A lady had just engaged him as
butler, and he had been shown, by the man whose place he was to
take, into the dining-room. There, to use his own expression, he
had discovered Ellen Green, carefully pouring out the glass of port
wine which her then mistress always drank at 11.30 every morning.
And as he, the new butler, had seen her engaged in this task, as he
had watched her carefully stopper the decanter and put it back into
the old wine-cooler, he had said to himself, "That is the woman for
me!"
But now her stillness, her--her dumbness, had got on the
unfortunate man's nerves. He no longer felt like going into the
various little shops, close by, patronised by him in more prosperous
days, and Mrs. Bunting also went afield to make the slender purchases
which still had to be made every day or two, if they were to be
saved from actually starving to death.
Suddenly, across the stillness of the dark November evening there
came the muffled sounds of hurrying feet and of loud, shrill shouting
outside--boys crying the late afternoon editions of the evening
papers.
Bunting turned uneasily in his chair. The giving up of a daily
paper had been, after his tobacco, his bitterest deprivation. And
the paper was an older habit than the tobacco, for servants are
great readers of newspapers.
As the shouts came through the closed windows and the thick damask
curtains, Bunting felt a sudden sense of mind hunger fall upon him.
It was a shame--a damned shame--that he shouldn't know what was
happening in the world outside! Only criminals are kept from hearing
news of what is going on beyond their prison walls. And those
shouts, those hoarse, sharp cries must portend that something really
exciting had happened, something warranted to make a man forget for
the moment his own intimate, gnawing troubles.
He got up, and going towards the nearest window strained his ears to
listen. There fell on them, emerging now and again from the confused
babel of hoarse shouts, the one clear word "Murder!"
Slowly Bunting's brain pieced the loud, indistinct cries into some
sort of connected order. Yes, that was it--"Horrible Murder!
Murder at St. Pancras!" Bunting remembered vaguely another murder
which had been committed near St. Pancras--that of an old lady by
her servant-maid. It had happened a great many years ago, but was
still vividly remembered, as of special and natural interest, among
the class to which he had belonged.
The newsboys--for there were more than one of them, a rather unusual
thing in the Marylebone Road--were coming nearer and nearer; now
they had adopted another cry, but he could not quite catch what they
were crying. They were still shouting hoarsely, excitedly, but he
could only hear a word or two now and then. Suddenly "The Avenger!
The Avenger at his work again!" broke on his ear.
During the last fortnight four very curious and brutal murders had
been committed in London and within a comparatively small area.
The first had aroused no special interest--even the second had only
been awarded, in the paper Bunting was still then taking in, quite a
small paragraph.
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