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Page 27
CHAPTER VII
Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate.
It brought Daisy--pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy--a
sight to gladden any father's heart.
"Old Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad," she
cried out joyously.
There was a bit of a wrangle over the fare. King's Cross, as all
the world knows, is nothing like two miles from the Marylebone Road,
but the man clamoured for one and sixpence, and hinted darkly that
he had done the young lady a favour in bringing her at all.
While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it,
walked up the flagged path to the door where her stepmother was
awaiting her.
As they were exchanging a rather frigid kiss, indeed, 'twas a mere
peck on Mrs. Bunting's part, there fell, with startling suddenness,
loud cries on the still, cold air. Long-drawn and wailing, they
sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar
of traffic in the Edgware Road.
"What's that?" exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. "Why, whatever's
that?"
The cabman lowered his voice. "Them's 'a-crying out that 'orrible
affair at King's Cross. He's done for two of 'em this time! That's
what I meant when I said I might 'a got a better fare. I wouldn't
say nothink before little missy there, but folk 'ave been coming
from all over London the last five or six hours; plenty of toffs,
too--but there, there's nothing to see now!"
"What? Another woman murdered last night?"
Bunting felt tremendously thrilled. What had the five thousand
constables been about to let such a dreadful thing happen?
The cabman stared at him, surprised. "Two of 'em, I tell yer--
within a few yards of one another. He 'ave--got a nerve--But,
of course, they was drunk. He are got a down on the drink!"
"Have they caught him?" asked Bunting perfunctorily.
"Lord, no! They'll never catch 'im! It must 'ave happened hours
and hours ago--they was both stone cold. One each end of a little
passage what ain't used no more. That's why they didn't find 'em
before."
The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer--two news vendors
trying to outshout each other.
"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross!" they yelled exultingly.
"The Avenger again!"
And Bunting, with his daughter's large straw hold-all in his hand,
ran forward into the roadway and recklessly gave a boy a penny for
a halfpenny paper.
He felt very much moved and excited. Somehow his acquaintance with
young Joe Chandler made these murders seem a personal affair. He
hoped that Chandler would come in soon and tell them all about it,
as he had done yesterday morning when he, Bunting, had unluckily
been out.
As he walked back into the little hall, he heard Daisy's voice--
high, voluble, excited--giving her stepmother a long account of
the scarlet fever case, and how at first Old Aunt's neighbours had
thought it was not scarlet fever at all, but just nettlerash.
But as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room, there
came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter's voice, and he heard
her cry, "Why, Ellen, whatever is the matter? You do look bad!"
and his wife's muffled answer, "Open the window--do."
"'Orrible discovery near King's Cross--a clue at last!" yelled
the newspaper-boys triumphantly.
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