“Have a bit of something now?” she said suddenly.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t eat anything,” he said hastily.  “I don’t feel as if I could ever eat anything any more.”

“That’ll only make you ill.”  Mrs. Bunting spoke rather crossly, for she was a sensible woman.  And to please her he took a bite out of the slice of bread-and-butter she had cut for him.

“I expect you’re right,” he said.  “And I’ve a goodish heavy day in front of me.  Been up since four, too—­”

“Four?” she said.  “Was it then they found—­” she hesitated a moment, and then said, “it?”

He nodded.  “It was just a chance I was near by.  If I’d been half a minute sooner either I or the officer who found her must have knocked up against that—­that monster.  But two or three people do think they saw him slinking away.”

“What was he like?” she asked curiously.

“Well, that’s hard to answer.  You see, there was such an awful fog.  But there’s one thing they all agree about.  He was carrying a bag—­”

“A bag?” repeated Mrs. Bunting, in a low voice.  “Whatever sort of bag might it have been, Joe?”

There had come across her—­just right in her middle, like—­such a strange sensation, a curious kind of tremor, or fluttering.

She was at a loss to account for it.

“Just a hand-bag,” said Joe Chandler vaguely.  “A woman I spoke to —­cross-examining her, like—­who was positive she had seen him, said, ’Just a tall, thin shadow—­that’s what he was, a tall, thin shadow of a man—­with a bag.’”

“With a bag?” repeated Mrs. Bunting absently.  “How very strange and peculiar—­”

“Why, no, not strange at all.  He has to carry the thing he does the deed with in something, Mrs. Bunting.  We’ve always wondered how he hid it.  They generally throws the knife or fire-arms away, you know.”

“Do they, indeed?” Mrs. Bunting still spoke in that absent, wondering way.  She was thinking that she really must try and see what the lodger had done with his bag.  It was possible—­in fact, when one came to think of it, it was very probable—­that he had just lost it, being so forgetful a gentleman, on one of the days he had gone out, as she knew he was fond of doing, into the Regent’s Park.

“There’ll be a description circulated in an hour or two,” went on Chandler.  “Perhaps that’ll help catch him.  There isn’t a London man or woman, I don’t suppose, who wouldn’t give a good bit to lay that chap by the heels.  Well, I suppose I must be going now.”

“Won’t you wait a bit longer for Bunting?” she said hesitatingly.

“No, I can’t do that.  But I’ll come in, maybe, either this evening or to-morrow, and tell you any more that’s happened.  Thanks kindly for the tea.  It’s made a man of me, Mrs. Bunting.”

“Well, you’ve had enough to unman you, Joe.”

“Aye, that I have,” he said heavily.

A few minutes later Bunting did come in, and he and his wife had quite a little tiff—­the first tiff they had had since Mr. Sleuth became their lodger.