ean?" 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.

"'Londoners are now in such a state of nerves--if I may use the
expression, in such a state of funk--that every passer-by, however
innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his
avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one and
three in the morning.'

"I'd like to gag that ex-Lord Mayor!" concluded Joe Chandler
wrathfully.

Just then the lodger's bell rang.

"Let me go up, my dear," said Bunting.

His wife still looked pale and shaken by the fright she had had.

"No, no," she said hastily. "You stop down here, and talk to Joe.
I'll look after Mr. Sleuth. He may be wanting his supper just a
bit earlier than usual to-day."

Slowly, painfully, again feeling as if her legs were made of cotton
wool, she dragged herself up to the first floor, knoc