The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes Read Free Book Online Page A

the breakfast which also served for luncheon, poring over
the Old Testament and over that, strange kind of index to the
Book.
      As for the delicate and yet the all-important
question of money, Mr. Sleuth was everything - everything that the
most exacting landlady could have wished. Never had there been a
more confiding or trusting gentleman. On the very first day he had
been with them he had allowed his money - the considerable sum of
one hundred and eighty-four sovereigns - to lie about wrapped up in
little pieces of rather dirty newspaper on his dressing-table. That
had quite upset Mrs. Bunting. She had allowed herself respectfully
to point out to him that what he was doing was foolish, indeed
wrong. But as only answer he had laughed, and she had been startled
when the loud, unusual and discordant sound had issued from his
thin lips.
      "I know those I can trust," he had answered,
stuttering rather, as was his way when moved. "And - and I assure
you, Mrs. Bunting, that I hardly have to speak to a human being -
especially to a woman" (and he had drawn in his breath with a
hissing 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 hour of the night, when suddenly Mrs. Bunting was awakened
from a deep, dreamless sleep by sounds at once unexpected and
familiar. She knew at once what those sounds were. They were those
made by Mr. Sleuth, first coming down the stairs, and walking on
tiptoe - she was sure it was. on tiptoe - past her door, and
finally softly shutting the front door behind him.
      Try as she would, Mrs. Bunting found it