CHAPTER VIII

Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice slice of roast pork downstairs.

“I hope you’re feeling a little better, sir,” Mrs. Bunting had forced herself to say when she first took in his tray.

And he had answered plaintively, querulously, “No, I can’t say I feel well to-day, Mrs. Bunting.  I am tired—­very tired.  And as I lay in bed I seemed to hear so many sounds—­so much crying and shouting.  I trust the Marylebone Road is not going to become a noisy thoroughfare, Mrs. Bunting?”

“Oh, no, sir, I don’t think that.  We’re generally reckoned very quiet indeed, sir.”

She waited a moment—­try as she would, she could not allude to what those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened.  “I expect you’ve got a chill, sir,” she said suddenly.  “If I was you, I shouldn’t go out this afternoon; I’d just stay quietly indoors.  There’s a lot of rough people about—­” Perhaps there was an undercurrent of warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous grey eyes.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bunting.  But I think I’ll take your advice.  That is, I will stay quietly at home, I am never at a loss to know what to do with myself so long as I can study the Book of Books.”

“Then you’re not afraid about your eyes, sir?” said Mrs. Bunting curiously.  Somehow she was beginning to feel better.  It comforted her to be up here, talking to Mr. Sleuth, instead of thinking about him downstairs.  It seemed to banish the terror which filled her soul—­aye, and her body, too—­at other times.  When she was with him Mr. Sleuth was so gentle, so reasonable, so—­so grateful.

Poor kindly, solitary Mr. Sleuth!  This kind of gentleman surely wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a human being.  Eccentric—­so much must be admitted.  But Mrs. Bunting had seen a good deal of eccentric folk, eccentric women rather than eccentric men, in her long career as useful maid.

Being at ordinary times an exceptionally sensible, well-balanced woman, she had never, in old days, allowed her mind to dwell on certain things she had learnt as to the aberrations of which human nature is capable—­even well-born, well-nurtured, gentle human nature—­as exemplified in some of the households where she had served.  It would, indeed, be unfortunate if she now became morbid or—­or hysterical.

So it was in a sharp, cheerful voice, almost the voice in which she had talked during the first few days of Mr. Sleuth’s stay in her house, that she exclaimed, “Well, sir, I’ll be up again to clear away in about half an hour.  And if you’ll forgive me for saying so, I hope you will stay in and have a rest to-day.  Nasty, muggy weather —­that’s what it is!  If there’s any little thing you want, me or Bunting can go out and get it.”