After she had done his bedroom the landlady went into the sitting-room and gave it a good dusting.  This room was not kept quite as nice as she would have liked it to be.  Mrs. Bunting longed to give the drawing-room something of a good turn out; but Mr. Sleuth disliked her to be moving about in it when he himself was in his bedroom; and when up he sat there almost all the time.  Delighted as he had seemed to be with the top room, he only used it when making his mysterious experiments, and never during the day-time.

And now, this afternoon, she looked at the rosewood chiffonnier with longing eyes—­she even gave that pretty little piece of furniture a slight shake.  If only the doors would fly open, as the locked doors of old cupboards sometimes do, even after they have been securely fastened, how pleased she would be, how much more comfortable somehow she would feel!

But the chiffonnier refused to give up its secret.

******

About eight o’clock on that same evening Joe Chandler came in, just for a few minutes’ chat.  He had recovered from his agitation of the morning, but he was full of eager excitement, and Mrs. Bunting listened in silence, intensely interested in spite of herself, while he and Bunting talked.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m as right as a trivet now!  I’ve had a good rest —­laid down all this afternoon.  You see, the Yard thinks there’s going to be something on to-night.  He’s always done them in pairs.”

“So he has,” exclaimed Bunting wonderingly.  “So he has!  Now, I never thought o’ that.  Then you think, Joe, that the monster’ll be on the job again to-night?”

Chandler nodded.  “Yes.  And I think there’s a very good chance of his being caught too—­”

“I suppose there’ll be a lot on the watch to-night, eh?”

“I should think there will be!  How many of our men d’you think there’ll be on night duty to-night, Mr. Bunting?”

Bunting shook his head.  “I don’t know,” he said helplessly.

“I mean extra,” suggested Chandler, in an encouraging voice.

“A thousand?” ventured Bunting.

“Five thousand, Mr. Bunting.”

“Never!” exclaimed Bunting, amazed.

And even Mrs. Bunting echoed “Never!” incredulously.

“Yes, that there will.  You see, the Boss has got his monkey up!” Chandler drew a folded-up newspaper out of his coat pocket.  “Just listen to this: 

“’The police have reluctantly to admit that they have no clue to the perpetrators of these horrible crimes, and we cannot feel any surprise at the information that a popular attack has been organised on the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.  There is even talk of an indignation mass meeting.’

“What d’you think of that?  That’s not a pleasant thing for a gentleman as is doing his best to read, eh?”

“Well, it does seem queer that the police can’t catch him, now doesn’t it?” said Bunting argumentatively.