Joe Chandler was looking longingly at what remains of the meal were still on the table.

“You can take a minute just to have a bite and a sup,” said Bunting hospitably; “and then you can tell us any news there is, Joe.  We’re right in the middle of everything now, ain’t we?” He spoke with evident enjoyment, almost pride, in the gruesome fact.

Joe nodded.  Already his mouth was full of bread-and-butter.  He waited a moment, and then:  “Well I have got one piece of news—­not that I suppose it’ll interest you very much.”

They both looked at him—­Mrs. Bunting suddenly calm, though her breast still heaved from time to time.

“Our Boss has resigned!” said Joe Chandler slowly, impressively.

“No!  Not the Commissioner o’ Police?” exclaimed Bunting.

“Yes, he has.  He just can’t bear what’s said about us any longer —­and I don’t wonder!  He done his best, and so’s we all.  The public have just gone daft—­in the West End, that is, to-day.  As for the papers, well, they’re something cruel—­that’s what they are.  And the ridiculous ideas they print!  You’d never believe the things they asks us to do—­and quite serious-like.”

“What d’you mean?” questioned Mrs. Bunting.  She really wanted to know.

“Well, the Courier declares that there ought to be a house-to-house investigation—­all over London.  Just think of it!  Everybody to let the police go all over their house, from garret to kitchen, just to see if The Avenger isn’t concealed there.  Dotty, I calls it!  Why, ’twould take us months and months just to do that one job in a town like London.”

“I’d like to see them dare come into my house!” said Mrs. Bunting angrily.

“It’s all along of them blarsted papers that The Avenger went to work a different way this time,” said Chandler slowly.

Bunting had pushed a tin of sardines towards his guest, and was eagerly listening.  “How d’you mean?” he asked.  “I don’t take your meaning, Joe.”

“Well, you see, it’s this way.  The newspapers was always saying how extraordinary it was that The Avenger chose such a peculiar time to do his deeds—­I mean, the time when no one’s about the streets.  Now, doesn’t it stand to reason that the fellow, reading all that, and seeing the sense of it, said to himself, ’I’ll go on another tack this time’?  Just listen to this!” He pulled a strip of paper, part of a column cut from a newspaper, out of his pocket: 

“’AN EX-LORD MAYOR OF LONDON ON THE AVENGER

“‘Will the murderer be caught?  Yes,’ replied Sir John, ’he will certainly be caught—­probably when he commits his next crime.  A whole army of bloodhounds, metaphorical and literal, will be on his track the moment he draws blood again.  With the whole community against him, he cannot escape, especially when it be remembered that he chooses the quietest hour in the twenty-four to commit his crimes.