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Page 3
Then had come the third--and with that a wave of keen excitement,
for pinned to the dress of the victim--a drunken woman--had been
found a three-cornered piece of paper, on which was written, in red
ink, and in printed characters, the words,
"THE AVENGER"
It was then realised, not only by those whose business it is to
investigate such terrible happenings, but also by the vast world
of men and women who take an intelligent interest in such sinister
mysteries, that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes;
and before that extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into
the public mind there took place yet another murder, and again the
murderer had been to special pains to make it clear that some
obscure and terrible lust for vengeance possessed him.
Now everyone was talking of The Avenger and his crimes! Even the
man who left their ha'porth of milk at the door each morning had
spoken to Bunting about them that very day.
******
Bunting came back to the fire and looked down at his wife with mild
excitement. Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of
weary, mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him.
He felt he could have shaken her!
Ellen had hardly taken the trouble to listen when he, Bunting, had
come back to bed that morning, and told her what the milkman had
said. In fact, she had been quite nasty about it, intimating that
she didn't like hearing about such horrid things.
It was a curious fact that though Mrs. Bunting enjoyed tales of
pathos and sentiment, and would listen with frigid amusement to
the details of a breach of promise action, she shrank from stories
of immorality or of physical violence. In the old, happy days,
when they could afford to buy a paper, aye, and more than one paper
daily, Bunting had often had to choke down his interest in some
exciting "case" or "mystery" which was affording him pleasant mental
relaxation, because any allusion to it sharply angered Ellen.
But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she
felt.
Walking away from the window he took a slow, uncertain step towards
the door; when there he turned half round, and there came over his
close-shaven, round face the rather sly, pleading look with which
a child about to do something naughty glances at its parent.
But Mrs. Bunting remained quite still; her thin, narrow shoulders
just showed above the back of the chair on which she was sitting,
bolt upright, staring before her as if into vacancy.
Bunting turned round, opened the door, and quickly he went out into
the dark hall--they had given up lighting the gas there some time
ago--and opened the front door.
Walking down the small flagged path outside, he flung open the iron
gate which gave on to the damp pavement. But there he hesitated.
The coppers in his pocket seemed to have shrunk in number, and he
remembered ruefully how far Ellen could make even four pennies go.
Then a boy ran up to him with a sheaf of evening papers, and Bunting,
being sorely tempted--fell. "Give me a Sun," he said roughly, "Sun
or Echo!"
But the boy, scarcely stopping to take breath, shook his head. "Only
penny papers left," he gasped. "What'll yer 'ave, sir?"
With an eagerness which was mingled with shame, Bunting drew a penny
out of his pocket and took a paper--it was the Evening Standard--
from the boy's hand.
Then, very slowly, he shut the gate and walked back through the raw,
cold air, up the flagged path, shivering yet full of eager, joyful
anticipation.
Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly he would pass
a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent,
miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments
of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife,
with careworn, troubled Ellen.
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