ng sound) "before I
know exactly what manner of person is before me."

It hadn't taken the landlady very long to find out that her lodger
had a queer kind of fear and dislike of women. When she was doing
the staircase and landings she would often hear Mr. Sleuth reading
aloud to himself passages in the Bible that were very uncomplimentary
to her sex. But Mrs. Bunting had no very great opinion of her sister
woman, so that didn't put her out. Besides, where one's lodger is
concerned, a dislike of women is better than--well, than the other
thing.

In any case, where would have been the good of worrying about the
lodger's funny ways? Of course, Mr. Sleuth was eccentric. If he
hadn't been, as Bunting funnily styled it, "just a leetle touched
upstairs," he wouldn't be here, living this strange, solitary life
in lodgings. He would be living in quite a different sort of way
with some of his relatives, or with a friend of his own class.

There came a time when Mrs. Bunting, looking back--as even the
least imaginative of us are apt to look back to any part of our
own past lives which becomes for any reason poignantly memorable
--wondered how soon it was that she had discovered that her
lodger was given to creeping out of the house at a time when
almost all living things prefer to sleep.

She brought herself to believe--but I am inclined to doubt whether
she was right in so believing--that the first time she became aware
of this strange nocturnal habit of Mr. Sleuth's happened to be
during the night which preceded the day on which she had observed a
very curious circumstance. This very curious circumstance was the
complete disappearance of one of Mr. Sleuth's three suits of clothes.

It always passes my comprehension how people can remember, over any
length of time, not every moment of certain happenings, for that is
natural enough, but the day, the hour, the minute when these
happenings took place! Much as she thought about it afterwards,
even Mrs. Bunting never quite made up her mind whether it was during
the fifth or the sixth night of Mr. Sleuth's stay under her roof
that she became aware that he had gone out at two in the morning and
had only come in at five.

But that there did come such a night is certain--as certain as is
the fact that her discovery coincided with various occurrences
which were destined to remain retrospectively memorable.

******

It was intensely dark, intensely quiet--the darkest quietest hou