She groped her way to a chair and sat down.  She felt very tired—­ strangely tired, as if she had gone through some great physical exertion.

Yes, it was true that Mr. Sleuth had brought her and Bunting luck, and it was wrong, very wrong, of her ever to forget that.

As she sat there she also reminded herself, and not for the first time, what the lodger’s departure would mean.  It would almost certainly mean ruin; just as his staying meant all sorts of good things, of which physical comfort was the least.  If Mr. Sleuth stayed on with them, as he showed every intention of doing, it meant respectability, and, above all, security.

Mrs. Bunting thought of Mr. Sleuth’s money.  He never received a letter, and yet he must have some kind of income—­so much was clear.  She supposed he went and drew his money, in sovereigns, out of a bank as he required it.

Her mind swung round, consciously, deliberately, away from Mr. Sleuth.

The Avenger?  What a strange name!  Again she assured herself that there would come a time when The Avenger, whoever he was, must feel satiated; when he would feel himself to be, so to speak, avenged.

To go back to Mr. Sleuth; it was lucky that the lodger seemed so pleased, not only with the rooms, but with his landlord and landlady —­indeed, there was no real reason why Mr. Sleuth should ever wish to leave such nice lodgings.

******

Mrs. Bunting suddenly stood up.  She made a strong effort, and shook off her awful sense of apprehension and unease.  Feeling for the handle of the door giving into the passage she turned it, and then, with light, firm steps, she went down into the kitchen.

When they had first taken the house, the basement had been made by her care, if not into a pleasant, then, at any rate, into a very clean place.  She had had it whitewashed, and against the still white walls the gas stove loomed up, a great square of black iron and bright steel.  It was a large gas-stove, the kind for which one pays four shillings a quarter rent to the gas company, and here, in the kitchen, there was no foolish shilling-in-the-slot arrangement.  Mrs. Bunting was too shrewd a woman to have anything to do with that kind of business.  There was a proper gas-meter, and she paid for what she consumed after she had consumed it.

Putting her candle down on the well-scrubbed wooden table, she turned up the gas-jet, and blew out the candle.

Then, lighting one of the gas-rings, she put a frying-pan on the stove, and once more her mind reverted, as if in spite of herself, to Mr. Sleuth.  Never had there been a more confiding or trusting gentleman than the lodger, and yet in some ways he was so secret, so—­so peculiar.

She thought of the bag—­that bag which had rumbled about so queerly in the chiffonnier.  Something seemed to tell her that tonight the lodger had taken that bag out with him.

And then she thrust away the thought of the bag almost violently from her mind, and went back to the more agreeable thought of Mr. Sleuth’s income, and of how little trouble he gave.  Of course, the lodger was eccentric, otherwise he wouldn’t be their lodger at all—­he would be living in quite a different sort of way with some of his relations, or with a friend in his own class.