“Yes, father,” came her eager, happy voice.

“Better come up out of that cold kitchen.”

He turned and came back to his wife.  “Ellen, is the lodger in?  I haven’t heard him moving about.  Now mind what I says, please!  I don’t want Daisy to be mixed up with him.”

“Mr. Sleuth don’t seem very well to-day,” answered Mrs. Bunting quietly. “’Tain’t likely I should let Daisy have anything to do with him.  Why, she’s never even seen him.  ’Tain’t likely I should allow her to begin waiting on him now.”

But though she was surprised and a little irritated by the tone in which Bunting had spoken, no glimmer of the truth illumined her mind.  So accustomed had she become to bearing alone the burden of her awful secret, that it would have required far more than a cross word or two, far more than the fact that Bunting looked ill and tired, for her to have come to suspect that her secret was now shared by another, and that other her husband.

Again and again the poor soul had agonised and trembled at the thought of her house being invaded by the police, but that was only because she had always credited the police with supernatural powers of detection.  That they should come to know the awful fact she kept hidden in her breast would have seemed to her, on the whole, a natural thing, but that Bunting should even dimly suspect it appeared beyond the range of possibility.

And yet even Daisy noticed a change in her father.  He sat cowering over the fire—­saying nothing, doing nothing.

“Why, father, ain’t you well?” the girl asked more than once.

And, looking up, he would answer, “Yes, I’m well enough, my girl, but I feels cold.  It’s awful cold.  I never did feel anything like the cold we’ve got just now.”

* * *

At eight the now familiar shouts and cries began again outside.

“The Avenger again!” “Another horrible crime!” “Extra speshul edition!”—­such were the shouts, the exultant yells, hurled through the clear, cold air.  They fell, like bombs into the quiet room.

Both Bunting and his wife remained silent, but Daisy’s cheeks grew pink with excitement, and her eye sparkled.

“Hark, father!  Hark, Ellen!  D’you hear that?” she exclaimed childishly, and even clapped her hands.  “I do wish Mr. Chandler had been here.  He would ’a been startled!”

“Don’t, Daisy!” and Bunting frowned.

Then, getting up, he stretched himself.  “It’s fair getting on my mind,” he said, “these horrible things happening.  I’d like to get right away from London, just as far as I could—­that I would!”

“Up to John-o’-Groat’s?” said Daisy, laughing.  And then, “Why, father, ain’t you going out to get a paper?”

“Yes, I suppose I must.”

Slowly he went out of the room, and, lingering a moment in the hall, he put on his greatcoat and hat.  Then he opened the front door, and walked down the flagged path.  Opening the iron gate, he stepped out on the pavement, then crossed the road to where the newspaper-boys now stood.