“There’s a fine Christmas show in the Edgware Road.  I was thinking of asking if you wouldn’t like to go along there with me.”

“No,” she said dully.  “I’m quite content to stay at home.”

She was listening—­listening for the sounds which would betoken that the lodger was coming downstairs.

At last she heard the cautious, stuffless tread of his rubber-soled shoes shuffling along the hall.  But Bunting only woke to the fact when the front door shut to.

“That’s never Mr. Sleuth going out?” He turned on his wife, startled.  “Why, the poor gentleman’ll come to harm—­that he will!  One has to be wide awake on an evening like this.  I hope he hasn’t taken any of his money out with him.”

“’Tisn’t the first time Mr. Sleuth’s been out in a fog,” said Mrs. Bunting sombrely.

Somehow she couldn’t help uttering these over-true words.  And then she turned, eager and half frightened, to see how Bunting had taken what she said.

But he looked quite placid, as if he had hardly heard her.  “We don’t get the good old fogs we used to get—­not what people used to call ‘London particulars.’  I expect the lodger feels like Mrs. Crowley—­I’ve often told you about her, Ellen?”

Mrs. Bunting nodded.

Mrs. Crowley had been one of Bunting’s ladies, one of those he had liked best—­a cheerful, jolly lady, who used often to give her servants what she called a treat.  It was seldom the kind of treat they would have chosen for themselves, but still they appreciated her kind thought.

“Mrs. Crowley used to say,” went on Bunting, in his slow, dogmatic way, “that she never minded how bad the weather was in London, so long as it was London and not the country.  Mr. Crowley, he liked the country best, but Mrs. Crowley always felt dull-like there.  Fog never kept her from going out—­no, that it didn’t.  She wasn’t a bit afraid.  But—­” he turned round and looked at his wife—­ “I am a bit surprised at Mr. Sleuth.  I should have thought him a timid kind of gentleman—­”

He waited a moment, and she felt forced to answer him.

“I wouldn’t exactly call him timid,” she said, in a low voice, “but he is very quiet, certainly.  That’s why he dislikes going out when there are a lot of people bustling about the streets.  I don’t suppose he’ll be out long.”

She hoped with all her soul that Mr. Sleuth would be in very soon —­that he would be daunted by the now increasing gloom.

Somehow she did not feel she could sit still for very long.  She got up, and went over to the farthest window.

The fog had lifted, certainly.  She could see the lamp-lights on the other side of the Marylebone Road, glimmering redly; and shadowy figures were hurrying past, mostly making their way towards the Edgware Road, to see the Christmas shops.

At last to his wife’s relief, Bunting got up too.  He went over to the cupboard where he kept his little store of books, and took one out.