ied
out to purchase the things of which he was in urgent need.

How pleasant it was to feel that there was money in her purse
again--not only someone else's money, but money she was now in
the very act of earning so agreeably.

Mrs. Bunting first made her way to a little barber's shop close by.
It was there she purchased the brush and comb and the razors. It
was a funny, rather smelly little place, and she hurried as much as
she could, the more so that the foreigner who served her insisted
on telling her some of the strange, peculiar details of this
Avenger murder which had taken place forty-eight hours before, and
in which Bunting took such a morbid interest.

The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting. She didn't want to think of
anything painful or disagreeable on such a day as this.

Then she came back and showed the lodger her various purchases. Mr.
Sleuth was pleased with everything, and thanked her most courteously.
But when she suggested doing his bedroom he frowned, and looked
quite put out.

"Please wait till this evening," he said hastily. "It is my custom
to stay at home all day. I only care to walk about the streets when
the lights are lit. You must bear with me, Mrs. Bunting, if I seem
a little, just a little, unlike the lodgers you have been accustomed
to. And I must ask you to understand that I must not be disturbed
when thinking out my problems--" He broke off short, sighed, then
added solemnly, "for mine are the great problems of life and death."

And Mrs. Bunting willingly fell in with his wishes. In spite of her
prim manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's landlady was a true woman
--she had, that is, an infinite patience with masculine vagaries
and oddities.

When she was downstairs again, Mr. Sleuth's landlady met with a
surprise; but it was quite a pleasant surprise. While she had
been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young friend, Joe
Chandler, the detective, had come in, and as she walked into the
sitting-room she saw that her husband was pushing half a sovereign
across the table towards Joe.

Joe Chandler's fair, good-natured face was full of satisfaction:
not at seeing his money again, mark you, but at the news Bunting
had evidently been telling him--that news of the sudden wonderful
change in their fortunes, the coming of an ideal lodger.

"Mr. Sleuth don't want me to do his bedroom till he's gone out!"
she exclaimed. And then she sat down for a bit of a rest.

It was a comf