The boy nearest to him only had the Sun—­a late edition of the paper he had already read.  It annoyed Bunting to give a penny for a ha’penny rag of which he already knew the main contents.  But there was nothing else to do.

Standing under a lamp-post, he opened out the newspaper.  It was bitingly cold; that, perhaps, was why his hand shook as he looked down at the big headlines.  For Bunting had been very unfair to the enterprise of the editor of his favourite evening paper.  This special edition was full of new matter—­new matter concerning The Avenger.

First, in huge type right across the page, was the brief statement that The Avenger had now committed his ninth crime, and that he had chosen quite a new locality, namely, the lonely stretch of rising ground known to Londoners as Primrose Hill.

“The police,” so Bunting read, “are very reserved as to the circumstances which led to the finding of the body of The Avenger’s latest victim.  But we have reason to believe that they possess several really important clues, and that one of them is concerned with the half-worn rubber sole of which we are the first to reproduce an outline to-day. (See over page.)”

And Bunting, turning the sheet round about, saw the irregular outline he had already seen in the early edition of the Sun, that purporting to be a facsimile of the imprint left by The Avenger’s rubber sole.

He stared down at the rough outline which took up so much of the space which should have been devoted to reading matter with a queer, sinking feeling of terrified alarm.  Again and again criminals had been tracked by the marks their boots or shoes had made at or near the scenes of their misdoings.

Practically the only job Bunting did in his own house of a menial kind was the cleaning of the boots and shoes.  He had already visualised early this very afternoon the little row with which he dealt each morning—­first came his wife’s strong, serviceable boots, then his own two pairs, a good deal patched and mended, and next to his own Mr. Sleuth’s strong, hardly worn, and expensive buttoned boots.  Of late a dear little coquettish high-heeled pair of outdoor shoes with thin, paperlike soles, bought by Daisy for her trip to London, had ended the row.  The girl had worn these thin shoes persistently, in defiance of Ellen’s reproof and advice, and he, Bunting, had only once had to clean her more sensible country pair, and that only because the others had become wet though the day he and she had accompanied young Chandler to Scotland Yard.

Slowly he returned across the road.  Somehow the thought of going in again, of hearing his wife’s sarcastic comments, of parrying Daisy’s eager questions, had become intolerable.  So he walked slowly, trying to put off the evil moment when he would have to tell them what was in his paper.

The lamp under which he had stood reading was not exactly opposite the house.  It was rather to the right of it.  And when, having crossed over the roadway, he walked along the pavement towards his own gate, he heard odd, shuffling sounds coming from the inner side of the low wall which shut off his little courtyard from the pavement.