As they were exchanging a rather frigid kiss, indeed, ’twas a mere peck on Mrs. Bunting’s part, there fell, with startling suddenness, loud cries on the still, cold air.  Long-drawn and wailing, they sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar of traffic in the Edgware Road.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Bunting wonderingly.  “Why, whatever’s that?”

The cabman lowered his voice.  “Them’s ’a-crying out that ’orrible affair at King’s Cross.  He’s done for two of ’em this time!  That’s what I meant when I said I might ’a got a better fare.  I wouldn’t say nothink before little missy there, but folk ’ave been coming from all over London the last five or six hours; plenty of toffs, too—­but there, there’s nothing to see now!”

“What?  Another woman murdered last night?”

Bunting felt tremendously thrilled.  What had the five thousand constables been about to let such a dreadful thing happen?

The cabman stared at him, surprised.  “Two of ’em, I tell yer—­ within a few yards of one another.  He ’ave—­got a nerve—­But, of course, they was drunk.  He are got a down on the drink!”

“Have they caught him?” asked Bunting perfunctorily.

“Lord, no!  They’ll never catch ’im!  It must ’ave happened hours and hours ago—­they was both stone cold.  One each end of a little passage what ain’t used no more.  That’s why they didn’t find ’em before.”

The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer—­two news vendors trying to outshout each other.

“’Orrible discovery near King’s Cross!” they yelled exultingly.  “The Avenger again!”

And Bunting, with his daughter’s large straw hold-all in his hand, ran forward into the roadway and recklessly gave a boy a penny for a halfpenny paper.

He felt very much moved and excited.  Somehow his acquaintance with young Joe Chandler made these murders seem a personal affair.  He hoped that Chandler would come in soon and tell them all about it, as he had done yesterday morning when he, Bunting, had unluckily been out.

As he walked back into the little hall, he heard Daisy’s voice—­ high, voluble, excited—­giving her stepmother a long account of the scarlet fever case, and how at first Old Aunt’s neighbours had thought it was not scarlet fever at all, but just nettlerash.

But as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room, there came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter’s voice, and he heard her cry, “Why, Ellen, whatever is the matter?  You do look bad!” and his wife’s muffled answer, “Open the window—­do.”

“’Orrible discovery near King’s Cross—­a clue at last!” yelled the newspaper-boys triumphantly.

And then, helplessly, Mrs. Bunting began to laugh.  She laughed, and laughed, and laughed, rocking herself to and fro as if in an ecstasy of mirth.

“Why, father, whatever’s the matter with her?”

Daisy looked quite scared.